Waymo robotaxis have recently been spotted out and about on Portland’s streets. These autonomous vehicles are mapping the city — with a safety driver on board — in advance of their proposed launch. No date has been announced but at Monday’s City Council meeting, the public works committee was busy debating both ground rules and whether the city wants autonomous vehicles at all.
A Waymo autonomous vehicle is shown in San Francisco, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026.
Jeff Chiu / AP
The committee met to decide how to update 2018 AV permitting, discussing a series of policy ideas such as caps on fleet size, limits to where loading and unloading happens, required data sharing and required data privacy. They also discussed permitting fees, per-mile fees and driver retraining fees.
Councilor Mitch Green is in favor of hefty fees levied on AV companies to help retrain the human drivers losing their jobs.
“If we go down this road to permit Waymos to operate in our city, there will be a labor displacement problem. Like that’s real,” he said. “If we’re going to say, let’s deal with that through a just transition style impact fee, the fees are going to be large.”
Councilor Sameer Kanal wants not just strict regulation but a ban.
“I’d like to have code that simply says all vehicles require a human driver. It would take six words,” Kanal said.
The committee expressed a bigger concern. Future state-level legislation that would preempt these city rules. There was widespread agreement that Portland needed to codify its rules before the state legislature convenes in 2027. In the last legislative session, state lawmakers failed to pass House Bill 4085, which would have given the green light for AV companies to deploy in Oregon. A new AV bill is expected in the next legislative session.
More than 16 states have passed AV regulations that preempt city law. Yet, many other cities, including Minneapolis, Washington D.C., and Boston, are still trying to pass autonomous vehicle regulations. As of Wednesday, none of the 12 U.S. cities with robotaxis on their streets has the ability to regulate them. Permission has only been granted at the state level.
The committee’s next step is to agree on the update to the administrative rules for AVs and to bring them to the full Council sometime this fall.
