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The choice is not "tech employees live in Oakland and commute by car" vs "tech employees live in Oakland and commute by bus". Get rid of the buses, and the tec

by timr 13y ago

The choice is not "tech employees live in Oakland and commute by car" vs "tech employees live in Oakland and commute by bus". Get rid of the buses, and the tech employees will move closer to work. It's a classic straw man argument. I don't have a problem with gentrification, but I do think it's tone-deaf (at best), and maybe counter-productive (at worst) to ferry rich people into low-income neighborhoods via fancy white buses on a daily basis. Turning Oakland into a bedroom community for silicon valley does nothing for the people who have lived in Oakland for decades -- they're raising rents far more than they're building low-income housing with the taxes on their rent checks. If the tech companies want to encourage their employees to live in Oakland, they should open offices in Oakland, pay their taxes in Oakland, and otherwise encourage people to live, work and play in Oakland. Bussing folks out of town in the morning and into town at night is the worst possible outcome for everyone but the people on the bus.

yaroslavvb 13y ago
By that logic, we should also put some brakes on Bart/Caltrain because it makes it easier to work in Silicon Valley and live in the city.
- timr 13y ago
  That would almost make sense if Bart and Caltrain were limited to employees of major tech companies, instead of a public service.
  - yaroslavvb 13y ago
    It's not really a strawman to say that shuttles take cars off the road because Googlers commuted from the city to Silicon Valley by car before the shuttle program existed. In fact, it started as a 20% project in response to the annoying commute.
    - yapcguy 13y ago
      If the commute is annoying, move closer to work. Don't come up with a solution which is illegal. But oh, I forget, this fits right in with Google's approach to doing business, from whether it's scanning books or slurping up wifi data: break laws first, deal with consequences later.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        Busses are illegal? Are are you harping on about where the busses are parking? If so, why not direct your irritation at the city government, which could be making a few hundred extra dollars a week writing them parking tickets.
        yapcguy 13y ago
        The city has failed to police the situation, so protestors are taking out their anger on those committing illegal activities. Doesn't make it right for the protesters, and guess what, it doesn't make it right for Google to keep on doing what they're doing.
        jrockway 13y ago
        The question is whether or not stopping to pick up passengers is illegal or not. That's different from parking, which implies that the driver is not in the vehicle to move it in case of emergency (or a Muni vehicle that needs to use the stop).
tptacek 13y ago
Absurd. Google MTV employees would not move out of San Francisco or away from Piedmont street in Oakland if you took the busses away. People have been commuting by car from San Francisco to Mountain View and Santa Clara since the dotcom bubble. Meanwhile: by paying employees who own and maintain property in Oakland, Google is in fact providing part of the tax base for Oakland. Every other city in the country understands this and their mayors and city councils practically puke on their shoes trying to get big employers to move in. When big employers leave cities or go under, it devastates the economy. It does not take a degree in econ to understand why. Income inequality is a real thing. Starving cities that are already under immense financial pressure of tax revenues does nothing to solve it. But, like I said: opportunity to fuck up a bus. How do you pass that up?
- timr 13y ago
  "People have been commuting by car from San Francisco to Mountain View and Santa Clara since the dotcom bubble." I'm sure that some people were doing that. You can find people who will tolerate anything. The point is, the buses shift the market by making that kind of commute appealing on a large scale. "by paying employees who own and maintain property in Oakland, Google is in fact providing part of the tax base for Oakland. Every other city in the country understands this and their mayors and city councils practically puke on their shoes trying to get big employers to move in." Red herring. Again, the increased property taxes those tech employees are paying (assuming they're not just renting from owners who are all protected from tax increases by Prop 8, but I digress...) isn't offsetting the real cost-of-living increases experienced by the people living in Oakland. Said another way: your theoretical, twice-removed tax-base gains aren't making the housing cheaper, or the poor people richer in Oakland.
  - jamiequint 13y ago
    Gentrification is the reality, its just a matter of where at this point. Why is gentrification centered around where the tech companies are based better than gentrification in lower-income neighborhoods. Either way people are getting displaced and rents are going up somewhere as demand exceeds supply. I find it interesting that in this situation in general (and in your comments in particular) most of the blame seems to be focused on the tech companies. The businesses are just making economically rational decisions around how providing transportation helps recruiting. What is their alternative? There are two sides to the supply and demand equation. Asking companies to scale back the "demand" for workers moving into the city is ridiculous. The City of San Francisco is the one that is actually to blame for not appropriately managing the supply side of the housing market by making it so hard to get new projects approved and built. Why is all the focus on the companies and not on the city government and neighborhood NIMBYs that seems to proliferate all of SF.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
Google's shuttle services are primarily chosen based on demand by Googlers (I hope!). Our lives and incomes are our own, and it's not for you, or Google, to manage our choices so as to minimize the inconvenience to others. We live in a market economy where goods go to the highest bidder, not the person who wants or needs it most. However if you really feel for some reason that the people in Oakland being displaced are the people in the US who are most in need of help, there is a very simple solution: pay their rent for them with your own money.
jamiequint 13y ago
'The choice is not "tech employees live in Oakland and commute by car" vs "tech employees live in Oakland and commute by bus". Get rid of the buses, and the tech employees will move closer to work. It's a classic straw man argument.' That's not a straw man, you might have meant "false dichotomy". I think that OP was trying to say that anecdotally people will actually not move closer to work, they will just drive. At least this is supported by some kind of data, where your premise is not.

