The Brief

Whether you love Waymo’s self-driving cars, or love to hate them, the vehicles are becoming more and more common throughout the Los Angeles area — including on freeways.

When Waymo announced last month that it would offer select freeway trips in L.A.’s 120-square-mile service area, my colleague Kevin Tidmarsh and I knew we’d be reuniting for another round of rides. We took a test trip on city streets last fall.

Admittedly, I’ve been nervous about trusting the autonomous tech, especially at higher speeds and merging in our region’s infamous traffic.

But freeways are actually easier for self-driving cars to maneuver than surface streets, according to Rahul Jain, professor and director of the USC Center of Autonomy and AI.

“City driving is more challenging because there are pedestrians and bicyclists and lights and stop signs and whatnot,” Jain told LAist. “On a freeway, it's relatively unencumbered.”

The set up

We teamed up to take a roundtrip Waymo ride from downtown to the Arlington Heights neighborhood of L.A.

According to the company, riders who have opted into Waymo’s freeway list on the app will be matched with those routes when they’re “meaningfully faster,” so we chose destinations with the guidelines in mind.

A side view of a Waymo car from March 2023.

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We called the first ride shortly after 10 a.m. on a Friday to take us from downtown’s Sante Fe Avenue to the intersection of Washington Boulevard and Bronson Avenue in Arlington Heights. The Waymo took about 6 minutes to arrive and cost a little more than $17.

We called the second ride back downtown shortly after 10:30 a.m. The car took 7 minutes to arrive and cost a little more than $15, which was both quicker and cheaper than our test rides from downtown to Koreatown last year.

The positives 

Our Waymo got on the 10 Freeway in downtown almost immediately, speeding up to a smooth 34 mph to merge into flowing traffic.

Waymo then moved a few lanes over to the left as it accelerated to 55 mph, squeezing between human-driven cars — and using its blinker every time.

“A lot of people could take notes,” Kevin said during the ride.

The autonomous car made some driving decisions like a seasoned Angeleno, using thru-traffic lanes around freeway off-ramps to bypass stalled traffic.

Kevin, who takes that route often, said Waymo picked the "absolute safest way” to go.

As we exited the freeway onto a packed off-ramp, Waymo was able to merge into the turning lane (although, it did cut a line of cars).

Once we were back on city streets, I was curious how Waymo would handle a run-in with emergency vehicles, especially after one of the cars drove toward a police standoff in downtown L.A. last month. A video shows a Waymo, with a passenger inside, turning toward a man lying on the ground in front of a line of officers with guns drawn and lights flashing.

But our car slowed to a stop until the ambulance, its siren blaring, passed by in the opposite direction.

The negatives

Waymo topped out around 55 mph for the first leg of our freeway trip, which was noticeably slower than other cars that passed us on the right.

But, as Kevin pointed out during the ride, maybe Waymo’s technology was seeing something we couldn’t. Traffic tightened up less than a mile ahead, and dropping back down to 25 mph felt like a smooth transition.

The biggest snafu was when Waymo seemed to get a bit confused by the freeway lanes toward the end of our trip. The car suddenly jerked to the left as if it was trying to merge before retreating back into the far right lane.

“ What is going on,” I said, several times.

“ Thinking with its steering wheel, it seems like,” Kevin replied.

It repeated the move two more times, without any obvious hazards or obstacles ahead.

Final thoughts 

Overall, we were pleasantly surprised with the Waymo freeway rides.

Kevin noted there were a couple of hiccups, including the sudden steering, but the driving was generally smooth and the car seemed to adjust to the various conditions we encountered.

I felt like Waymo handled the stop-and-go traffic better than I would’ve behind the wheel, and both Kevin and I agreed it felt like the autonomous technology has made notable improvements since our last test ride.

“ When it can take me on the Arroyo Seco through Highland Park, then, then I will give everything to our robot overlords,” I joked during the ride. “If it can do the stop sign on-ramp onto 60 miles per hour of that freeway … I'll never drive again.”

Lineage Logistics has removed all food waste inside the Boyle Heights cold storage that burned down in June, the company and air quality officials said this afternoon.

Now, Lineage has seven days to remove debris, power wash and disinfect certain areas.

The fire started on June 17 and burned for about a week, displacing many Boyle Heights residents and causing widespread air quality issues across the region.

Then putrid odor from an estimated 88 million pounds of food rotting inside the facility began to blanket Boyle Heights and surrounding communities.

Lineage said total cleanup cost is expected to run more than $100 million.

"The City gave Lineage 45 days to remove the biohazard food waste; today is day 60 on the City’s timeline," said L.A. City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, whose district includes Boyle Heights, in a statement today.

The food waste removal, Jurado added, "does not erase two months of odors, pests, and disruption."

South Coast AQMD said it has received more than 4,900 odor complaints from surrounding communities since July 12 and has issued 38 notices of public health and safety code violations.

