Thank God for private tech buses. Imagine how many more cars would flood the already congested bay area highways if they didn't exist. I don't understand the argument against the tech busses, seems pretty irrational to me.
Maybe. Or maybe Google (Facebook etc.) employees would be forced to live closer to the Peninsula. Or maybe Google (Facebook etc.) would be forced to invest in the public transportation infrastructure with all the taxes they're not paying.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-sho...
I don't have the silver bullet answer, but if you live anywhere near San Francisco and are not on the road to tech millions, you can see that we have a big livability problem. Every day SF looks more like Santana Row, or the Plaza in Kansas City, plus homeless people.
Don't build terrible, dehumanizing, sprawl-encouraging, traffic-encouraging headquarters out in suburbia.
This isn't my idea - it's what every progressive minded thinker that spends even two minutes thinking about urban/traffic/sprawl ideas arrives at.
If google, facebook, et. al, were in the city, the network and wealth effects would be staggering. How many boats would be lifted by that rising tide ?
So if Google's entire MTV campus was in SF, you really think housing prices would be better? Move Apple, Facebook, Google to SF and you have gentrification on steroids.
You are assuming that they could move into SF. I'm sure Google could easily fill the Transamerica pyramid.
SF isn't amenable to new construction, and Google and most these companies could easily be more decentralized then they are now in MV if they had to take up residence in the city.
If Facebook/Google were in SF, I reckon many of its workers would still live in San Jose, Fremont and Oakland, due to affordability concerns and a lack of density in the city proper.
1. Tech buses were a response to people living in the city. I don't think not having them would necessarily "force" them to live on the peninsula. When I worked for a company in Sunnyvale that didn't have a private bus I still didn't move down there.
2. People act like this is a simple matter of getting more money into public transit. This is silly, even if that was the only roadblock (pun intended!), building a new freeway takes a lot of time, and expanding public transportation takes a lot of time, and in the meanwhile makes things even more miserable for everyone. Just look at all the very modest light rail expansions in the city and how they've made those sections nightmares for traffic for years. Google and FB need solutions today, not 5 years from now, and personally paying for shuttling their own employees seems like an incredibly environmentally conscious and fair way to handle it: don't forget, they're decreasing congestion on muni/bart/caltrain for everyone else. Lastly, money isn't the only problem: there's a lot of politics in public transport. For example, the reason the BART doesn't go all the way to Cupertino is because they voted against it there. So when you throw around expanding public transport as if its a defense of poor existing SF residents, realize that it may also be a form of antagonization for people in other communities. Hiring your own bus seems to be the simplest, cheapest, least displacing, and fairest way of solving this problem.
That's not Google's problem, that's the loopholes' problem. Every single entity (including Warren Buffet) will pay the minimum amount of taxes required, i.e. your standard (no higher, no lower) tax burden.
That's not Google's problem, that's the loopholes' problem.
I'm an entrepreneur. I get that. And you can keep repeating it until we turn into India or Brazil or Nigeria or someplace else where the rich ride around in bulletproof cars while the poor beg by the dozen at each intersection.
Speaking as coming from an Eastern Europe, here's my view: the biggest problem in poor countries is corruption (in government), not poverty. My country, as well as those you mention, have plenty of middle class people, it's not just super-poor or super-rich. At least in my country, the biggest problem is that it's much harder to be a successful entrepreneur.
Taxing corporations more does not, in any way, fix government corruption. In fact, it actually makes the problem worse, since there's more to steal by corrupt politicians.
The tech bus protests aren't anti-bus, they're anti-discrimination. The rich people get to use the bus and the poor(er) people aren't allowed to. Other organizations and companies aren't even allowed to use their own buses - the city fines anyone else who uses the bus stops.
What about the criticism that the private buses are using public infrastructure and are blocking the public busses from using the stop? Certainly you can agree that the public infrastructure should first go to the public systems we all fund and benefit from?
That sounds like an allegation worth verifying, but in any regard, a 2 minute delay could be caused by a the relative lead composition of the driver's foot just as much as it could be caused by a bus blocking a stop.
