Toronto needs to welcome autonomous cars — an active invitation, a licence path that fits a driverless service, and designated curb space — Toronto should be the first Canadian city an autonomous ride-hailing service launches in.

Summary

Autonomous ride-hailing is scaling fast: Waymo runs more than 500,000 paid driverless trips a week and is opening its first markets outside the United States, in Tokyo and London ¹. It has approached Toronto and signalled it will apply to Ontario’s provincial pilot ². The authority for vehicle approval is provincial ³ but the City can and should compete on what it does control: the municipal welcome.

The City should explicitly invite operators, through its regional investment agency, create a clear licensing path for driverless services that the current Vehicle-for-Hire by-law does not fit, and run pilots to designate curb space for pick-up and drop-off. If this is done now while Waymo is seeking international expansion it will make Toronto the obvious first Canadian market, give the City more information and time to adapt, as well as future-proofing the curb. Done late, Toronto will watch the service scale elsewhere first reaping little benefit or time to adapt.

The Recommendation

Toronto should stop debating whether autonomous vehicles are coming and start competing to be where they land. Whether a self-driving car operates on Ontario roads is the Province’s decision: it is governed by the provincial Automated Vehicle pilot under the Highway Traffic Act, the City has no regulatory authority over it. The City also cannot opt out. If an AV is approved, it will be allowed to drive ³.

But what Toronto can decide is the municipal welcome. It can create the environment that ensures an approved service chooses to launch here or somewhere else first. If the City wants to be first there are three things it should do. First, court operators through Economic Development and Culture and Toronto Global, the region’s investment-attraction agency. Second, create a clear path for a driverless ride-hailing service, which the City’s Vehicle-for-Hire by-law, built around a human driver’s record and training, does not yet accommodate ⁴. Third, pilot designated pick-up and drop-off spaces, the one piece of the road that determines the success of a robotaxi initiative and the City controls outright.

Whether or not the City is an early adopter of this technology will have serious consequences. As of December of 2025 over more than 170 million driverless miles, Waymo reported 92% fewer crashes involving a serious or fatal injury than human drivers over comparable roads ¹ — a road-safety gain with serious implications for the City’s Vision Zero goal. Autonomous vehicles also represent significant new mobility options for people who cannot drive and a chance for large-scale investment into Ontario’s automotive-technology sector.

The Problem

The opportunity for deploying autonomous vehicles is concrete and time-bound. Waymo’s paid trips have doubled in a year and it is aiming to conduct one million rides a week by the end of 2026, with more than twenty new cities in the pipeline for expansion ¹ and its first markets outside the United States — Tokyo and London — have started to open ¹, Toronto would not be the first non-US city, but it could be the first in Canada. Waymo has already lobbied City Hall and told the Mayor’s office it intends to apply to Ontario’s pilot ².

Toronto is the largest municipality in Canada, the fourth-largest in North America by population, and has been one of the fastest-growing large metros on the continent ^6,9. It is a growing city whose road-safety needs, transport costs, and the demand for mobility are all increasing alongside the growth in population.

Ontario is also the centre of Canada’s automotive industry: the third-largest vehicle producing state or province in North America, with roughly 90,000 auto-sector workers and the province has already funded a network dedicated to connected and autonomous vehicles ⁷.

The Automated Vehicle pilot regulation that the province has implemented runs to October 2027 and admits driverless operation under provincial conditions ⁸. A welcome that would lead a company to expand operations needs to be municipal.

Toronto had adopted an Automated Vehicles Tactical Plan in 2019 and runs an interdivisional working group, but that machinery was built for testing and for a current last-mile delivery pilot ³ not for hosting a passenger service. It is completely out-of-date and unaligned with where the technology has developed.

In theory the City has declared itself ready to bring in Autonomous Vehicles but it has failed to do the things that make it ready in fact. If the City can make it clear publicly, legally, and in concrete actions that it wants to be one of the first international municipalities to host Waymo and other AV operators then the expansion will happen.

Source: Waymo, 2025 Year in Review, December 10 2025, and 2026 company statements ^{[1](https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/2025-year-in-review/)}

Implementation

Invite the operators in, deliberately. City Council should direct the General Manager, Economic Development and Culture, working with Toronto Global, the region’s investment-attraction agency, to open a formal conversation with Waymo — which has already signalled its intent to apply to Ontario’s pilot ² — and any other qualified operator, presenting Toronto as the launch market and acting as the single municipal point of contact across divisions, the Province, and the agency. Report a status update to the Economic and Community Development Committee by the second quarter of 2027. The City should work as a concierge, not offer a subsidy: the City can offer coordination, a clear curb-and-licence path, and speed — the things that a first mover values — rather than money or other special treatment. A named contact who can convene Transportation Services, Municipal Licensing and Standards, and the Ministry of Transportation in one room is worth more to an operator choosing a city than any incentive the City could afford.

