Waymo offers new incentives for commuters on public transit

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Set us as preferred Waymo customers in San Francisco will soon be able to earn credit toward future rides when they use one of the robotaxis to connect to public transit.Alphabet-owned Waymo introduced its transit rewards program Tuesday.

It will start in Northern California and expand to other cities.Waymo employees will be the first to access the program.

To earn ride credit, or Waymo Cash, customers will have to link their Visa card to the Waymo app and use it to take an autonomous trip and public transit within two hours of each other.For each connected trip on public transit, riders will earn $2.85 in Waymo Cash, which is the cost of transit fare in San Francisco.

California Students who commute to college by bus and train often experience delays and safety threats.But they don’t have to deal with the high costs of driving.“Access to transit is really something that transit agencies need to put focus on,” said Henriette Cornet, co-director of the Autonomous Vehicles and the City Initiative at the University of San Francisco, who has done research on autonomy and public transit.

“In the Bay Area, rail is solid and we have very good bus rides, but for some neighborhoods it’s very hard to access that first point of transit.”The rewards program applies to all 27 Bay Area transit agencies that accept Visa tap-to-pay.San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie launched a tap-to-pay option throughout the Muni transit system last year.

“Public transit networks and shared autonomous vehicles are part of a complementary mobility ecosystem,” Waymo said in its announcement.Business Waymo announced today it received approval from California regulators to expand its service area across 18 counties, including the cities of San Diego and Sacramento.The move to incentivize the use of public transit could broaden the appeal of ...