Bill road rage at gov’s self-drive surprise
Gov. Cuomo gave the green light to a plan by General Motors to test self-driving cars in a large swath of lower Manhattan — and Mayor de Blasio found out about it from a press release.
Now City Hall said it may fight the state to block the plan from happening.
“The city wasn’t given much notice of this idea, and we certainly weren’t consulted,” de Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips said Tuesday, adding that Hizzoner found out about GM’s plan “last night” and that the city “received nothing outside of the press release.”
“We have very real safety concerns,” he continued. “The idea of computers operating 2,000pound hunks of metal in a congested grid full of motorists and pedestrians should give everyone pause.”
The mayor’s office is “reviewing . . . options” to hit the brakes on the plan, Phillips said.
GM wants to use lower Manhattan’s tangle of congested byways because it will help test cars’ intelligence in harried conditions, and the company has already begun mapping out a 5square-mile section of lower Manhattan where its autonomous Chevy Bolts will roam — with engineers in the front seats in case anything goes haywire.
State officials say they repeatedly gave city transit honchos the heads-up starting in August.
“The city was first alerted to this proposal two months ago be- fore GM started preliminary mapping,” said Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi. “They were notified again before the announcement of plans for testing next year was made. This hyperventilating is more than a little silly.”
The August notice came in the form of a call between Director of State Operations Jamie Rubin and NYC DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, a state official said.
City DOT spokesman Scott Gastel confirmed the call but said information the state provided in August was “nothing approaching the contents of what was detailed today.”
“DOT has not been consulted on this by any real definition,” he said.
Council Speaker Melissa MarkViverito and Transportation Committee Chairman Ydanis Rodriguez said they never received a notice.
The state is responsible for permits allowing car companies to test autonomous vehicles in New York, and it began accepting applications in May. GM has been in talks with the state for “a couple months,” according to Azzopardi.
GM has tested more than 100 of the vehicles around the country, including in dense San Francisco, but New York’s harsh weather and even harsher streets will “improve our software at a much faster rate,” Kyle Vogt, chief executive of GM’s self-driving division, Cruise Automation, told the Wall Street Journal.
“Anyone else who’s driven in New York City knows that it’s going to present some unique challenges,” he said.
Officials would not specify the 5 square miles of lower Manhattan where the autos will operate, but the area below 14th Street constitutes less than 6 square miles, suggesting de Blasio may have to contend with self-driving cars right outside City Hall.
GM and Cruise Automation did not respond to multiple requests for comment.