Last week, a L.A. City Council committee voted to withhold permits to rebuild the warehouse, pending a full investigation by the fire department. That motion heads to the full City Council for consideration.

In a last-minute move, state legislators added language to a bill on Friday evening that street safety advocates say would threaten a long-planned project to slow speeding cars on Forest Lawn Drive near Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

The proposal, which would amend a larger bill if approved, targets projects that would reduce lanes on roads that provide access to “two or more adjacent cemeteries” in cities with populations over 2 million. Los Angeles is the only city in California large enough to meet that requirement.

Since 2022, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the city council office of Nithya Raman, who is running for mayor, have studied and planned to reduce the number of lanes along a one-mile stretch of Forest Lawn Drive. The proposal would cut the number of lanes to three — two through-lanes and one center turn lane.

The stretch of road is the point of entry for Forest Lawn’s Hollywood Hills location and Mount Sinai Memorial Park. The cemeteries are home to the graves of famous actors such as Debbie Reynolds and Brittany Murphy, at Forest Lawn, and comedians Don Rickles and Bob Saget at Mount Sinai.

Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks and Mortuaries, which operates a chain of cemeteries including the Hollywood Hills location, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against the project at the state and local levels, according to an LAist review of lobbying activity. Mount Sinai has also advocated against the project.

“After years of work to finally make this street safer, Sacramento is threatening that progress because powerful interests objected,” Michael Schneider, CEO of Streets for All, said in a post on the street advocacy group’s website condemning the bill’s language. 

The project

According to the L.A. Department of Transportation, Forest Lawn Drive has seen more than 95 collisions, resulting in four deaths, since 2013. Earlier this month, a driver died on the road after their "vehicle collided into a tree and became engulfed in flames,” according to the LAPD.

In response to concerns about speed and safety, the Department of Transportation proposed reducing the number of lanes. The project would also install plastic posts to separate vehicular traffic from cyclists.

Both cemeteries along the affected portion of Forest Lawn Drive have opposed the project from the start, saying the reduction in lanes would “create severe gridlock.”

The city’s analysis of how traffic could be impacted show that the lane reduction would result in a driving delay of about 15 seconds during weekday evening rush hour and by a little more than a minute and a half during weekend peak hours, when traffic is heavier.

The project was set to break ground earlier this summer before state legislators and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass requested city departments to pause work, citing "significant community opposition."

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass during a talk with LAist's public affairs show AirTalk.

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Bass is facing Raman in a runoff race for the L.A. mayor’s seat this November. The project has become a heated campaign issue with Bass wanting to block the work and Raman supporting the project.

“This last minute amendment to the legislation is clearly meant to stop one road safety project in my district, which is designed to save lives while keeping travel times nearly unchanged for commuters,” Raman said in a statement shared by her campaign.

L.A. Councilmember and mayoral candidate Nithya Raman at a press conference to speak in support of safety updates following a fatal crash that occurred on Forest Lawn Drive, on Tuesday, August 18, 2026.

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The mayor's office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment

The bill

If the added language is approved, State Senate and Assembly bills 194 would require Los Angeles to get approval from the City Council and the mayor and hold a public hearing before reducing “the number of vehicle travel lanes on a street that provides the only access to two or more adjacent cemeteries.”

The proposed bill change comes at the tail end of the legislative session, meaning lawmakers would have until midnight on Aug. 31 to either advance or reject the legislation.

A joint statement from Forest Lawn and Mount Sinai cemeteries said the legislation, if passed, would represent a “momentous victory.”

“The proposed legislation places important safeguards around any future effort to reduce vehicle lanes on the only street providing access to these adjacent cemeteries,” the statement reads.

Lobbying money

Records held by the California Secretary of State show that Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mortuaries paid a lobbying firm $125,000 between April and June to advocate the governor’s office and state legislature regarding “transportation issues.” No additional details are available.

Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, who represents the project area, confirmed to LAist that he heard from Governmental Advocates, Inc., the lobbying firm retained by the cemetery. Zbur said the firm and other stakeholders reached out to his office about “the harmful impact of the proposed projects on access to the cemeteries and the surrounding area.”

According to city records, lobbyist Rick Taylor and Associates received $360,000 from a law firm working on behalf of the cemetery between 2025 and 2026. Reports filed with the L.A. City Ethics Commission about the lobbying activity list opposition to the Forest Lawn Drive transportation project as the subject.

Status of the project

According to an Aug. 24 statement from the mayor’s office received before the proposed state language was introduced, alternative plans that preserve the four lanes of traffic and include protected bike lanes “are being reviewed.”

The mayor’s office said the project will break ground following additional community outreach.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

After Inglewood systematically violated state law, a judge reminded the city it was required to release records on police misconduct and use of force — but rolled back an earlier ruling that would have required the records to be posted online.

