Cyclists blast Waymo after robotaxis keep parking in bike lanes
Waymo's bike-lane stops have fueled backlash in San Francisco, where the company racked up 589 parking tickets and $65,065 in 2024.
Waymo’s cars keep turning up where cyclists say they should never be, in San Francisco bike lanes that are already crowded, narrow and fragile. The latest complaints have sharpened a basic question for city leaders: whether a robotaxi gets treated any differently than a human driver when it blocks the lane.
The city’s own records show the scale of the problem. In 2024, Waymo vehicles received 589 parking tickets from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, costing $65,065 in fines for violations that included obstructing traffic, ignoring street-cleaning rules and parking in prohibited areas. Those penalties are the most immediate enforcement tool the city has used, even as critics argue they have not changed the company’s curbside behavior.
The uproar is part of a longer fight over autonomous vehicles in San Francisco. City officials led by then-City Attorney David Chiu filed an administrative motion on Aug. 17, 2023, asking the California Public Utilities Commission to pause approval of expanded commercial AV service with no limits on geography, service hours or fleet size. Waymo went ahead anyway, opening its San Francisco ride-hailing service to everyone on June 25, 2024, and saying it was already running tens of thousands of trips each week.
For cyclists, the issue is no longer just inconvenience. A June 2025 lawsuit brought by San Francisco cyclist Jenifer Hanki said a Waymo stopped in or near a bike lane and that a passenger opened a rear door into her path, leading to injuries and a collision with a second Waymo that was also blocking the lane. The case added to public frustration after a separate 2023 episode in which a frozen Waymo on Valencia Street forced some drivers into the center bike lane.
San Francisco now has an official reporting channel for autonomous-vehicle incidents, and city guidance tells residents to report when and where the event happened and which company was involved. That reporting system reflects the city’s broader effort to track how driverless cars behave on streets like Valencia Street, Market Street and 7th Street, where curb space is tight and bike-lane conflicts can unfold in seconds.
Waymo’s own marketing says its vehicles are designed to anticipate pedestrians, cyclists and other road users. For critics, that makes each bike-lane stop harder to excuse, and it leaves San Francisco with a test of enforcement that goes beyond one company: whether the city can make its traffic rules apply the same way when the violator has no driver behind the wheel.
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