Top image (representative): Sidewalk delivery robot. Photo: Mbrickn / CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Silicon Valley’s largest city has long marketed itself as a test bed for new technology. This month, San Jose’s City Council took up the less glamorous follow-up: writing the rules once the technology is already on the street.

Rules of the sidewalk

On Oct. 6, the council unanimously approved a regulatory package for autonomous food delivery robots, San José Spotlight reported, with Councilmembers Peter Ortiz and Domingo Candelas absent. Until that vote, the city had no codified rules for the cooler-sized robots that have operated downtown since April. Two companies, Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics, run 35 bots between them, officials said.

The package sets operating fees and escalating fines for violations: $100 for a first offense, $200 for a second and $500 for a third, with permits subject to revocation. It also launches a pilot allowing larger robots in the city’s bike lanes. Officials told the council that DoorDash has expressed interest in deploying its Dot robot, which stands nearly 5 feet tall and is designed to travel up to 20 mph in bikeways. Officials estimate the program could eventually include about 70 smaller robots and 30 larger ones.

The rules set no cap on the number of robots and no geographic limit on where they operate, though the Department of Transportation can revise the program, add restrictions or end it.

Vice Mayor Pam Foley voted yes but warned about the costs to pedestrians. “If someone is in a wheelchair or using a cane, and they can’t walk down the curb because it’s being blocked by one of these devices, that’s going to affect them a lot more than $100 for the first offense,” she said. Jordan Moldow, who chairs the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, said the city had adopted many residents’ recommendations but needs “continued vigilance.”

According to a staff report cited by the Spotlight, only three other Bay Area cities, Fremont, San Ramon and Dublin, have authorized roadway delivery robots.

Rules of the checkout lane

The next day, the debate moved from the sidewalk to the supermarket. After statewide self-checkout bills failed in 2024 and 2025, Councilmembers Domingo Candelas and David Cohen brought a proposal on self-checkout safety standards to an Oct. 7 joint meeting of the Rules and Open Government Committee, asking city staff to draft local rules modeled on ordinances in Costa Mesa, Long Beach and Santa Ana, San José Spotlight reported in coverage summarized by SF Times. Ideas under discussion include one employee for every three self-checkout stations, a 15-item limit and a ban on buying goods from locked cabinets at self-checkout.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union argues that understaffed kiosks cut jobs and invite theft. Grocers are pushing back hard. Safeway’s Kent Streeb told the Rules Committee that grocery margins are about 1.7% and that an ordinance would at least double self-checkout operating costs at the chain’s 12 remaining San Jose stores. The California Grocers Association pointed to Long Beach, where 10 of 13 affected retailers reduced or eliminated self-checkout after a staffing rule. Candelas said the goal is to set practical standards, not to kill the lanes.

The long view

Read together, the two items show a city government taking on a new role. For decades, the question of how fast to automate belonged to companies and, occasionally, to Sacramento or Washington. Now San Jose is regulating machines that share public space with pedestrians and wheelchairs, and machines that replace or reshape grocery jobs.

The policy logic in each case is different. With robots, the city is trading permissive entry for data and control, letting the industry grow while reserving the right to clamp down. With self-checkout, labor is using local government to win what it could not win in the Legislature. In both cases, the hard questions are about who absorbs the costs of automation: sidewalk users with disabilities, store workers or shoppers facing higher prices.

San Jose’s choices will spread. Cities across the region watch what Silicon Valley’s capital does first, and the companies building these machines are headquartered nearby. Whether San Jose ends up as a model for governing automation or a cautionary tale will depend on enforcement, which will be harder to carry out than the votes were to cast.

Sources: San José Spotlight (Oct. 9 and Oct. 15, 2026), via SF Times summary; San Jose Rules and Open Government Committee legislation record.