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.

(

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

/

Getty Images North America

)

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.”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has rejected a proposal that would have let tenants across the county fall behind by about three months' worth of rent and still have local protections from eviction.

Supporters said the rules would have helped immigrants stay housed after losing income because of federal immigration raids.

Only one of the county’s five supervisors supported the expanded eviction protections. With none of the other four willing to second the motion in Tuesday’s meeting, the proposal died before it ever came to a vote.

The proposal failed after an hour of impassioned public comment from both renters and landlords. Onlookers chanted “cowards” as the board cleared the room for closed session.

Would the rules have been challenged in court?

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who put forward the proposal, said earlier in the meeting that expanding eviction protections would have been an appropriate way to help the county’s nearly one million undocumented immigrants.

Anticipating potential lawsuits to strike down the proposed ordinance, Horvath said, “I understand there is legal risk. There is in everything we do. Just like the risk undocumented Angelenos take by going outside their homes every day.”

Landlords spoke forcefully against the proposed rules. They said limiting evictions would saddle property owners with the cost of supporting targeted immigrant households.

“This proposed ordinance is legalized theft and will cause financial devastation to small housing providers,” said Julie Markarian with the Apartment Owners Association of California.

Horvath’s proposal would have built on an existing protection for renters in unincorporated parts of L.A. County, such as East L.A., Altadena and City Terrace. Under the current rules, renters can fall behind by up to one month’s worth of “fair market rent” (an amount determined by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department) and still be legally protected from eviction.

Protections won’t go countywide

Last week, county leaders voted to explore increasing that threshold to two months. But Horvath wanted to go further by increasing the limit to three months and making it apply countywide, not just in unincorporated areas.

Tenant advocates said family breadwinners have been detained during federal immigration raids, and other immigrants are afraid to go to their workplaces, causing families to scramble to keep up with the region’s high rents.

“Immigrant tenants are experiencing a profound financial crisis,” said Rose Lenehan, an organizer with the L.A. Tenants Union. “This protection is the bare minimum that we need to keep people housed and keep people from having to choose whether to stay in this county with their families and with their communities or self deport or face homelessness.”

A report published this week by the L.A. Economic Development Corporation found that 82% of surveyed small business owners said they’d been negatively affected by federal immigration actions. About a quarter of those surveyed said they had temporarily closed their businesses because of community concerns.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday placed on the June ballot a proposed temporary half-cent sales tax increase to fund the county’s struggling health care system, which has been hit hard by federal funding cuts.

If passed by voters, the increase would bring the county’s tax rate to 10.25%. It is projected to raise one billion dollars annually over five years.

The tax would expire in five years.

The background

County health officials said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” will cut $2.4 billion from county health programs over three years, threatening closure of some of the county’s 24 clinics and an array of public health programs.

Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who co-authored the proposal, said the county faced a “federally imposed crisis” that in the absence of state action, could only be addressed by raising taxes on county residents.

“This motion gives the voters a choice, given the stark realities that our county is facing,” Mitchell said.

The vote was 4-1, with Supervisor Kathryn Barger the lone dissenter. Barger is the board’s sole Republican. She worried shoppers would go to Orange County, where the sales tax is 7.75%. She also said the state should take the lead on addressing federal funding cuts to county health care systems.

Public reaction

More than 700 people showed up Tuesday to speak out on the proposal. Health care providers pleaded with the board to place the measure on the ballot, saying federal funding cuts to Medi-Cal had hit them hard.

“This is a crisis,” said Louise McCarthy, president and CEO of the Community Clinic Association of L.A. County. “Medi-Cal accounts for over half of clinic funding. So these changes will lead to clinic closures, longer wait times, overcrowded E.R.’s and higher costs for the county.” 

Others opposed any plan that would increase the sales tax.

“Our city is opposed to the adding of this regressive tax to overtaxed residents and making it even more difficult for cities, especially small cities, to pay for the increasing cost of basic resident services,” said Rolling Hills Mayor Bea Dieringer. “The county needs to tighten its belt further.”

Details on the proposed plan

Under the plan, up to 47% of revenue generated will be used by the Department of Health Services to fund nonprofit health care providers to furnish no-cost or reduced-cost care to low-income residents who do not have health insurance. 

Twenty-two percent would provide financial support to the county’s Department of Health Services to safeguard its public hospital and clinic services. Ten percent would be allocated to the Department of Public Health to support core public health functions and the awarding of grants to support health equity.

The rest would be sprinkled across the health care system, including to support nonprofit safety net hospitals and for school-based health needs and programs.

A last-minute amendment by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath set aside 5% of funding for Planned Parenthood.

The spending would be monitored by a nine-member committee but ultimately would be up to the discretion of the Board of Supervisors.