Build a licence path that fits a driverless service. City Council should direct the Executive Director, Municipal Licensing and Standards, in consultation with the City Solicitor, Transportation Services, and accessibility staff, to bring forward amendments to the Vehicle-for-Hire by-law (Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 546) creating a licence category for autonomous private-transportation services, and report to the committee responsible for licensing by the first quarter of 2027. The present by-law licenses a human driver — driving record, training, demerit thresholds — so a driverless service has no clean way to be licensed today ⁴. This should be designed to write the terms the City wants in exchange for market access: collision and service data sharing, an accessible-vehicle requirement so the fleet serves wheelchair users, curb-and-loading compliance, and a complaint channel. This is a lightweight policy that turns Ontario’s standing as Canada’s autonomous-vehicle hub ⁷ into a Toronto-specific advantage, rather than leaving the City to react after a service is approved.

Designate the curb before it is contested. City Council should direct the General Manager, Transportation Services, to designate a network of on-street pick-up and drop-off zones for ride-hailing and autonomous vehicles in the busiest districts, building on the Curbside Management Strategy, and to fold pick-up/drop-off standards into curb allocation so new and rebuilt curbs are designed for it. Report the first zones and the design standard to the Infrastructure and Environment Committee by the third quarter of 2027. This is the future-proofing step: a robotaxi that cannot reach the curb stops in the travel lane, which is the congestion problem other cities now manage after the fact. It also proves through concrete action that the City means what it says about bringing in providers. By designating space on a published basis — and pricing it where demand warrants — the City can keep the vehicles out of the lane, develop tools to manage volume, and signal to an operator that Toronto has somewhere for the service to stop.

Financial impact. No material incremental cost. The outreach sits within the approved budgets of Economic Development and Culture and Toronto Global; the by-law work within Municipal Licensing and Standards; the curb designation within the Transportation Services curb-management program. A licensing regime and priced curb zones would, if a service launches, generate fee revenue rather than cost; the Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer would confirm the treatment.

Risks and objections. The strongest objection is to driving jobs: a driverless fleet competes with taxi and ride-hailing drivers, and the Mayor’s office has raised this concern ². The cost is real and concentrated, and the licence path is the place to address it — phased volume, accessibility and data conditions, a transition window. The mistake would be to pretend the technology will not arrive whether or not Toronto licenses it. The broader gains in safety, mobility, and investment are larger and lasting. The loss to the average Torontonian would eventually be too great to prevent. The displacement is immediate and should be named, not waved away but the transition can be managed effectively.

The second objection is safety and public trust. The City does not certify the vehicle — the Province does ⁸ — but it can require collision-data sharing as a licence condition, so Toronto regulates what it can see. Waymo’s reported safety record is strong but company-sourced, and the City should treat independent data as the test ¹.

Sources

• [1] Waymo, “Delivering more for our riders in a year of incredible growth” (2025 Year in Review), December 10 2025, with the company’s Safety Impact pages and 2026 statements. https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/2025-year-in-review/ (see also https://waymo.com/safety/impact/)
• [2] CBC News / Toronto Star, reporting on Waymo’s approach to Toronto and Ontario, April 2026. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/waymo-ontario-self-driving-cars-9.7163535
• [3] City of Toronto (Transportation Services), “Automated Vehicle Pilot Deployment in Toronto Under the Highway Traffic Act” — Report for Action, April 24 2025. https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2025/ie/bgrd/backgroundfile-254933.pdf
• [4] City of Toronto, Vehicle-for-Hire by-law — Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 546, administered by Municipal Licensing and Standards. https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/municode/toronto-code-546.pdf
• [5] State of Arizona, Executive Order 2015-09 (“Self-Driving Vehicle Testing and Piloting…”) and Executive Order 2018-04 (authorizing fully driverless operation); Arizona Department of Transportation, autonomous-vehicle pages. https://azdot.gov/mvd/services/professional-services/autonomous-vehicles-testing-and-operating-state-arizona
• [6] Statistics Canada, Census of Population 2021 — Toronto, City (population 2,794,356) and Toronto CMA (6,202,225). https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm
• [7] Invest Ontario, “Automotive” sector page, and the Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network (OVIN), Ontario Centre of Innovation. https://www.investontario.ca/automotive (and https://www.ovinhub.ca/about/)
• [8] Government of Ontario, “Automated Vehicle Pilot Program” (O. Reg. 306/15 under the Highway Traffic Act). https://www.ontario.ca/page/automated-vehicle-pilot-program
• [9] Toronto Metropolitan University, Centre for Urban Research and Land Development (Frank Clayton), “Toronto Tops in Population Growth in Canada and the US,” June 10 2024. https://www.torontomu.ca/centre-urban-research-land-development/blog/blogentry86-toronto-tops-in-population-growth-in-canada-and-us/