There are plenty of valid reasons for the city’s bad headlines. But its demise has been exaggerated, especially by Republicans in an election year.
“Hey there, Kevin!”
The car was talking to us. Weird.
We buckled up in the backseat of a driverless taxi in San Francisco and pushed the “start ride” button on the iPad-sized screen. The steering wheel turned by itself, and we eased into traffic. It felt a bit like a scene from a horror movie, but the car drove itself smoothly, and even pulled over for a passing ambulance.
We didn’t know what to expect when we visited San Francisco this month, given all the gloomy headlines about the city’s decline since the Covid pandemic.
We live on the East Coast where taxis still have a person in the driver’s seat and we hadn’t seen anything like these white Jaguar SUVs with cameras on their roof and sides.
“Waymo” was written on the passenger door, so we did a Google search on our Apple iPhones, game-changing innovations that came out of nearby Silicon Valley. (Waymo is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, which is based 40 minutes away.)
Riding around in this driverless invention was a reminder that San Francisco is still in the vanguard of innovation. These days, of course, the buzz is AI. Trillions of dollars are streaming into its AI startups to create technology capable of tasks that until now needed humans – from making medical diagnoses to writing a book.
After nearly two weeks in San Francisco, it’s clear to us that no wise person would bet against this place.
For sure, it has serious problems. Its downtown office vacancy rates are the highest in the country – around 30 per cent, in part because many tech employees still work remotely. A law that downplayed the seriousness of stealing anything valued at less than $950, classifying it as a misdemeanour, is widely blamed for exacerbating crime. Many residents have also been upset with lenient police enforcement against drug-related offences.
Hundreds died last year in the streets from overdoses, and we had to step around two guys smoking meth as we entered a friend’s apartment building.
But in fact there has been a dip in crime and homelessness this year and a move, powered by frustrated residents and wealthy business leaders, to elect more moderate politicians and axe ultra progressive policies.
After voters on 7 March gave police more surveillance power and mandated drug screening for welfare recipients, the front-page headline in the San Francisco Chronicle declared, “San Francisco can no longer be called a progressive city.”
City voters had recently recalled the city’s hyper-progressive district attorney. They also ousted three members of the school board after an attempt to rename 44 schools, including one named after Abraham Lincoln, because some people found the names offensive or controversial.
So there have been plenty of valid reasons for the city’s bad headlines. But its demise has been exaggerated, especially by Republicans ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Fox News has led the charge, calling it “a hellhole,” a once-golden city destroyed by Democrats who control the city and state.
The gusto with which Republican commentators have been criticising San Francisco may have something to do with its powerful Democrats. Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who remains a force in Congress, lives here. California governor Gavin Newsom, a former mayor, is seen as a future Democratic presidential contender.
Riding around the city in a Waymo, you don’t see it as a hellscape. You see a gorgeous city unlike any other in the United States, especially when you crest one hill and see the Pacific Ocean and then another and see San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. You see colourful Victorian homes, parks bursting with flowers, an energising diversity of people.
We also saw a city reinventing itself again, moving into a new cycle. It still has to fill the empty buildings around Union Square and end the open-air drug markets – maybe some of the university brainpower in nearby Stanford and Berkeley will help solve that.
It will be years before most of the country is downloading the Waymo app and hailing a robotic taxi. But we enjoyed calling them, waiting for our electric Jaguar to arrive with a quiet whirr, its round dome spinning on the roof glowing with a purple “KS,” Kevin’s initials. On our first trip, we paid $17 for a 16-minute ride, about the same as an Uber or Lyft.
It’s often interesting to talk to taxi drivers, especially when you arrive in a new city. But it was actually nice not to have to make small talk with drivers or ask them to please turn down their music. In fact, we chose a little Brandi Carlile by tapping the car’s touch screen.
Waymo’s back windows are darkened, so it felt like our own little living room on wheels. We wondered if that had ever emboldened people to, you know, enjoy the ride. But we digress.
The front windows are clear, so people outside can see the empty driver’s seat in the moving car. That led to gawkers pointing and taking photos.
Not everyone is on board and many people find driverless cars dangerous and see them as job-killers.
But surrounded by 29 cameras, six radars and five lidars, a sensor that uses lasers to precisely measure the cityscape all around the car, we felt like Waymo was betting on the future – just like San Francisco.