They are not trying to "bury" remote assistance at all. They wrote a white paper about it in 2020 and a blog post about it in 2024.

Anyway you can think it's a waste but they're wasting their money, not yours. If you want a train in your town, go get one. Waymo has only spent, cumulatively, about 4 months of the budgets of American transit agencies. If you had all that money it wouldn't amount to anything.

"At all?"

Oh come on -- of course they are. That's precisely why you put it in a "white paper" and not, you know, ads.