Downtown Manhattan is the hardest-to-navigate area of NYC. I thought they would start somewhere in Midtown, where the grid is regular, streets wide, and demand for taxis still pretty high.

We already know that Waymo can handle regular American cities quite well. I woul expect them to spend most of their expensive human-supervised training and testing budget in the most unique locations, like downtown Manhattan.

Midtown on a busy Saturday or Sunday afternoon with a driverless vehicle would be... amusing. No one-including busses-give af about traffic rules.