From my understanding, Google is currently working with the city to provide an alternative solution. Not that I think that would dampen the current biligerence of some of their critics.
Yeah, my comment from the thread on this series that disappeared:
Whenever I see these articles, I think about what makes the Bay Area expensive. The key factor is housing prices.
There's a limited amount of land available near the centers of SV because of mountains and natural areas. Supply is strictly constrained and demand is very strong because of industry growth. The result is spiraling prices far above what would seem reasonable elsewhere.
Supply constraint isn't really a natural limit, though. Bay Area housing is spread out, low density, even sprawling. Even San Francisco is only half the density of Brooklyn. San Jose and San Mateo county mostly look like a suburb of Omaha.
Market demand would indicate big profit opportunities for anyone who can buy up a subdivision and build a neighborhood of three story flats on wide sidewalks and two lane streets. That would be over double the density of San Francisco and ten times the density of a typical San Mateo subdivision. You could easily afford to buy up property, knock down current buildings and carry away a huge profit. But you can't get permission from planning boards.
Or you could build like Tokyo, which is a little less dense than Brooklyn. You'd make free standing two or three story single family homes with very little yard on 15' single lane streets and small blocks. That's the same density as Brooklyn, 2.5 times San Francisco.
Or you could even build like San Francisco, but in San Jose. That's efficient enough in land per housing unit to make big money.
But it's all prohibited.
The Bay Area has chosen to be unlivable and unpleasant by its choice of public officials. Those city officials have prohibited the practices that make city living affordable. The result of bad public officials is an unhappy public.
Agreed. There is no need for this to be happening. San Francisco has a very anti-build attitude and there isn't a lot of new construction going up to account for growth. You are adding 3000-3500 dwellings per year, that is not going to cut it.
We need denser, taller, construction, so that everyone can live here and everyone can enjoy SF.
Amen. This really does seem like a problem of SF's own making. You have a booming population of wealthy (or at least upper middle class) workers — this is typically a good problem to have! If there was ample housing, and/or the ability to develop and increase density in areas to accommodate, then rents wouldn't be rising so drastically, and the entire community could benefit.
I wonder how many of these protestors blocking the Google bus also protest any increase in density/development?
Google, Cisco, etc. can spend their money any way they want, the shuttle busses for their employees apparently make good economic sense. Still, people are upset to the point that they are starting to interfere with traffic. In my experience, this sort of anger doesn't go away if you ignore it.
I suppose once everyone who dislikes the busses have been priced out of the neighborhood and have moved away, the issue will be resolved. Although, at that point, it may make sense for Google, Cisco, etc. to demand better city busses that everyone can use. Which won't be a problem once everyone is in the same class.
I suppose once everyone who dislikes the busses have been priced out of the neighborhood and have moved away, the issue will be resolved. Although, at that point, it may make sense for Google, Cisco, etc. to demand better city busses that everyone can use. Which won't be a problem once everyone is in the same class.
Classism at its finest folks! City buses are there for the people, not just those belonging to the same social-economic group. Tech firms should encourage better public transportation regardless of who takes it because it is there for the citizens of SF which they are directly a part of.
Let's not forget how much mobile devices by Apple, Google, and company assist in navigating public transportation.
They are most certainly encouraging better public transportation. This doesn't excuse blocking the bus. I wouldn't argue that they're doing it out of pure goodwill, but its crazy to ignore how much efficiency and value their apps have added to the system. Not to mention the drastically increased accessibility to people new or too confused to ride prior to this.
Google, Cisco, Apple, etc. are making critical mistake of not investing and engaging more into process of improving community around them (homeless problem, schools, housing, public transportation, etc.).
The philosophy goes like this: the person who takes private buses will eventually have kids, spouses, friends which not will not be able to use private buses. So these talented engineers will move out (and probably find different company) as soon as they are not any more single or DINKY because their quality of life will suck. Then what?
