Wireless connectivity issues causes car traffic fiasco in San Francisco

Supervisor Aaron Peskin said Sunday that government agencies would ask the city attorney to file a petition requesting that the state revisit last week’s key approval expanding robotaxi service.

As many as 10 Cruise driverless cars stopped working in San Francisco’s North Beach on Friday night, causing traffic to back up and leaving some questioning the decision of state regulators a day earlier to approve the expanded use of robotaxis in the city.

The autonomous vehicles appeared to be stopped in the middle of Grant Avenue, according to social media posts, with hazard lights on, blocking other cars from moving.

In a response to the incident, Cruise said the backup was caused by “wireless connectivity issues” that immobilized the driverless cars. San Francisco police confirmed that the cell connectivity issues were caused by the large number of people at the nearby Outside Lands music festival overtaxing the system.

“We are actively investigating and working on solutions to prevent this from happening again and apologize to those impacted,” Cruise said in a statement.

According to a text message exchange between San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin and a Cruise government affairs manager reviewed by the Chronicle, the cell connectivity affected the company’s remote ability to reroute the cell-connected cars. According to Peskin, approximately 10 cars stalled at the intersection.

Peskin said he was told by Cruise that the company is now considering creating its own cell phone network just for its San Francisco operations. It was not immediately clear if the company had plans to improve the connectivity issues for the subsequent days of the Outside Lands festival.

The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday voted to lift all restrictions for Cruise and Waymo’s full commercialization in the city amid vocal opposition from city officials.

Transportation and fire officials told state regulators that the spike in robotaxi activity in recent months coincided with disruptive incidents, such as unplanned stops and erratic driving. They warned that such disruptions were likely to occur more often as the companies expanded service.

The road that the cars were paralyzed on was a “tiny street,” Peskin said, and there would have been no way for emergency vehicles to get through had there been an emergency.

“The irony is that this happened the night after the CPUC irresponsibly gave them the green light for unlimited vehicles over the city’s objections,” Peskin said.

The CPUC’s approval did not include a cap on fleet sizes, and Cruise and Waymo are not required to report to state regulators how many driverless taxis they operate in the city. SF Chronicle