driverless

Waymo displays a self-driving Jaguar taxi in October in New York City, N.Y. Three days following a massive San Francisco blackout that disrupted its driverless operations, Waymo said it will upgrade its fleet to better handle future power outages. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 24 (UPI) — Three days following a massive San Francisco blackout that disrupted its driverless operations, Waymo said it will upgrade its fleet to better handle future power outages.

Saturday’s outage, which was sparked by a substation fire that damaged local infrastructure, left about 130,000 customers without power at its peak and 21,000 still offline by Sunday, according to Pacific Gas and Electric.

“We’ve always focused on developing the Waymo Driver for the world as it is, including when infrastructure fails,” the company said Tuesday.

Traffic gridlock followed as lights went dark with videos showing Waymo cars stalled across the city.

“We directed our fleet to pull over and park appropriately so we could return vehicles to our depots in waves,” Waymo wrote. “This ensured we did not further add to the congestion or obstruct emergency vehicles during the peak of the recovery effort.”

The Alphabet-owned company said it will take three immediate steps.

According to Waymo, it will update its vehicles to recognize regional outages, strengthen emergency response protocol and expand training and coordination with local first responders and city officials.

“Backed by 100M+ miles of fully autonomous driving experience and a record of improving road safety, we are undaunted by the opportunity to challenge the status quo of our roads, and we’re proud to continue serving San Franciscan residents and visitors,” Waymo officials continued in Tuesday’s blog.

Waymo operates ride-hailing services in San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

It recently surpassed 450,000 weekly rides and expects to exceed 20 million total trips by year’s end.

“In San Francisco, we’ll continue to coordinate with Mayor [Daniel] Lurie’s team to identify areas of greater collaboration in our existing emergency preparedness plans,” the company stated.

A MAJOR UK city, home to the third oldest subway system in the world, is set to get driverless trains next year.

Glasgow will be getting driverless subway trains in the second half of 2026, according to The Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT).

The new driverless trains will be introduced in Glasgow slowly, with officials noting in a report that “whilst our new system will be capable of Unattended Train Operation, there may be a requirement for some staff presence within the system beyond this point”.

The move to driverless trains in Glasgow will be the first of its kind in the UK.

The only other similar train system is the DLR in London – while not having train drivers, they do still have ‘Train Captain’s onboard.

In addition to the driverless trains, Glasgow’s public transport more widely has undergone a number of other projects.

These include implementing more glass screens at a number of stations for safety.

And most stations on the circular line have had refurbishments.

There are also a few projects that still need to be carried out including introducing new signalling.

A report from June revealed that the subway modernisation in Glasgow is the “most significant investment and improvement programme to be undertaken in the Subway within the last 45 years”.

The report also listed a number of other areas that will undergo improvements, including the introduction of a new ticketing system.

Glasgow is planning on becoming the first city in Scotland to trial a free public transport scheme as well.

The scheme will start in early 2026 and involve around 1,000 people, who will get free public transport for six weeks.

This means travellers will get unlimited travel on trains, buses and the subway network.

The aim of the scheme is to see whether more people take up public transport, rather than opting to drive.

Currently, fares to travel on Glasgow’s transport network range from around £3.60 to £5.90.

This week, rail operator Lumo also announced that it is extending its London Euston to Edinburgh route to Glasgow.

Passengers will be able to use two northbound services each weekday and one southbound service.

There will then be one service in each direction at the weekend.

And tickets for the route with the low-cost operator will cost from £33.10 between London and Glasgow.

In other rail news, here’s the first look at the new Great British Railways trains being rolled out across the UK.

Plus, popular UK seaside town scraps trains to London.