Except there's a big flaw with your entire argument. Most of the big tech companies (with the exception of Twitter) are located in Santa Clara County, rather than in downtown SF. When those engineers get older and start families, they're probably just going to move out to Santa Clara County, where they will be able to get a house and live closer to work (allowing them to spend more time with their families). There will be no reason for them to switch jobs - in fact, their commute will be shortened.
Not sure if that make sense since Bay Area is quite integrated. Great you move to Santa Clara but your kid needs to go to San Francisco since there is a good catholic school there - then what? Or your wife works in San Francisco?
> Great you move to Santa Clara but your kid needs to go to San Francisco since there is a good catholic school there - then what?
That's no different from living in any other metropolitan area. If you refuse to send your child to the local public school, then you're going to have to deal with the difficulty of transportation.
> Or your wife works in San Francisco?
Then it's no different from before you were married, when you were traveling from SF down to the Valley, except in reverse.
I would venture to guess that the Google bus, with all of its amenities, costs less per passenger mile than a MUNI bus. Paying for better city buses would be a waste of money.
"You can blame me if you want, but I don't think I'm really the cause of the problem."
You can draw a lot of comparisons between the economic/class struggle in SF and the NSA scandal. Techies and engineers 'just doing their job', insulated from and making excuses for the larger system. Not really a direct comparison, but an interesting one to think about.
Except, people who work at tech companies like Cisco, Facebook and Google are largely spending their time making things that are good for the world, or at least give people what they want. This is validated by the market for their products. Pretty much no one outside the US government thinks that the NSA's infrastructure is good for the world.
"Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin', 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president."
The point is everyone just 'does their job' regardless of any outside stimuli/judgement. Everyone is a hero in their own world.
Amazing. So when the rich try to segregate, the papers start screaming about how gated communities are bad for everyone. On the other hand, when the rich try to live where everybody else does, then the popular reaction is, "Oh my god, gentrification!" Why don't we just come together and realize that what the public/press really wish is that everyone else better off than them had died (or actually, perhaps the press doesn't want to take it that far, otherwise there would be no more "revolutionary" feelings to stir anymore, and the papers would go out of business).
The disappointing thing for me is that the actual rich, the people who don't need to go to work every day keep themselves out of sight. So we all act like crabs in a barrel, attacking the people who make 2-3x what we make, and the people who have 1000x what we do keep on keeping on.
From what my accountant tells me, there's a good chance the people inside the Google bus (driver excepted) are making 10-20X what the folks protesting them are making.
SF median income in 2012 was 74,922. Even if we assume the protesters are making 1/2 of that, your projection is strong — few people, even at Google, are making >$300k per year.
The protesters could be making a lot less than that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6928230Santa Clara County, Calif., is home to Google, Apple and eBay. So it's no surprise that the median household income was $91,000 a year in 2012, one of the highest in the country. Yet one-third of the households in the county don't earn enough for basic living expenses, even when they work at some of those big tech companies.
"Median income" does not include unemployed people. (Edit: actually, I have no idea how they calculated it.)
I assume that people who are fed up enough to protest and block a bus are making quite a bit less than $37K. I know lots of people who are making less than $37K.
I also know that many, many, many people at Google are making >$300K total comp.
Glassdoor has a lot of issues, but it looks like most salaries listed range between $100-250k. It looks like Directors and above make above 300k, but they'd typically only be 4-8% of total employees ... or 2-4k people at Google.
Maybe all the salaries on Glassdoor skew low, but even doubling that still means 85% of Google employees make under 300k.
Based on numbers I hear from friends and Glassdoor, Google programmers make $100k-150k/year. To make 10x less than that, you'd have to make $10-15k/year; that's less than minimum wage.
Not everyone can get a full time job in this economy. A friend of mine is struggling to pay rent with her part time job at minimum wage. She can't afford to eat every day. Sure, you could tell her "go get a full time job", but no one is hiring. Believe me, she's tried.
I thought the problem was not eco related, nor related to gentrification, nor weath inequalities, but more that private busses are using public bus lanes.