by timr 13y ago

yaroslavvb 13y ago

By that logic, we should also put some brakes on Bart/Caltrain because it makes it easier to work in Silicon Valley and live in the city.

timr 13y ago
That would almost make sense if Bart and Caltrain were limited to employees of major tech companies, instead of a public service.
- yaroslavvb 13y ago
  It's not really a strawman to say that shuttles take cars off the road because Googlers commuted from the city to Silicon Valley by car before the shuttle program existed. In fact, it started as a 20% project in response to the annoying commute.
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    If the commute is annoying, move closer to work. Don't come up with a solution which is illegal. But oh, I forget, this fits right in with Google's approach to doing business, from whether it's scanning books or slurping up wifi data: break laws first, deal with consequences later.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Busses are illegal? Are are you harping on about where the busses are parking? If so, why not direct your irritation at the city government, which could be making a few hundred extra dollars a week writing them parking tickets.
      - yapcguy 13y ago
        The city has failed to police the situation, so protestors are taking out their anger on those committing illegal activities. Doesn't make it right for the protesters, and guess what, it doesn't make it right for Google to keep on doing what they're doing.
        jrockway 13y ago
        The question is whether or not stopping to pick up passengers is illegal or not. That's different from parking, which implies that the driver is not in the vehicle to move it in case of emergency (or a Muni vehicle that needs to use the stop).

tptacek 13y ago

Absurd. Google MTV employees would not move out of San Francisco or away from Piedmont street in Oakland if you took the busses away. People have been commuting by car from San Francisco to Mountain View and Santa Clara since the dotcom bubble. Meanwhile: by paying employees who own and maintain property in Oakland, Google is in fact providing part of the tax base for Oakland. Every other city in the country understands this and their mayors and city councils practically puke on their shoes trying to get big employers to move in. When big employers leave cities or go under, it devastates the economy. It does not take a degree in econ to understand why. Income inequality is a real thing. Starving cities that are already under immense financial pressure of tax revenues does nothing to solve it. But, like I said: opportunity to fuck up a bus. How do you pass that up?

timr 13y ago
"People have been commuting by car from San Francisco to Mountain View and Santa Clara since the dotcom bubble." I'm sure that some people were doing that. You can find people who will tolerate anything. The point is, the buses shift the market by making that kind of commute appealing on a large scale. "by paying employees who own and maintain property in Oakland, Google is in fact providing part of the tax base for Oakland. Every other city in the country understands this and their mayors and city councils practically puke on their shoes trying to get big employers to move in." Red herring. Again, the increased property taxes those tech employees are paying (assuming they're not just renting from owners who are all protected from tax increases by Prop 8, but I digress...) isn't offsetting the real cost-of-living increases experienced by the people living in Oakland. Said another way: your theoretical, twice-removed tax-base gains aren't making the housing cheaper, or the poor people richer in Oakland.
- jamiequint 13y ago
  Gentrification is the reality, its just a matter of where at this point. Why is gentrification centered around where the tech companies are based better than gentrification in lower-income neighborhoods. Either way people are getting displaced and rents are going up somewhere as demand exceeds supply. I find it interesting that in this situation in general (and in your comments in particular) most of the blame seems to be focused on the tech companies. The businesses are just making economically rational decisions around how providing transportation helps recruiting. What is their alternative? There are two sides to the supply and demand equation. Asking companies to scale back the "demand" for workers moving into the city is ridiculous. The City of San Francisco is the one that is actually to blame for not appropriately managing the supply side of the housing market by making it so hard to get new projects approved and built. Why is all the focus on the companies and not on the city government and neighborhood NIMBYs that seems to proliferate all of SF.

yetanotherphd 13y ago

Google's shuttle services are primarily chosen based on demand by Googlers (I hope!). Our lives and incomes are our own, and it's not for you, or Google, to manage our choices so as to minimize the inconvenience to others. We live in a market economy where goods go to the highest bidder, not the person who wants or needs it most. However if you really feel for some reason that the people in Oakland being displaced are the people in the US who are most in need of help, there is a very simple solution: pay their rent for them with your own money.

jamiequint 13y ago

'The choice is not "tech employees live in Oakland and commute by car" vs "tech employees live in Oakland and commute by bus". Get rid of the buses, and the tech employees will move closer to work. It's a classic straw man argument.' That's not a straw man, you might have meant "false dichotomy". I think that OP was trying to say that anecdotally people will actually not move closer to work, they will just drive. At least this is supported by some kind of data, where your premise is not.