CA: Uber plans to deploy taxis on S.F.'s car-free Market Street -- and luxury cars at a later date

Uber aims to launch a taxi service on the car-free portion of Market Street in the coming days, according to a letter that a top executive from the tech company sent to one of Mayor Daniel Lurie's top advisers on Monday.

The move comes a month after Lurie allowed Waymo to map the downtown artery for its self-driving vehicles, a controversial decision that could bring more congestion onto a road currently reserved for cyclists, transit and taxis.

Whether Waymo's robotaxis count among that group of authorized vehicles has become a focus of debate. Waymo's competitors have accused Lurie of giving the company special treatment. Transit and cycling activists have also pushed back, on what they see as a play to put cars on the road. But staff in Lurie's office contend that Waymo ride-hails equate to taxis, and should have been permitted on car-free Market all along.

Now, top officials at Uber want to apply the same logic to commercial ride-hails — starting with Uber's program that enables riders to book professionally licensed taxis, and quickly expanding to Uber Black luxury cars.

While Uber had "dutifully respected" the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board's 2019 vote to ban private automobiles from Market east of 10th Street, Uber's management told Lurie they felt blindsided after he opened that two-mile segment to Waymo.

"Favoritism of this nature is deeply concerning," Uber's senior vice president of communications and public policy, Jill Hazelbaker, wrote in a letter to Lurie on April 10. When Lurie cited the urgency of revitalizing downtown as a motivating factor for the change, Uber's management seized on that rationale.

"If your goal is to boost the vitality of downtown, then there is no practical reason to exclude Uber drivers, who currently provide more than three times the number of trips each day as Waymo, at significantly lower prices and shorter wait times," Hazelbaker wrote in the April letter.

Her subsequent missive to Ned Segal, Lurie's economic policy chief, on Monday proposed holding off on operations of Uber Black, the company's luxury car ride-hail platform, in favor of starting with taxis. Uber began its taxi service as a pilot two years ago but routed the cabs away from car-free Market Street.

In what Hazelbaker called "a sign of respect for the mayor," Uber executives plan to wait until Waymo has finished its mapping before deploying Uber Black cars down the entirety of Market Street.

The hope, Hazelbaker said, "is that by respecting Waymo's mapping deployment the end result will be that Waymo and Uber (and Lyft, and anyone else) can launch rides at the same time."

An Uber spokesperson said in a statement that the company shares Lurie's "focus on helping revitalize the downtown core of San Francisco."

"We're committed to partnering with the City and drivers to ensure equal access on Market Street over the long term," the statement said.

Lurie signaled he would not stand in the way of Uber's ambitions, at least for now. The mayor's spokesperson, Charles Lutvak, said in a statement that San Francisco "can't expect downtown to recover if we let Market Street stay empty, and we are being thoughtful and intentional about the smartest ways to get foot traffic back."

"As these changes play out within existing law, we will look at the data, evaluate their impact, and make thoughtful decisions that prioritize public transit and reenergize downtown," Lutvak said.

Advocates for public transportation and pedestrian safety saw Uber's decision as the latest in a series of encroachments, which could lead to a full return of automobiles to Market.

"I'm very concerned that Uber is jumping and trying to put cars back on ( Market Street)," said public transit advocate Cyrus Hall. "Fundamentally, the way we make sure that everybody in the city can get downtown is making sure there is sufficient and easily accessible public transit. That's the move, in my eyes. We need to make sure that riders from all over the city can access the Market Street corridor."

Hall, who was the campaign manager for an unsuccessful 2024 ballot measure that would have taxed Uber and Lyft to fund transit, said that allowing more cars on Market Street, including robotaxis, is a recipe to "degrade" the quality of Muni service on the thoroughfare.

"The addition of Uber to that is just opening the floodgates to what we used to have: a congested, hard to navigate Market Street," Hall said.

YeBut some businesses along Market Street that have struggled since the onset of the pandemic have persistently lobbied Lurie to reinstate car traffic, including ride-hails.

"The world has changed since the design of the original car-free Market Street, so it does bear looking at," said Fernando Pujals, deputy director of the Mid-Market Business Association and Foundation. "I don't think we believe there's any one magic bullet, but ... it does behoove us to try and bring cars back, and we have heard from our stakeholders that this is something they're interested in seeing, so we welcome steps in that direction."

Pujals said his group wanted to see the city implement any changes to Market Street in a way that prioritizes public safety. He thought that adding more car traffic to the street could help restore vibrancy to the corridor in tandem with other efforts to add more public events and encourage residents to spend more time around Mid-Market and downtown.

"All of these things working together," he said, expressing hope the city could accelerate what's been a sluggish downtown recovery.

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