Thats the fucked up part in my mind.
Proliferating different forms of mass transit in general seems like a shitty solution, just take a look at how many different bus companies there are in Buenos Aires.
Let's say these people are envious. So they get their own bus! Buy it outright, and use it for their own travels. Well as soon as that bus pulls into a city bus stop, they get fined $300. Google's buses don't get fined, only poor peoples' buses get fined.
Google is currently working with the city on a better solution. The city, and everyone in it, have incentive to cooperate with Google since they attract tax revenue, while attempting a solution to not bring extra congestion to the city streets. I don't believe this merits the level of hostility that I have seen.
I wonder what their opinion is on school buses from expensive elitist private schools? Also, I know I'm not the only one whose picking up on the subtle racial undertones in this article. Why are they so quick to describe the villainous tech workers as "young white men"? I keep seeing this pop up in bay area news concerning gentrification in Oakland. In St. Louis, numerous races (Black, White, Asian) take part in gentrification and it's seen as a good thing. Yet, in San Francisco it's so demonized and race is immediately pointed out.
Aren't the vast majority of tech workers "young white men"? Also maybe the areas that are gentrifying are ending up less diverse than they started whereas in St Louis its not an issue since the neighborhoods are staying diverse?
Care to elaborate? I'd be interested in hearing what Baudrillard has to say about this. I don't see any immediate and obvious connection here, but I'm admittedly not well-versed in him.
Sure thing. Up front: I've only read Simulacra; I wouldn't call myself well-versed either. So if you have read that, the following "should" make sense, reserving the possibility that I'm off-base in my interpretation of Baudrillard - a possibility I readily admit is a real one.
Others in the thread have probably pointed out by now that the linked NPR story leaves conspicuously absent a key point in the "private buses in SF" narrative, i.e. that the recent ire (past week or two) flared up when some Vanguard type filmed himself pretending to be an obnoxious "let them eat cake" Googler. The next day, the even bigger story was that that video was a fake (not a hoax but a "true fake", to use Assange terminology). Indeed, were it not for the true faking of the perspective of one "side" of A Divided San Francisco, this NPR story, titled "Private Tech Buses Drive Tension" couldn't exist. Couldn't. So what? So whether the original was a lie or not has become definitively irrelevant - the length of its shadow is the same. The point being not that NPR is lying or something like that, but rather: that the Symbol has progressed on through to the fourth stage, that of the fully realized Simulacrum, now totally divorced from the "map-reality" (you remember the Borges fable about the nation-sized map at the beginning of the book?) which begat it in the first place. It now exists only on a plane of interaction with other Symbols (e.g., this is part of a series on Income Inequality, which, of course, has no non-wholly-symbolic connection to private buses) which have also divorced themselves of their original connection to reality and which also only interact with other Symbols. Baudrillard, you will recall, names this plane the "Hyperreal." Real because it is.
So... is it weird to anyone else that the protesters spent money on identical costumes and made fake road signs and barricades? Yes it makes for a more appealing photo for the press, but it just seems strange. Who are these protesters? What group do they represent?
"According to fliers handed out at the protest, the group staging the protest is the San Francisco Displacement and Neighborhood Impact Agency, which seeks to stop “the injustice in the city’s two-tier system where the public pays and the private corporations gain,” according to its website. The group has also made a false Google bus as a protest in the past."
According to one article, a union organizer also staged a fight between a fake Google employee and a protester. http://www.sfbg.com/googleshoutdown
Basically their aim is related to housing. They targeted the Google bus because 1. it's a fineable offense that Google et al is apparently not paying (so they claim), and 2. they claim the buses drive up rent in the neighborhoods.
So they gathered media attention with a "political theater piece" by "ticketing" the bus and causing havoc. The city is (reportedly) already in talks with Google and others to get them to pay for the privilege of doing so (which seems fair to me), so their only valid claim left is housing prices being raised, but good luck stopping gentrification. Oh, and they want Google, etc to pay 1 billion dollars in past-due fines (where they got that number, I don't know).
