Oct 9, 2015
Stuck Bus, 25th and Fair Oaks.
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Stuck Bus, 25th and Fair Oaks.
Close your eyes, listen to this video's soundtrack, and try to imagine what's happening. Are climbers cresting Everest's mighty peak? Is a physically disabled runner overcoming all odds to win the New York Marathon?
Nope. The rousing score is touting an ad for San Francisco's new luxury-bus service, Leap Transit.
-San Francisco Gets the Ridiculous Luxury Bus It Deserves
What's the matter with Google Bus?
Around corners in San Francisco Bay Area, you will see dozens of shiny white coaches with dark-tinted windows, no logo, but an LED display showing "GBUS TO MTV". It has been an usual scene of the morning SF. In fact, these are Google's commuter buses ferrying 4,500 - 5,000 employees every day to and from Googleplex in Mountain View which is 40 miles away.
These commuter bus services - not only for Google, but also other tech giants like Facebook and Electronic Arts - stirred controversies last year. Some views suggested that the bus services enabled the high-paid tech people to move into San Francisco and thus driving up the cost of homes. Some also opposed their unpaid use of public bus stops leading to delays and congestion.
Earlier this year, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) required these firms to pay US$1 per day for each public stop used for picking up or dropping off their employees. Later, the agency conducted an 18-month "Commuter Shuttle Pilot Program" to increase fees and impose more regulations for the use of a shared Muni and commuter shuttle stops network. A permit (as shown in the photo between two headlights) had to be applied.
23485S1 Van Hool TX45
Last week, it occurred to me that I might start monitoring the local Wi-Fi environment to determine how often the Apple Bus really comes by. My wife guessed 10 times a day. I’d have said 20. After a week of reverse-wardriving, it appears the Apple Bus passes my house an average of 36 times a day, and is uncannily punctual, especially in the a.m., when the first bus reliably pops up on my Wi-Fi radar between 6:23:33 and 6:23:56 every morning.
Last week, it occurred to me that I might start monitoring the local Wi-Fi environment to determine how often the Apple Bus really comes by. My wife guessed 10 times a day. I’d have said 20. After a week of reverse-wardriving, it appears the Apple Bus passes my house an average of 36 times a day.
Sadly, what could have been a constructive dialogue was instead an afternoon largely spent listening to two groups talking past each other. One by one, tech employees approached the microphone to talk about how great the shuttles were. Then, the activists would get their turn, and they’d talk about how it wasn’t right to have people suffering and kicked out of their homes in the midst of such massive, dynastic wealth creation, and how the tech community had shirked a neighborly duty to the rest of San Francisco. What's needed, instead, is a massive citywide reconciliation effort – perhaps starting with a series of town hall meetings – that can serve as a venue for tech workers to hear, in moral terms, why their proliferation is worrying residents of San Francisco, and for anxious locals to better understand, in utilitarian terms, that the city's development rules and the basic laws of supply and demand are doing far more to cause displacement than the Google buses. Then, with calmer ground established, the two groups could begin to sort through some of the policy specifics.
When Is a Google Bus Not Just a Google Bus?
conquistador transportation
speaker, City Hall MTA meeting, referring to tech buses
In 1980, 9% of commuters in San Francisco left the city every day to go to work. In 2010, outbound commuters approached 25%. The rise of private transit is an immediate reaction to poor regional transit connections. Yet rather than sidestepping failed regional planning by encouraging an inequitable, two-tiered, private system, we need to expand and regionalize the existing public bus systems.
Nickels and dimes... or transit for our times?
Maybe we should call San Francisco Google-land.
Herbert Weiner, resident, 74