Barring an appeal, the decision brings five years of legal wrangling between the city and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California closer to a conclusion.

Inglewood won’t face serious consequences for the pattern of breaking California public records law, but the city must pay attorney fees for the ACLU and Trisha Shanklin, who joined the ACLU’s 2021 lawsuit. Inglewood police fatally shot Shanklin’s sister, Kisha Michael, and Marquintan Sandlin in 2016.

LA Superior Court Judge Amy Carter said the city will not have to proactively post the records online, which another judge had previously ordered the city to do for the next three years. Carter said during a Wednesday hearing that such a requirement would have to come from state legislators, not a judge.

Over the last decade, California lawmakers have expanded the public’s right to access police misconduct and use-of-force records, but Inglewood has thrown up a series of obstacles to that access.

The Inglewood City Council voted to destroy decades of internal affairs records in 2018 just weeks before one law went into effect, though Mayor James Butts denied the move was intended to thwart the law, according to LAist. The LA Times reported that the city nearly did it again in 2021 before being blocked by a judge.

This week’s court ruling found the city has routinely violated the law since then, missing deadlines, sharing incomplete records, and at times, failing to provide any documents at all.

Tiffany Bailey, an ACLU attorney, celebrated the decision and said it streamlines the civil rights group’s ability to get police records from the city in the future.

David Loy, an attorney with the First Amendment Coalition, said the case was a great win for the ACLU.

“These kinds of (public records) delays are not uncommon throughout the state,” Loy said. “I hope and believe this is a signal to other cities to get their house in order.”

Attorneys for the city declined to comment on the ruling, and Mayor James Butts did not immediately reply to written questions from The LA Local.

CalMatters maintains a searchable database of police misconduct and use-of-force records called the Police Records Access Project that includes records from the Inglewood Police Department.

The universe is a strange place — filled with exploding stars, ancient galaxies, and unseen worlds. Now, astronomers are about to get a brand new tool to explore it.

The $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled for launch Aug. 30. Named for NASA's first chief astronomer, the observatory is expected to reveal new information about the expansion of the universe and discover multitudes of planets orbiting distant stars.

Roman, as it is known to its friends, has an unusual history. About 15 years ago NASA was making plans to build a space telescope that could, among other things, search for exploding stars known as Type 1A supernovas. These supernovas were used as a kind of cosmological measuring stick to uncover a mysterious force called dark energy that was causing the universe to expand — a discovery that earned the Nobel Prize in 2011.

Cosmologist Daniel Scolnic at Duke University says finding more of them would be key to better understanding that expansion.

As NASA was developing plans for this new telescope, a call came in from the government office in charge of surveillance satellites.

"The National Reconnaissance Office reached out to NASA," Scolnic says, "saying, 'We have this amazing satellite sitting in a hangar that we're not using. And what what do you guys think about instead of pointing downwards, we point upwards, and you guys use it?'"

NASA said yes. It took some substantial modifications, but now that old satellite is set to become NASA's next major space observatory.

Scolnic says that the new observatory could fundamentally change the scientific model that astronomers use to understand our universe.

"In the last few years, there have been measurements saying that model might be wrong — and that's something that Roman will absolutely nail, whether the model's right or wrong," he says.

Another goal of the telescope is to spend a month surveying all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Julie McEnery is Roman's project scientist. She says even though Roman has broadly the same sensitivity and sharpness of vision as the currently orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, its design lets it do things much faster.

"That one month of observations to survey our Milky Way galaxy would take about a century with Hubble," says McEnery.

Instead of focusing on a single object, Roman is designed to make catalogs of large swaths of the sky, and McEnery says these catalogs will be available to everyone, not just academics.

"You can be a teacher in a high school in Kentucky and your students have the opportunity to see Roman data at the same time as a professor in Princeton," she says.

One professor eager to get his hands on Roman data is Scott Gaudi at The Ohio State University. Along with colleagues, Gaudi developed a technique for detecting planets around distant stars. It's called gravitational microlensing, and it measures the way those planets bend the starlight that passes them by.

Albert Einstein described the idea in 1936 but thought it would be impractical. New technology has proven him wrong — and Gaudi expects Roman will find tons of planets that way.

"We're looking for planets that are just completely undetectable by any other method," Gaudi says. That includes planets at the center of our galaxy, "that are very analogous to our own solar system planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune."

In addition to new planets, Roman should also reveal new galaxies, helping astronomers to get a better idea of the large-scale structure of the universe.

But predicting what will be Roman's greatest accomplishments over the course of its five-year mission is a tricky business.

"The history of astronomy really has shown that when you get a new capability, and especially a survey capability, you learn something new, something unexpected," says Wendy Freedman, an astronomer at the University of Chicago. "Often that turns out to be the most exciting part of a new facility. So I am completely open to what this telescope will find."

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