Can’t access the video? Click here. To read a transcript, scroll down.

San Diego City College reporters Briana Bush, David J. Bohnet, Mari Pilego and Samira Hassan gather for a new episode of City Times Media’s “Reporters’ Roundtable” to chat about Waymo and the upcoming release of the autonomous vehicles in San Diego.

In March, City Times reporters took a trip to San Francisco, the home of Waymos, to get first-hand experience of what the car is really like.

Can’t access the audio? Click here. To view a transcript, scroll down.

The reporters findings are detailed in an article with their reactions, that includes sound, video and interviews from locals in San Francisco, and paints a picture of what San Diegans could expect.

Waymo is slated to roll out mid-2026, according to an X post made by Wamyo officials.

Stay tuned to ⁠City Times Media⁠ and ⁠sdcitytimes.com⁠ for all the up-to-date information.

This story was edited by Samira Hasson and David J. Bohnet.

TRANSCRIPT

David: Good afternoon, and welcome to today’s episode of reporters Roundtable. I’m David J. Bohnet, Co-Editor in Chief for City Times media and today’s host. We’re so happy to have everybody along. Thanks so much for joining us here at the recording from the College of City College campus on today’s episode, we’re going to be talking a little bit about Waymo. And of course, we brought in some of our reporters from City Times media and the staff who have been covering autonomous vehicles, aka Waymo, (to be coming to) San Diego and in San Francisco. Leading that coverage is our Arts and Culture editor, Briana Bush. Hi, Brinna,

Bri: Hi. 

David: Thanks so much for being here. 

Bri: Thank you for having me, David.

David: Of course, of course. Also joining us is reporter Samira Hassan. Samira, thanks for being here.

Samira: Hi, David. I’m glad to be here.

David: Rounding us out is our Social Media editor, Marty Pilego, hi, Mari.

Mari: Hi David.

David: Thanks so much for being here everyone. And we’re so excited to kind of get into it. We of course, want to welcome all of you joining us out there. Be sure to check out this episode and all of our episodes of  ‘Reporter Roundtable’ at sdcitytimes.com, you can find all of our updated coverage about Waymo and the upcoming election as well. Did you all check out the first episode on Balboa?

Mari: Yes, I did.

David: That’s right. Mari is our technical director for that, so she’s wearing multiple hats, jumping in here now as talent and kind of getting in there. But honestly, I’m glad you all checked it out. Go ahead check that out if you haven’t sdcitytimes.com. But you know, speaking of transportation, let’s just jump in. We’d love to get a little background from you, Briana, about how you started this Waymo coverage. You’re kind of our lead Waymo reporter, so if you might just tell us about how you first heard about this and how this all kind of began.

Bri: Yes, David. So back in January, while on break, I went to San Francisco on a solo trip. And while I was there, I had a lot of my friends being like, “You got to ride a Waymo”. And I was like, “What is a Waymo?” Because I’ve never heard of it. But I have actually, because there have been a lot of reports of them doing stupid stuff, like driving in circles and completely just stopping and being weird. And so I was like, I gotta try. I gotta try that then. And so I went into a Waymo and it was fun. And then a little bit later, we got invited to the JACC Journalism Conference in San Francisco, and that reminded me of Waymos. And I was like, we should, we should ride a Waymo while we’re there.

David: And we did, didn’t we? We actually got the whole team, this entire team here was able to get in there. Tell us a little bit about how. Because I think you first mentioned it, Waymo in general, not a lot of people have heard about it. How do you get a Waymo? What’s kind of the main difference between regular rideshare right now?

Bri: Well, the thing about Waymo is it’s an autonomous vehicle. There is no driver whatsoever, and that’s kind of what makes it different. But in the process of ordering it and everything, it’s the same exact thing as like Uber or Lyft. You just download the app and then call it, and then this robot comes and picks you up. It’s a really cool, interesting process.

David: And how long have Waymos been on the road in San Francisco?

