SFGATE – Ex-SF Mayor Willie Brown blasts SF attacks on Cruise, Waymo, is on Cruise payroll
See full original article in SFGATE, by Joshua Bote.
Former San Francisco mayor and longtime pundit Willie Brown has very strong feelings in support of the upcoming, twice-postponed vote in the California Public Utilities Commission to expand Waymo and Cruise’s reach in San Francisco.
“As our city’s transit system faces steep challenges, it is deeply disappointing to see SFMTA direct considerable time and resources to hamstring an industry with a strong safety record rather than focus on improving the services they’re in charge of,” Brown said in a statement, which was first shared by Politico writer Lara Korte Monday afternoon.
There’s just one catch: Brown is also on Cruise’s payroll. A spokesperson for Cruise confirmed to SFGATE Monday that the former San Francisco mayor has been a paid adviser for the company since 2020.
The debate over Cruise and Waymo’s expansion in the city, which would allow the companies to operate their vehicles 24/7 in San Francisco with passenger fares, has amped up in recent months, throwing a disparate range of community members in the ring. City officials, firefighters, transportation workers, garbage workers and cone-wielding transit activists stand on one side of the proverbial ring, while driverless car companies, technologists and, now, the former mayor stand on the other.
The rival autonomous vehicle companies, meanwhile, have launched a charm offensive in an attempt to garner community goodwill and override the many complaints of stuck, obtrusive or otherwise glitched-out cars. Last week, Cruise entered a partnership with the San Francisco Giants to have a company-branded patch on team uniforms until 2025 — a move that SFGATE columnist Dave Tobener described as “an advertisement for a faceless, soulless corporation with no real connection to The City or the team.”
Just weeks before, the same company put full-page ads in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and other local news outlets noting the number of Americans killed in car crashes last year — the logic being that autonomous vehicles are safer than human drivers. (The jury’s still out on that logic.) Waymo toed the party line, putting out a full-page ad in the Bay Area Reporter with a similar sentiment. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
The vote to decide the fate of Cruise and Waymo’s expansion, previously pushed back from July 13, will be held Thursday.
