Waymo drops the Dallas waitlist — the city goes fully public six months after launch

Waymo removed the waitlist for its Dallas robotaxi service on 4 August: anyone in the city can now download the app and hail a fully autonomous ride, ending the invitation-only phase that had run since the market launched commercially in February. Waymo says nearly 150,000 riders came through the Dallas interest list during the phased rollout. Freeway and airport access in the market are still ahead.

Why it matters

The number worth extracting is the interval, not the rider count: roughly six months from commercial launch to general availability, in a market Waymo entered from scratch. That is the first clean read on how long the invite-only stage lasts now, and it is the yardstick for the four cities Waymo announced in July — Denver, San Diego and Tampa opened employee-first with public rides promised by year-end, a schedule that only works if the Dallas cadence holds or compresses. It also matters for the goal Waymo has put a date on: a million paid rides a week by the end of 2026 is arithmetic that depends on markets converting to general availability, not on the count of cities where the service technically exists.

What to watch

Whether the July-announced cities open to the public on the promised year-end timeline, when Dallas gets freeway and airport access, and whether Waymo publishes a rides-per-week figure that tests the end-2026 target.