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Very tense atmosphere at a Google Bus stop in San Francisco
- fennecfoxen 13y ago> "Are they too delicate to take public transportation?" No. The public transit agency is just not competent to provide effective public transportation -- not from Noe Valley to Mountain View, anyway. The equivalent technology worker in New York has access to an effective subway system and takes it as a matter of routine. That's not too hard to understand, is it? :P (Though I should note, lest I call the MTA competent, that much of that system was privately-built and inherited by the city when it got crushed by a fluke of changing US monetary policy :P)
- homunculus 13y agoThis may be where the rest of SF's population gets the impression that Googlers, et al are privileged or believe themselves so. The public transit system is good enough for the rest of them but not for us. Edit: grammar
- melling 13y agoIn the United States mass transit isn't good enough anywhere. Even in NYC area where we have the best system in the country, I could ask for a lot more.
- Aloisius 13y ago> The equivalent technology worker in New York has access to an effective subway system and takes it as a matter of routine. A lot of technology workers in New York traveling 50 miles to work by subway? I'm just asking because that's about the distance from Trenton NJ to Manhattan. Many people would rightly consider that to be a little outrageous and would maybe consider moving closer to their work instead of treating their city like a suburb they like to hang out at on the weekends. Edit: It is actually about 35 miles from 18th/Dolores to Google HQ, not 50. That's more like commuting from Brooklyn to New Brunswick.
- ameister14 13y agoLots of workers travel from Croton on Hudson or Long Island by train into Manhattan and take the subway from there; all of that is public transportation or at least publicly subsidized.
- Aloisius 13y agoCaltrain from SF to MV is significantly faster than taking public transit from Long Island or Croton on Hudson to Manhattan.
- biscarch 13y agoThe LIRR goes out to Riverhead, Long Island from Penn Station, which is 75mi. Even Ronkonkoma to Penn is 50mi.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- muzz 13y agoYour second point is a keen observation-- the jobs are in suburban-looking places like Mountain View, but workers want to spend their nights and weekends in the city. It would be like buses picking up workers from their residences in Manhattan and transporting them to their office in Trenton, NJ.
- lmg643 13y agono one travels 75 miles by subway - the longest single stretch is 31 miles inside the city. plenty of people do that by train and subway combined though. the key difference between "classic" big city commuting and the google commute, is that the SF tech folks are doing a REVERSE commute out of a city center. the "classic" commute scenario is take a train from a low density area to a high density area, where you switch to bus/subway/cab/walk. subways work great for short haul, trains for long haul. there is a "last mile" problem in the reverse commute that needs the google equivalent of the "johnny cab" to work. its a density and space problem that won't be easily solved, although google may be the first. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10bfo9_total-recall-homicidal-johnny-cab_fun http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10bfo9_total-recall-homici... i also would hardly say the MTA is incompetent - it's incredible how reliable the system is - 24x7 subways, reasonably clean cars, electronic clocks to let you know the next train time. even the trains out to the burbs work well.
- Aloisius 13y agoAccording to this article, Dolores and 18th is Noe Valley and the Tenderloin is a few blocks away. That's the kind of crack reporting that makes me think this article is worth sharing.
- steveklabnik 13y agoTo be fair, Twitter's geolocation says it's the Castro...
- Aloisius 13y agoGood golly. And tech workers wonder why locals are angry at them. Next they'll start labeling Oakland as East San Francisco.
- crassus 13y agoIt's "gentrification" when people with money move in, and "white flight" when they move out. Chase those tech workers out and watch public tax revenue, infrastructure, police force, and schools go down the tube. Presumably, progressives want people making decent money to stay exactly where they are and neither come nor leave But the real reason for the protests is that it offers a sense of belonging and meaning in a post-religious world. God may be dead, but now we have social justice Stay safe out there guys. Lefties can be dangerous[1] [1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/12/20/san-francisco-tech-shuttle-buses-blocked/4147335/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/12/20/san-francisco-...
- dreamdu5t 13y agoGod may be dead, but now we have social justice Glad someone else recognizes this.
- crucini 13y agoYup. Next step is to extrapolate the saints, dogmas and heresies of the current church.
- ekianjo 13y agoOh, we already have Saint Jobs.