Bri: 2024 they were released to the public in San Francisco.

David: That’s the first, that was kind of the flagship city, and now it’s slowly moving to other cities.

Bri: Yeah, including San Diego, sometime mid-2026.

David: Yeah, we’re definitely gonna get into that. Before we get there, you kind of mentioned riding for JCC and wanting to kind of get the team. It was kind of a team effort, and you had Samira alongside riding with you. Samira, tell us about your experience riding Waymo and kind of how all of this came together for you.

Samira: Yeah, I personally enjoyed taking a ride on a Waymo. Our experiences were a little bit similar. We ordered the ride, drove down to San Francisco bridge, and in that experience, I personally liked it. The Waymo vehicle itself was really clean, tidy. Being a passenger in a Waymo, it was responding to the traffic quite well. We got to witness that. It was completely safe, personally for us. And then I know moving forward that personally, when I’m in San Francisco, I will probably take another ride in a Waymo.

David: You mentioned just kind of how clean it was. They were brand new leather Jaguars that were just amazing. I have never ridden a jaguar. It was like you mentioned, just very nice. And when we were kind of in there making that whole thing, we of course, got a ton of video. It’s obviously videoing you, so we figured we might get (video) of the Waymo and things kind of going around. Mari, you put together the video package that you can find on the website, sdcitytimes.com about Waymo. Tell us a little bit about that, and kind of gathering all of that, and if you have a particular opinion about Waymo, we’d love to hear as well.

Mari: Yeah, riding in the Waymo was an experience. But I myself took video and Samira as well took a lot of video, which was great. I loved it helped out a lot. It was pretty interesting, because I watch a lot of movies as a film major, and it was crazy to see like an actual self-driving car on the streets. And I know it’s powered by an AI software. And I’m not a big person with AI, so off the bat, did not like the car. I just don’t think AI should be behind the wheel, personally. I’d rather it be a person.

David: Yeah, it’s interesting. I think that was kind of one of the first things we noticed, is just how everyone’s kind of looking and when you first see vehicles. And again, I’m really glad that you brought that up, because we are truly living in a futuristic time where we actually are having autonomous vehicles roaming our streets. People are happy to get in. We didn’t go on the freeway, and there are kind of some restrictions about that. I know Briana probably knows a little bit more about that, like the exact roads that they can go and the routes, which are kind of TBD here in San Diego. It really was funny to just see a car without anyone driving it. I know that is pretty disconcerting for you and probably for a lot of people. Kind of continuing on, We got a lot of the coverage from San Francisco. We were able to kind of put it together. Bri, how did that end up being received at the conference?

Bri: Well, we chose Waymo as our topic for a contest, a team feature me and Samira, we worked on the writing portion. Mari did video, and David did audio. Me and Samira’s article that we wrote together got like, fifth place, I think, out of a lot of other colleges, writing about different stuff. So that was really cool. It was on-the-spot, we only had one day to do it, reporting research, everything Samira did, all of the interviews, for the most part, because I am not the best at that. If Samira, you want to talk about the interviews.

David: Definitely love to just hear, kind of what you’re thinking or what your response was. Kind of heading back, and then we’ll kind of talk a little bit about San Diego and what’s up to what’s coming next.

Samira: Yeah. So when we were in San Francisco, we interviewed San Francisco locals, so people who resided in San Francisco, who work in San Francisco as well. The first person we interviewed was a Lyft driver. That interview didn’t go as well. So then we took another Lyft to the conference and and you know, during that ride with the driver, we were able to hear her personal experience being a Lyft driver and how Waymo’s are impacting her industry. The Lyft driver we particularly interviewed, she wasn’t a big fan of Waymo as it’s impacting business. And then the other person we interviewed was a really nice interview, because it just happened so casually. We were having dinner at a ramen spot. Then there was a group of individuals sitting next to us, and we just sparked up a conversation over some ramen. And it was then that we learned that the specific artists in the community who we interviewed actually view Waymos as a form of gentrification. So Waymos pertains to how it’s being perceived by locals. It was just so interesting to see that negative kind of reaction compared to what we were researching and finding out online.

