Waymo riders in several cities say pickups are getting worse, not better
A Reddit thread about robotaxis stopping blocks from requested spots spread from Houston to Dallas, LA and beyond, just as Waymo races toward 14 cities and a million weekly rides.
What happened: A Houston Waymo rider posted on Reddit that the service was "already declining," describing cars stopping in a turn lane 300 feet from a restaurant while a two-minute boarding countdown ran. The post drew corroborating replies from Los Angeles and Dallas riders describing similar block-plus walks and circling cars, plus shorter agreement from Phoenix. Not everyone agreed: several commenters said they'd seen no change over hundreds of rides, and one said reporting a bad spot to support gets it corrected.
Why it matters: Two riders said the longer walks pushed them off the service entirely: one, recovering from a spine injury, and another describing a mother in her 90s who uses a walker and "cannot chase down Waymos." Waymo publishes no data on how far riders now walk to reach cars, so there's no way to check whether the complaints reflect a real policy shift or a run of bad luck. The timing matters too: Waymo is scaling faster than ever, and reliability complaints that would be a footnote at low volume become a bigger problem at a million rides a week.
How it works, plainly: Waymo's help pages say cars pick spots they can "best navigate to," which may differ from where a human driver would stop; if the walk exceeds three minutes the app warns riders and offers a "minimize walking time" option that lengthens the ride instead. Once a car arrives it typically waits five minutes but can leave a busy spot early, and a no-show fee can apply if the countdown expires. A San Diego commenter offered a possible explanation for the pattern: cars now avoiding bike lanes and unsafe curbside stops for safety reasons, at the cost of convenience.
The rollout: The complaints surface as Waymo pushes its fastest expansion yet: from invited rides in four cities in February to 14 with fully autonomous public service by September 1, more than 500,000 paid rides a week and a stated goal of one million by year-end, plus a Munich launch announced for late 2027. The same year brought two vehicle recalls, covering roughly 7,600 cars combined, after flooded-road and construction-zone incidents, and separate footage and an Austin case have raised questions about how the cars behave around emergency vehicles. Waymo has not commented on the pickup complaints.