- yetanotherphd 13y agoNot only that, but the idea that the truth is too subtle and complex for the masses, so it is better to feed them ideas known to be false by the leaders. I always hear "educated" liberals say how crime is caused by poverty, and that race isn't a factor after poverty is accounted for. I have read plenty of academic topics on the paper, and liberal academics are very happy to acknowledge that poverty cannot account for the race difference in crime rates. But these academics have proven their loyalty to the true faith, so they can say these things within their own circles. Ordinary people who try to make this same claim will be socially punished.
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- dopamean 13y agoI've read a bunch about this situation and I still cant for the life of me understand why so many people are stressed out about people getting together and taking a bus to work.
- dreamdu5t 13y agoBecause the media has created fake controversy in order to fill their papers/columns.
- muzz 13y agoAgreed, something like 1 window has been broken on a tech bus, yet media reports often use plural, not singular, to describe the number of acts of violence by protestors.
- mcphilip 13y agoI don't necessarily agree with the frustrations expressed in the article, but it does make it clear that stopping buses is just the focal point used to air protesters' larger grievances. From the article: >Robles said the protests that he and his group are involved with aren't about the buses but about unaffordable rents and the wave of evictions of seniors and the disabled. >"That's why we're stopping the damn Google buses!" he said. "You think I'm doing this for my health? I want to go out there and stop buses? No, I don't want do that, but I'm forced to do that!..."
- ekianjo 13y agoBasically it's the principle of terrorism applied to buses. They are using it as a tool to advance a political agenda. Make the daily life of users unbearable so that it changes things. Needless to say, this kind of action should be outlawed.
- busterarm 13y agoRevolution happens in the mind. Yeah it's a bit silly to target the people on the bus just going to work...but a) A lot of these commuters have spent their entire lives in an exceptionally privileged and insulated social bubble. The buses are really the _only_ way to reach these people and open their minds a little even if they only get a few of them. b) It's their community and their streets. The Google campus is private property and they wouldn't have any standing to take the problem there.
- jupiterjaz 13y agoSo much of this would go away if the city would just loosen its building and zoning regulations.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- malandrew 13y agoNot necessarily. A lot of people live here for a lot of different reasons. I live in SF for the people despite the way the city is organized and run. The types of people from the techies to the hippies are what make San Francisco desirable. The "quaintness" people admires? Who cares? What matters if that changes with growth so long as it changes for the better? Instead of being against all growth, why not just support growth that improves your quality of life? For example, instead of only being okay with rent control, permit a mechanism where you can trade your rent control on your current place for rent control in a better newly constructed building. Further still, you could create a market for people to exchange rent control in one unit for rent control in another unit. This would permit builders to voluntarily submit to rent control as a way to get access to land. i.e. I want to develop a piece of land into 20 units, where there are now two units. I could offer the tenants of those two units at the same rent price in nicer and larger units in a building I recently built.
- steven2012 13y agoYes, all that wasted space in useless Golden Gate Park that could be used for housing!
- wpietri 13y agoWhy pick on the city? So much of it would go away if the cities in which these companies exist would loosen their zoning regulations. Then we could get rid of the buses.
- muzz 13y agoWhich cities would that be? Mountain View? Palo Alto? Menlo Park? Cupertino? South San Francisco? The 100+ other cities in the Bay Area? If zoning were truly the major obstacle, we would see more building where there is the least amount of zoning.
- lmg643 13y agoIt's crazy to me that buses have become the flashpoint of controversy about silicon valley companies, enough to drive protestors in the street. i guess it's really true when they say all politics are local. i don't live with these buses around every day, but at least they are on a bus and not creating traffic jams with cars. pretty thoughtful that they are taking buses in that respect - downright neighborly. in terms of tech industry issues that affect the national and/or local community, i guess people have a hard time caring about more abstract issues like tax evasion or immigration. taxes pay for various public services, whether national or local. one can argue about the details of which governments would get what funds, but the offshore cash balances are largely "dead" money waiting for a tax holiday, and not going to be meaningfully reinvested. if we drop the white collar aspect of immigration reform, the "comprehensive" changes the tech industry is advocating will increase the quantity of semi and unskilled labor, further contributing to pressure on the lower half of the income scale. but by all means - let's get rid of those buses.
- XorNot 13y agoThe revolution in Egypt has flashed up over a number of issues (i.e. the building of a mall). This is what public discontent looks like when you have entrenched social problems and don't try and fix them. It will get worse if you don't take meaningful action that helps the lower and middle class.
