Adam Kovacevich

Wow. DC's updated AV bill would also give rideshare drivers and AV facility workers the right to organize. Labor would be crazy to not take this deal.

DC's greatest policy weakness is legislative amnesia. I've been observing DC's work on autonomous vehicle policy for over a decade. Here's what I'm afraid will happen if DC Council kicks the can down the road again. Q4 2026: Folks will keep repeating that things are moving too fast, even though DC passed one of America's first AV laws in 2012. Even though @charlesallen wrote a rigorous, thoughtful, best-in-the-nation AV bill. They'll earnestly promise that a new bill will be written at the beginning of the next session. Q1 2027: The new AV bill will not arrive. It is not JLG's priority. There will be no timeline. There will be few meetings. There will be no negotiation. She's entering office facing a budget crisis, a time crunch on Gold Line + transporting people to RFK, and her first-year priorities. Q2 2027: Certain interest groups will work on convincing certain Council members to re-adopt the "report brain" approach to AV policy that defined the last decade (h/t @KelseyTuoc). Q3 2027: Council will hold yet another hearing. It will be several hours long. It will immediately be forgotten. And let me just remind y'all: the hearing in July was 8+ hours. Allen chaired through the whole thing and JLG showed up with opening remarks, but other committee members hardly engaged. This is not a rushed process. I have seen rushed processes. DC isn't capable of those. Q4 2027: When markup is about to be scheduled, labor interests and the entity that pays for the scary ads will roll out the same exact talking points about "rushing." Council will decide to write yet another bill asking DDOT to spend millions of dollars on a taxpayer-funded consultant report that will never arrive. 2028-2030: Same story, repeated over and over, in DC Council. Most other major cities in America will have AVs, while Vision Zero continues to fail in DC and countless residents continue to be left at the curb by the inequitable and inaccessible status quo. I hope to be proven wrong.