David: Definitely and then again, kind of paired along with that is public perception versus when you are from somewhere or you’re living in an area as a tourist, right? Because we were visiting San Francisco, let’s try this new thing just like Lime scooters used to be a big thing, and again, just taking a (self-driving) car in general is a pretty relatively new thing. So I imagine, if you’re visiting somewhere and they have them available, like, why not give them a try? Definitely gonna feel a little bit different about that if you’re from somewhere kind of fast forward to now, like we have. Waymo is coming to San Diego. Bri, you published the article available at sdcitytimes.com on April 16. Tell us a little bit about how and what you’ve kind of come up with in San Diego, and what you’ve been hearing about. Introduction of autonomous vehicles here in San Diego.

Bri: Yeah, writing that article was a very long process. It took about a month. It was definitely really difficult to correlate a story that was all about San Francisco and make it match up to San Diego when Waymos aren’t even driving around our streets yet. They’re being test driven by people, but they’re not driving on their own yet. But it was definitely very difficult to try to do that. I had so many different ways that I could have done it, and I tried a lot of different ways, and I just wasn’t going through but I settled on the perspective of kind of mixmatching and putting together the San Francisco perspectives and how that might affect here, and what people might experience here in San Diego. And I think the end product was really good. It’s a pretty long article, but it took a long time, and I’m just glad that it’s out now.

David: As well worth the read and it was kind of a team effort. We have the video from Mari as well, some great photos, you know, from San Francisco, and then I put together a little bit of an audio story on that. Also all available sdcitytimes.com. Just kind of seeing the future come down. This is obviously going to be an ongoing story, and we’ve kind of seen a bunch of different things kind of coming out. Currently, it looks like Waymo is in Georgia. They’re in Texas, multiple places, LA and we’re on the up next list to be able to get Waymos on the road. I actually have seen a few doing their testing throughout the city. Has there been any update on the expected date for all of that to roll out?

Bri: No. 

David: Nothing yet, what do we hear the mid, mid summer? 

Bri: Yeah. They keep just saying, mid 2026, I even reached out to a spokesperson at Waymo, and then also the Mayor here in San Diego. And nobody knows at all.

David: One thing we do know is that they are coming. They are already here. Have any of you? Mari, Bri, or Samira? Have you seen any Waymo’s on the street?

Mari: I have yet to see them. I’m waiting.

Samira: I personally have, at a night out downtown. I actually seen one, but there was a person driving it.

David: Right, because they’re still doing the testing. Yeah. And Bri, you bring up some good points. I think one thing I heard when we were in San Francisco again, just super easy to bring it up and kind of talking with people about what they think about it. I heard so many people saying, yeah, they’re extra convenient. They can run 24 hours a day, right? There’s no driver fatigue, that type of thing. Safe Rides at any point. And we kind of did a little bit of a compare contrast for price, right? Bri, they weren’t. They were relatively the same price.

Bri: Yeah, at certain times it is a little more expensive. Obviously, during like Friday or Saturday or Sunday, when people are going out the most, they tend to be a little more expensive. Because I guess you can consider it more of a luxury type of ride compared to just taking a regular Uber or a Lyft.

David: Awesome. Well, that is all the time we have for today. I want to thank the panel Samira, Mari and Bri. Thanks so much for being here today.

Bri: Thank you, David, for having us.

David: Of course, I want to also thank our producer and our director, Tresean Osgood, and everyone here at City Times media. Stay tuned for more updates about Waymo and everything that you can catch here from City Times media at sdcitytimes.com. Again, I’m David Bohnet. Thanks so much for joining us. This has been an episode of reporters roundtable. Thanks.

This story was edited by Samira Hassan and David J. Bohnet. Tresean Osgood was the technical director for the episode and video editor.