- ebiester 13y agoI think that was Turkey. (Gezi)
- wpietri 13y agoYeah. I'm sure if corporate executives were to come down to a streetcorner and frankly explain their activities and views, people would be happy to protest them instead of the buses. But they stay ensconced in their corporate office parks, which the hoi polloi can't even reach via public transit. And where even if they did, corporate security would keep the executives from any uncomfortable frankness.
- thrill 13y ago
- MyNameIsMK 13y agoMayor Lee needs to give every SF resident a Google bus, or provide clean buses for the people who DO NOT work a large tech companies like Google. kthxbai
- wes-exp 13y agoAs Marc Andreessen recently noted, “They are attacking the demand for housing [whereas the discussion should be] around the supply of housing,” Andreessen said. “Market forces want the Valley to expand; if our politicians show leadership, we have decades of growth ahead of us.”
- fidotron 13y agoI've always had the suspicion that in SV proper no one, and I mean no one, wants any more people near them, as it would destroy the place utterly. Yes, it's sprawl, but at least there's some greenery remaining. If the entire peninsula urbanised it would destroy the quality of life for many in the upper levels of SV. They're all NIMBYs, and to some degree justifiably. The other problem is who wants to live somewhere where so many people are technologists? There's a bad enough bubble around the place already, this would just make it worse. On top of the growing mass of lonely single dudes.
- kqr2 13y agoBut how does one determine the right amount of development? When is a place "destroyed"? Keep in mind that Silicon Valley was once a bunch of orchards. One could have argued that we shouldn't have built any industry here and kept it "pristine". But wait, even the orchards are man-made. Maybe things were better before agriculture... NIMBYs are just picking one point in time and declaring it "optimal".
- wes-exp 13y agoOn top of the growing mass of lonely single dudes If housing were actually affordable to anyone other than (predominantly male) tech engineers, this would be less of a problem. Hence, suppressing growth in housing makes the problem worse, not better.
- thekevan 13y agoI just see this as bigotry against people at or above upper-middle class.
- tikhonj 13y ago> "Are they too delicate to take public transportation? I take public transportation all the time. I've lived here 50 years. I've taken public transit for maybe 45 of those 50 years. I've turned out just fine." This is just as applicable to people with cars. Like, you know, almost everyone, including the poor. What in the world is wrong with not taking public transportation? It somehow makes you arrogant, conceited and evil? Seems like a futile attack on people at tech companies, all for the wrong reasons. It's always disappointing when politics becomes about demonizing the other side. But not unexpected. It goes on: > Robles said the protests that he and his group are involved with aren't about the buses but about unaffordable rents and the wave of evictions of seniors and the disabled. Well, that doesn't match his earlier quote! Evictions and unaffordable rents are one thing. Attacking people just because they're better-off and—the horror!—going to work without talking to their neighbors ("They don't want to talk, just to get on their bus and head to work.") is quite another. This attitude blows through the understandable and into the viciously anti-individualistic. Seriously: evictions are one thing. But everybody deserves to be able to live and work in peace, without having to bow to the "community"! You should be under no obligation, social or otherwise, to enjoy the same things as your neighbors or even talk to them. And yet this is one of the main complaints I hear about techies. It's an absurd position and, doubtless, a double standard: it's not like many of the people they're trying to protect—ones who actually deserve some protection, at that—are all that much more social themselves.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- smacktoward 13y ago> This is just as applicable to people with cars. Something you buy with your own money doesn't shout "privilege" as loudly as something you're given for free. If Google was handing out cars to their employees, the comparison would be more apt. > Like, you know, almost everyone, including the poor. Lots of people who live in cities don't have cars, including many of the not-poor. Many (most?) of these people use public transit. Having access to a robust public transit system is generally seen as one of the benefits of living in a dense urban area. > What in the world is wrong with not taking public transportation? It somehow makes you arrogant, conceited and evil? No, it makes you look like you're isolated in a cushion of comfort specifically designed to protect you from having to deal with your neighbors. That's not evil, but it's also not the best way to make friends and otherwise seem engaged and non-aloof.
- billiam 13y agoThere are so many inaccuracies in this article that I just stopped reading after a while. Worthy subject, but a sad reflection of the state of journalism.
