Tag: San Francisco

With rain and wind in the forecast, it may make some people’s holiday travel a little more difficult.

At San Francisco International Airport, more than 400 flights have been delayed. Maggie Nelson’s was delayed coming into the airport. 

“It seemed like everyone was in a panic or a hurry to get anywhere,” said Nelson. “The plane was crowded. There was a lot of turbulence.”

Nelson flew in from Redmond, Oregon, usually a quick flight to SFO, just under two hours, but she ended up being delayed nearly that long.

“Originally, we were supposed to take off at 2 p.m. and then our flight got delayed to 2:50 p.m., and then it got delayed again,” Nelson explained. “I don’t think we took off until 3:30 p.m. because of high winds or something.”

California is in the middle of an intense storm period. Two systems bringing heavy rain and strong winds, and Nelson could feel all of it.  

“The turbulence was pretty bad,” said Nelson. “There was a point where I got nauseous. I was like ‘Are we there yet? Is this over?’”

While she’s grateful to be on solid ground, Shon Alkaslasi was about to take off or at least try to.

“United sent a text that wind might affect operations,” said Alkaslasi. 

He arrived early, just in case of holiday traffic, now he’s anticipating he may be delayed. He’s travelling home to Los Angeles, another area in the middle of the storms.

“I would say I’m not the biggest fan of turbulence so I am a little bit nervous about that,” Alkaslaski detailed. “But if they say it’s totally safe to travel, I’m not usually concerned but the feeling of bumps on a plane is just not the most comfortable and I’ll have to deal with it.”

Airport Duty Manager Crystal David said overall things haven’t been too bad, but West Coast flights, like Alkaslasi’s and Nelson’s, are the ones most likely to be impacted.

“SFO is on a ground delay program throughout the night, through midnight and so right now it’s about 127 minutes because of winds,” said David. “Mostly it’s the west coast flights are that are being affected right now with delays of up to 35 minutes for the west coast traffic.”

She said the delays could continue into the morning, when even stronger winds are expected. She recommends travelers check in with their airlines.

But for Nelson, she’s just glad she made it home.

“I used to live a lot closer so it’s a lot harder to come home now so when I do get to come home, I try to take advantage of that and appreciate it,” said Nelson. 

Many of Waymo’s self-driving cars blocked streets of San Francisco during a mass power outage Saturday and forced the company to temporarily suspend service, raising questions about the cars’ ability to to adapt to real-world driving conditions.

Social media users posted videos of Waymos as they encountered traffic lights that were off. Some cars’ hazard lights blinked and they abruptly stopped in place, failing to cross the intersection. Others stopped in the middle of the intersection, forcing other cars to swerve around them.

The power outage affected 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco, nearly one-third of the customers served by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. It was caused by a fire at a power substation, officials said. On Monday, the utility company was still working to restore power to thousands of customers.

Waymo operates hundreds of robotaxis in San Francisco, but it wasn’t clear how many cars were on the road at the time of the outage. The company paused service Saturday evening and resumed it Sunday afternoon.

The road-blocking problems that prompted Waymo to suspend its service during the weekend power outages revived concerns that city officials raised about the robotaxis periodically coming to abrupt and inexplicable stops before California regulators approved them as a commercial service in August 2023.

Tyler Cervini, who lives in the Mission District, said he was calling an Uber to bring him to the airport since his train station was not operating due to the outage. At the traffic light outside his apartment, there were five Waymos crowding the intersection, he said.

He got into his Uber right outside where all the Waymos were, but his driver “had to swerve through them to pick me up,” Cervini said. “He seemed extremely frustrated by what was going on.”

Waymo said that its vehicles are designed to treat nonfunctioning traffic signals as four-way stops, but the scale of the outage created unusual conditions.

“While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events,” a Waymo spokesperson said. “Throughout the outage, we closely coordinated with San Francisco city officials.”

The company said most active trips were completed before vehicles were safely returned to depots or pulled over.

Philip Koopman, professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University and expert on self-driving vehicle safety, said the scale of the traffic disruption was concerning. Autonomous vehicles are generally programmed to come to a stop if they are unsure or confused on what to do and ask for remote assistance, he said.

Koopman said it did not appear to be a software failure in the cars themselves, but an “operational management failure” where the company did not have the capability to deal with so many robotaxis needing assistance at once.

Waymo should have suspended service earlier — as soon as their vehicles started having issues, he said.

“If you have thousands of robotaxis that stop, you have a problem,” he said. “What if this had been an earthquake? You would have thousands of robotaxis blocking the road.”

Waymo, which started as a secret project within Google in 2009, has steadily expanded its operations in San Francisco while also introducing its robotaxis into other California cities such as Los Angeles and San Jose, in addition to other U.S. markets in Texas, Arizona, Florida and Georgia.

In the months leading up to the approval from the state’s Public Utilities Commission, San Francisco’s transportation and fire department leaders flagged dozens of reports about robotaxis coming to standstills, blocking traffic.

Besides inconveniencing other drivers trying to get to their destinations, the road-blocking robotaxis were viewed as a possible impediment in life-threatening emergencies when firefighters and police officers were responding to calls for help.

Waymo’s fleet of robotaxis is on pace to complete more than 14 million rides this year, more than tripling from last year, according to the company.

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Ding reported from Los Angeles.