Calling San Francisco a "town" diminishes what they've achieved. It is the second densest urban center and ride hailing market in the US, and a difficult place for humans to drive. I think being able to effectively replace Uber drivers there means that once they crack freeway driving and snow, the regulatory, economic, policy, and social hurdles will start to fall like dominos.

I don't think this is how most people expected this to go. My personal belief was that self-driving cars would be limited to medium-density suburban areas initially (i.e. places where the driving is relatively simple, but there's still enough demand for it to be economically viable). It's astonishing that they were able to move from suburban trials to high density environments so quickly.