Buckle up! St. Louis is one of the 12 cities the autonomous rideshare company Waymo is getting set to expand into.
The company announced Wednesday morning it’s starting to get a lay of the land in the Gateway City, by manually driving a fleet of its Jaguar I-PACE vehicles around the area. Waymo says its approach will allow the company to engage with the local community and “begin preparations to welcome public riders in the future.”
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The company adds its approach in St. Louis will be the same as in places it already operates with an eye to “deliberately scale service over time.”
The subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet Inc. launched full driverless commercial service in Phoenix five years ago and has added Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, and Atlanta since. Its St. Louis plans come alongside a handful of cities in the northern part of the country, where weather and road conditions can be much more challenging than cities in the Sun Belt (as evidenced by Monday’s traffic snarls over a paltry few inches of snow).
The news comes with some local fanfare, including welcoming messages from elected leaders and vehicle safety advocates.
“Autonomous vehicles hold the exciting promise of preventing deaths and injuries caused by behavioral factors, including impaired driving, if deployed responsibly and safely and in collaboration with the right community and city stakeholders,” Jerod Breit, regional executive director of MADD Heartland, said in a statement provided by Waymo. “We welcome Waymo into these new communities as another tool in the toolbox to end impaired driving.”
Missouri House Speaker Jon Patterson (R-Lee’s Summit) says he’s ready to work with the company to bring the technology to the state. “Waymo’s arrival in St. Louis is an exciting step forward for our state,” he said in a statement also shared by Waymo. “It will offer a safe and reliable transportation option for its residents.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article misspelled Jerod Breit’s name. We regret the error.
