Waymo opens public rides in three cities
On 14 October 2026 Waymo announced that anyone in San Antonio, San Diego and Tampa can download its app and hail a fully autonomous ride, including at San Antonio International Airport. The post says Waymo has served hundreds of thousands of riders in these cities since opening service there earlier in 2026. In the following days it announced plans for Toronto (first riders in 2028) and for the Region of Madrid (first riders in 2027).
Why it matters
The post presents the day as the start of access for anyone and adds the airport as a new place; it does not say what limited access before. The scale that the announcements give is Waymo's own: over 20 million trips and hundreds of thousands of commercial rides a week (the Madrid post), and 400 million fully autonomous kilometres with 95% fewer crashes involving serious injury or worse than human drivers in the cities where it operates. The posts contain no independent check of these figures.
What the post says. "Starting today, anyone in San Antonio, San Diego, and Tampa can download the Waymo app and hail a fully autonomous ride, including the San Antonio International Airport." The company has "welcomed hundreds of thousands of riders in these cities since opening our service earlier in the year". The post quotes San Antonio's director of airports, the founder of the San Diego Seniors Community Foundation and the board chair of Lighthouse for the Blind & Low Vision in Tampa; these quotations are not used. What limited access before 14 October is not stated. What came next. On 16 October Waymo wrote that it was "officially heading to Canada": it would begin driving manually in Toronto "in the coming days", map the streets and test with trained specialists behind the wheel, with the goal of welcoming first riders in 2028; its fleet-management partner is the Toronto-headquartered Element Fleet Management, and it expects "hundreds of roles over time". On 20 October it announced groundwork in Spain, beginning with the Region of Madrid, aiming at first riders in 2027, with Jaguar I-PACE vehicles driving manually first. The Madrid post says Waymo has completed "over 20 million trips" and serves "hundreds of thousands of commercial rides" each week; both posts say that data from "over 400 million fully autonomous kilometres" show the Waymo Driver involved in 95% fewer (20x fewer) crashes involving serious injury or worse than human drivers in the cities where it operates. These are statements of intent, not launches. What the record does not claim. The "hundreds of thousands of riders" and the safety figures are Waymo's own statements; the posts do not say how many vehicles serve each city, whether the three cities were open to a limited group before 14 October, or what the airport service covers. The Madrid page does not call it the first European city.