Waymo has expanded its operations into Los Gatos for the first time, making driverless rides available to around 100 residents in the North 40 neighborhood. The autonomous vehicles’ service area currently extends south to Pollard Road and Lark Avenue, and autonomous specialists were seen riding in the driver’s seat outside of Waymo’s current boundaries last week. These trained drivers often sit behind the wheel during certain testing and validation phases to monitor the technology, according to Waymo’s website. On Friday, the Mountain View-based company announced that it received state approval to dramatically expand its taxi services across the Bay Area. The California Department of Motor Vehicles released an updated map showing Waymo’s new approved operating range in Northern California, including the addition of East Bay and North Bay counties. “Our goal is to make Waymo accessible to more communities across the entire San Francisco Bay Area over time,” Sandy Karp, communications manager at Waymo, wrote in an email to the Los Gatan. “Waymo regularly drives in and around the cities where we operate with human specialists present.” “Currently, our fully autonomous service area in the Bay Area stretches from San Francisco to San Jose. This covers a 300-square-mile region and includes many neighborhoods in between, including parts of Los Gatos,” Karp said. Los Gatos Residents can currently request pickups and drop-offs within the North 40 neighborhood through the Waymo app. As Waymo’s footprint expands farther into Los Gatos, town officials will have little say over when and where those boundaries are drawn. State regulators, like the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Public Utilities Commission, instead oversee autonomous vehicle approval and deployment in California. “I think one of the big challenges is that the town didn’t ask for this, and yet our police officers, for instance, have to get up