‘Usually My Commute Is 20-30 Minutes’: San Francisco Woman Hops In Her First Waymo. It Takes An Hour
“Is Waymo afraid of the freeway?"
A Bay Area woman was left baffled after a Waymo ride doubled the time of her regular commute. TikTok user Alma (@almmmers) posted a video of herself speaking into the camera while riding in the backseat of the autonomous taxi.
“This is my first time in a Waymo, and usually my commute is 20-30 minutes. But today, it’s like an hour. And it’s because we’re taking the streets,” she says. “Is Waymo afraid of the freeway? Was there a way for me to change the route that we took and I just didn’t know? Because what the heck?”
To drive her point home, she caps off her video by flipping around her camera’s orientation to show her Waymo stuck in traffic.
Route Options
Typically, modern navigation apps like Google Maps will default to the fastest route options available. Maybe you’ve even been behind the wheel of your car while using Google Maps and received a notification that a quicker route is available.
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Additionally, Google Maps allows drivers to customize travel plans to their liking. Want to minimize or avoid tolls altogether? Dig into the settings and tick the corresponding box. If you’d like to exclude highways from your route, there’s an option to ensure you’re largely staying on local roads, which could help ease the nerves of those who aren’t into high-speed commuting or want to avoid being stuck on a freeway during rush hour. Furthermore, there are options to select more fuel efficient driving routes.
Waymo Commute Times Can be Longer
Alma isn’t the only person to complain about lengthy Waymo rides. One Reddit user posted to the site’s r/waymo sub venting their frustrations with the duration of a San Francisco Waymo trip. “It would have been about 2 miles down the Embarcadero. But instead, Waymo took us on a nearly 30 minute, very indirect route that bypassed several direct routes home,” they remarked.
While they thought the commute was “lovely,” they found the car’s autonomous driving software “confusing.”
A user who replied to the post commented that they, too, had a much longer ride home in a Waymo than they anticipated. “I have Waymo take me on a weird route one time on my way home what could have been a 2 min drive turned into a 12 minute drive,” they wrote.
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Another said they would’ve been able to walk to their destination faster than their Waymo drove them. “I had a 40 minute Waymo journey that could have been a 10 minute walk. There was nothing special going on. … Never taking that alone again,” the user wrote.
Waymo’s Rollout of Freeway Driving
“We’re gradually scaling our freeway operations with our safety framework at our foundation,” Waymo says on its website. “We look forward to expanding this service.”
In January 2024, the Google-owned company wrote that it’s taking “a phased approach to rolling out” freeway driving functionality.
Additionally, this Google support page says Waymo’s cars are restricted to operating within “territory boundaries.”
This is further corroborated by another support page that instructs Waymo customers to select cars in specific Waymo zones.
InsideEVs has reached out to Alma via email for further information.
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