- malandrew 13y ago"The buses really are emblematic of this class, this privilege that people have," Robles said. "Are they too delicate to take public transportation? I take public transportation all the time. I've lived here 50 years. I've taken public transit for maybe 45 of those 50 years. I've turned out just fine." I'm sorry, but this is MADNESS talking. What about cars!? Seriously, Google should just print shirts for their employees that point out the insanity of attacking anyone riding a bus over those driving cars. Better yet, this should just print "What about the people driving cars?" right on the side of the damn bus.
- delackner 13y agoRarely have I seen a single article that more concisely summed up the total failure of the media to inform the public. The real story is the colossal decades-long failure of California state and city governments AND CITIZENS to produce a coherent policy for housing and transportation. There is a long and very deep story there, but you won't read much about it because it is complex.
- codex 13y ago"I'm a fifth generation San Franciscan" sums it up pretty well.
- tedsuo 13y agoGuys, the buses have nothing to do with it. People are angry because rents and evictions are through the roof, and many people are really feeling it. SV hasn't been shy about taking credit for the situation. The buses are just an obvious target.
- dengnan 13y agoThis really confused me. They are complaining the high price of the rent. But instead of protesting in front of real estate companies, landlords, or those who rent their properties with high prices, they stopped Google buses, Apple buses and buses whose owners sell computers, build websites, share information across Internet. They really picked wrong targets. They can buy computers with low prices and the price is getting lower. Remember: Apple decides the price of laptop and/or desktop, not the price of the real estate.
- wpietri 13y agoA few months back I talked with a leasing agent who was showing a property across the street from me. When he told me the rent, I was gobsmacked. When I asked him why it was so high, he said straight out that they jacked the rents way up because the place was near the corporate bus stops. That echoes what I heard when I looked for a new place 2 years ago. The buses bring a lot of people with a lot of money to the neighborhood. Basic economics tells you what happens then.
- dengnan 13y agoI can see the problem of the imbalance of the demand-supply. But I see no reason to blaim tech companies. It is like blaming patients when emergency room responds slowly because of too many patients. Instead of asking patients to leave, we should ask for more doctors or more hospitals. In this case, why not blaming landlords for rising the price? Or asking the government to provide more affordable housings. Stopping a tech company's bus will fix nothing.
- wpietri 13y agoTech company buses are importing housing demand into the city. According to a recent study, about half the people riding buses would move closer to work if the buses didn't exist. That would be circa 10,000 people, a significant number in San Francisco's relatively illiquid housing market. So you're wrong. Stopping the buses would make a substantial difference.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoHow easy it is to demonize others and erode the value of individual liberty. The way that we react to people of wealth who act in ways we dislike is very telling of our individual values. It's one thing to say "I don't like the culture their creating, and I want to work to build a better culture". It's one thing to say "I think they are taking unfair advantage due to their wealth and influence". But it's something else entirely to say "they deserve to be hated for who they are and how they act". It's something else to say "we demand the authority to FORCE them to act how we want, with violence if necessary". It's so, so easy to vilify the wealthy. They are "privileged", they can take it, right? They deserve something to offset their privilege and wealth, right? We've seen this script before, many times, it's not a good one, it doesn't end well. We should know better by now. If you can't maintain compassion for the wealthy, then you don't have compassion. If you can't maintain compassion for people who have different values than you then you don't have compassion. If you have a desire to use force to make people change their behavior to something more desirable to you then you don't value freedom.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- InclinedPlane 13y agoI say "we" to avoid being polarizing or exclusionary. I certainly have many advantages others don't have but others have advantages I don't have as well. I don't begrudge others their success or their differences and I try to avoid using force or violence to change the behavior of others. If I want someone to change their behavior I talk to them (assuming that said behavior is within the bounds of the law, non-violent, etc.). That's the civilized way to act, by respecting the freedoms of others and attempting to work cooperatively with others, even people we may not like. The true irony here is that there's probably no shortage of folks in these anti-google demonstration groups who have shouted something along the lines of "we don't want you here!" and then drive back home in their cars with COEXIST bumper stickers on them. It's fundamentally important that people be able to get along despite having differences and despite disliking one another. It's simply not ok to use violence or threats as a means of coercion.
- yetanotherphd 13y agoJust more leftist protection scams. Stay safe fellow nerds.