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It's not the sort of route that a mass transit system runs. This isn't going a few miles and stopping every few blocks. It's an express-style route, 1-way-at-
by pkteison 13y ago
It's not the sort of route that a mass transit system runs. This isn't going a few miles and stopping every few blocks. It's an express-style route, 1-way-at-a-time, to a location 40 miles away which nobody has any reason to go to unless they work there.
To make a 40 mile run in an hour, a bus needs to do very few pickup stops in SF, drive nonstop to destination, then do very few drop off stops in Silicon Valley; then return empty to repeat. Same thing other direction for the evening trip. It's the sort of trip that only makes sense for a chartered coach, not a public bus.
If the route was provided by the local muni bus, people would protest that too - that tech employees were getting special treatment, that a SF tax funded agency was serving geographic areas well outside of SF, that stops should be added at all the intermediate cities (doubling the length of the trip), the system would be more wasteful as buses would run empty on company holidays, and that the companies should directly provide those routes themselves since they only benefit them.
The system presently in place actually makes far more sense than trying to expand muni because it's a very specific purpose and specific route.
- gaadd33 13y agoWhat about trains? I thought CalTrain ran down very near to most of the tech campuses, admittedly the companies would still need a minimal bus system to ferry people from the station to the office park.
- pkteison 13y agoThe tech companies already run shuttles to CalTrain, there are a lot of their employees who don't take that option because it would be a very very long commute from most neighborhoods in SF. CalTrain only has two stops in SF, both on the far east edge of the city. Buses cover more of the center of the city.
- gkoberger 13y agoCaltrain picks up in only one location in SF (meaning employees would need to get to CalTrain), it takes over an hour from SF to Mountain View, has no WiFi, and drops off about 3 miles from the Google campus[1]. For a company with no shortage of money, a shuttle makes complete sense. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!4m17!3m13!1m1!1sMountain+View+Caltrain%2C+600+W+Evelyn+Ave%2C+Mountain+View%2C+CA+94041!1m1!1sAmphitheatre+Pkwy%2C+Mountain+View%2C+CA+94043!3m8!1m3!1d3677!2d-122.0770258!3d37.3946411!3m2!1i800!2i891!4f13.1!5m2!13m1!1e1&fid=0 https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!4m17!3m13!1m1!1sM... (EDIT: Added 3 mile source since someone below questioned it)
- sbilstein 13y agoGoogle runs shuttles to the caltrain and it isn't three miles away from campus. Campus is huge; I see plenty of google employees on caltrain. There are 2 Caltrain stops in SF. The issue with Caltrain is that there are simply not enough trains running on it to ferry all the people who need to get to the South Bay. My ideal solution is better express routes through the city to the caltrain station and from there shuttles to the corporate campuses. We'd need some serious infrastructure improvements to the caltrain however. I wish companies were more willing to spend their lobbying money on pushing politicians to commit to infrastructure improvements that could benefit a broader stripe of the population then just their employees.