In Which We Find More Evidence the CPUC Is Thoroughly Captured
See original article by Sue Vaughan at Burning Planet, which contains more useful articles about climate change and transportation.
The California Public Utilities Commission is now reneging on a possible evaluation of the environmental impacts of Waymos and Cruises – and other commercial autonomous vehicles that may be authorized to charge passengers for rides on the streets of San Francisco.
That announcement came in its November 8, 2023 denial of the requests of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, and the San Francisco Planning Department (“San Francisco”) for a rehearing of the CPUC’s August 10, 2023 authorization – Phase I of the CPUC rulemaking – for Waymo and Cruise to offer unlimited commercial passenger services in San Francisco.
These vehicles are commonly called “robotaxis”. However, real taxi drivers object. Taxis are locally regulated and considered an extension of transit.
The denial just demonstrates how thoroughly captured the CPUC is by the industries that it is supposed to regulate – from PG&E to Ubers and Lyfts and now AVs.
San Francisco believed it had strong grounds to demand a rehearing based on the absence of an environmental impact report. Cruises and Waymos are, after all, cars. They pollute (yes, even electric vehicles pollute), they congest, they obstruct emergency vehicles, and they compete with our best tool for fighting transportation-related greenhouse-gas emissions, transit.
Three members of the five-member California Public Utilities Commission led concerned members of the publicand representatives of local agencies to believe that an environmental impact study of Waymos and Cruises was a future possibility when they authorized those two companies to offer unlimited autonomous vehicle passenger services (AVPS) on August 10:
D.21-05-017 makes clear, however, that this Resolution is not the proper venue for raising [California Environmental Quality Act] concerns. In that Decision, we made clear that any environmental impacts caused by these initial deployment measures were “far too speculative to undertake environmental review . . . .”37 We further made clear, however, that we would open a new phase of the TNC proceeding, R.12-12-011, in which “the data we have already required to be collected will be used to evaluate the Deployment Programs,” and that “[p]arties may raise the applicability of CEQA at that time.”
Now, however, according to the CPUC November 8 denial of the request for a rehearing, it is suddenly offering a new interpretation of environmental law, denying that the California Environmental Quality Act applies to autonomous vehicle passenger services. The CPUC now argues that AVPS deployment is exempt from environmental review under the “passenger service exemption to CEQA”.
This section of the Public Resources Code, 21080(b)(10), does indeed exempt projects “for the institution of increase of passenger or commuter services on rail or highway rights-of-way already in use, including modernization of existing stations and parking facilities.” (Streets are considered highways according to the vehicle code.)
But the legislation that the CPUC is now relying on to deny that CEQA applies to Waymo and Cruise – and any other autonomous vehicles that it may authorize in the future – is SB 788, passed in 2014. The first line of the bill analysisdigest reads, “This bill makes non-controversial changes to sections of law relating to transportation.” The first enumerated line of the bill analysis clarifies further, defining:
1: … the term “highway” for the purposes of establishing whether or not increased transit service qualifies for an exemption pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
The term transit, in state and federal law, refers to public transportation systems. For example, the California Vehicle Code defines transit buses this way:
642. A “transit bus” is any bus owned or operated by a publicly owned or operated transit system, or operated under contract with a publicly owned or operated transit system, and used to provide to the general public, regularly scheduled transportation for which a fare is charged.
And the mission of the Federal Transit Administration is to support public transportation systems.
Waymo and Cruise (and all other vehicles that fall under this particular rule making such Ubers and Lyfts) are not transit and are not exempted from environmental review. The CPUC’s determination that Waymo and Cruise are exempt from environmental review is, therefore, wrong.
Because the CPUC has turned down the request for rehearing, I sent an email to the San Francisco City Attorney to find out what action the City Attorney is planning on taking, if any. The response? We are weighing our options.
Meanwhile, Cruise’s California Department of Motor Vehicles operating permit and CPUC commercial permit have been indefinitely suspended since October 24 because representatives of the company withheld video from regulators of an October 2 incident in which a Cruise vehicle dragged a woman beneath it for 20 feet; representatives of Cruise must appear before the CPUC on February 6, 2024 as part of the process for assessing the fine. Cruise co-founders Kyle Vogt and Dan Kan have since resigned.
Based merely on the number of incidents cataloged by members of Safe Street Rebel, you would think regulators would have been able to predict a disaster such as the one that happened on October 2 – but not one of the three CPUC members who voted to approve Waymos and Cruises – or any of the 15 people in leadership positions at the DMV – have also stepped down. And Governor Gavin Newsom – who appointed all of the CPUC commissioners and most of the DMV directors, has been silent on the issues with autonomous vehicles in the city where he used to be mayor. In fact, he vetoed legislation that would have required safety drivers in autonomous trucks. It was also recently revealed that Newsom is close to a Cruise lobbyist.
Gavin Newsom is now toying with a run for president(clearly, the national Democratic party is casting about for someone in the event that President Biden decides not to run), but industry capture of Democratic officeholders – from AVs to California’s three, major investor-owned utilities– is why voters get disgusted and might vote for your Jill Steins and RFK Jrs, increasing the chances that Donald Trump will get elected and end our democracy.
People can let the CPUC know their opinion about AVPS here.
