Six votes, three for and three against, were enough to kill it. On Thursday, Nov. 12, the District of Columbia Council's Transportation Committee deadlocked on the "Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Authorization Amendment Act of 2026," leaving the bill stuck in committee with no path to a full council vote before the legislative session ends this year.
Committee Chairman Charles Allen, who sponsored the bill, voted yes alongside Christina Henderson and Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who cast a rare committee-level vote to try to break the stalemate. Mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George, Zachary Parker and Elissa Silverman voted no. Because a tie is not a majority, the legislation stays parked in committee and, under council rules, will die at the end of the year without further action, according to Axios.
What the bill would have allowed
The legislation would have let companies such as Waymo and Zoox sell driverless rides in the District starting in 2028, after roughly a year of human-monitored testing. Allen revised the bill days before the vote to blunt labor opposition. The entry fee for operators dropped from an original $5 million, three-year permit to $15,000, and the vehicle-miles-traveled tax on autonomous trips fell from 15 cents to 7.5 cents per mile, with proceeds earmarked for rideshare drivers affected by the shift.
Each operator would have been capped at 200 vehicles, with an 800-vehicle ceiling citywide. Allen also added a provision giving current Uber and Lyft drivers, along with future robotaxi maintenance workers, the right to unionize in the District, a right Allen said does not exist for app-based drivers in most other cities. He called the package the most "worker-friendly, safety-focused" autonomous vehicle legislation under consideration anywhere in the country.
Why the opposition held
Lewis George, who takes office as mayor in January, argued the council should not legalize commercial robotaxis while the city is still absorbing AI-driven job losses and while D.C. streets already mix motorcades, bike lanes and frequent protests with ordinary traffic. Parker had pushed to delay the vote by several months rather than reject the bill outright, and Silverman echoed safety concerns raised by transit unions representing for-hire drivers.
The outcome puts D.C. at odds with its regional neighbors. Virginia and Maryland both permit robotaxi testing and commercial pilots, and Waymo already runs supervised test vehicles on D.C. streets under a pilot that predates this bill. Without a legislative framework, Waymo's supervised testing can continue, but the company has indicated it cannot sustain human-monitored operations in the District indefinitely absent a clear regulatory path to driverless commercial service.
The defeat also leaves D.C. as one of the few major U.S. capitals without a robotaxi framework, even as Tesla's Robotaxi fleet runs around the clock in eight American cities and Waymo operates commercially in several more. A new version of the bill could be reintroduced when the next council session begins, but any effort would need to restart the committee process from scratch.