Waymo is expanding a programme that offers customers credits for combining its autonomous ride-hailing service with public transport in the San Francisco Bay Area, extending an initiative first piloted in 2024.
image: Waymo
The recently expanded scheme offers $2.85 in Waymo Cash when customers pay for a Waymo journey and a public transport journey within a two-hour window using a linked Visa card. It covers 27 Bay Area transit agencies that accept Visa contactless payments, with the initial rollout phased in, starting with employees.
The programme is intended to encourage connections between autonomous vehicles and public transport, potentially supporting journeys in which passengers use a Waymo vehicle to reach or leave a transit service rather than travelling the entire distance by car.
The original pilot, launched in October 2024, offered riders $3 towards future Waymo journeys when they travelled to or from selected stations operated by the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (Muni) and Caltrain.
The expanded scheme changes the incentive mechanism. Rather than focusing on journeys linked to a selected group of stations, it uses linked payment transactions to identify qualifying combinations of Waymo and public transport journeys across a wider network of participating agencies.
An academic evaluation of the original pilot, published in Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives in July 2026, provides evidence of how the incentives affected travel behaviour. The study found that 69% of surveyed participants connected to public transport, while 50% of those making connections said they would otherwise have used a privately paid ride-hailing service. Some said they would have used their own car, walked or cycled.
The findings suggest that incentives can encourage some passengers to combine autonomous vehicles with public transport. The researchers describe their findings as exploratory and note the need to consider further how such schemes influence travel choices.
Alongside the rewards programme, Waymo announced plans to lease 40 dedicated parking spaces at Caltrain stations for its vehicles, with the aim of improving connections between its service and rail services. The company said it hoped to replicate this approach with other transit agencies.
Waymo has described public transport and autonomous vehicles as complementary parts of a wider mobility system and said it intends to extend the programme to other cities over time.