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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

"While you're at it, Google, stop providing the property tax base for our city, and start having your employees drive individual automobiles to work every day."

Google: consider Chicago. We'd be happy to have you. Also our food is better, we have all four seasons, and most of your employees wouldn't even need a special bus to commute, because our public transportation actually works. But you can still run your busses out to Plainfield and Elgin (the approximately equivalent commute from SF to MTV). We'll find the busses charming, not inflammatory.

I am of course dignifying what has happened here. Really, this is just a bunch of people thrilled to have an excuse to fuck up a bus.

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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 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.

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?

"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.

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.

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.

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.

That would almost make sense if Bart and Caltrain were limited to employees of major tech companies, instead of a public service.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

'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.

Google already has an office in Chicago. :)

http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/locations/

It's a pretty great office too. Lots of happy chicagoans work there.

And they have Chrome Blend coffee. Reason enough to visit :)

Google and other companies are violating traffic laws repeatedly by illegally parking in a public bus stop. How could you forget to mention this important fact?

By your logic, every single person who pays local taxes should just go on a bender and do whatever they want to the city, to hell with the rules eh?

Why is it okay for corporations but not individuals to disrupt and fuck things up?

You really think this makes the situation sound better for the protesters? "They were parked illegally"? So get the city to write them a fucking parking ticket. I'm sure Oakland could use the revenue.

> So get the city to

If getting your municipal government to act on your behalf was so simple, do you really think they would be resorting to smashing windows? You're so blind, dude.

Yes, a much better idea for us to be governed by people who solve problems by smashing windows with rocks.

Again, way to totally miss the point. Whether or not the smashing is justified is a much larger discussion, though largely irrelevant to establishing your repeated evasiveness. So let's say for this point's sake that it absolutely isn't justified, under any circumstances. Does my point not still stand?

Your suggestion to the window smashers was to "get the city to write them a fucking parking ticket". I asked you why you think they would be engaging in the tactics that they are engaging in if that were any sort of viable channel through which to have their grievances addressed. As far as I can tell, you've done nothing to address my question, and your suggestion to the protesters remains invalid and meaningless. I think you should retract your condemnation of them, since so far you've been unable to propose a realistic alternative.

Deleted comment

Really? Disappointing comment from you.

Care to make a wager, how about just for $100, of course you'll lay me 99 to 1 odds given your certain right?

There's been several local papers that have reported they don't have permission (e.g., http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Google-riders-under-si... ) and talking to a Muni driver he indicated they don't have permission. If you're willing to take the bet though, I know one of the PR guys over at MUNI who I could get a hold of to provide us a definitive answer.

Deleted comment

It's right there, did you not read it?

"Currently, those buses are using Muni stops without permission and without paying a cent."

I just want to edit this to say, I'm really disappointed in you. I had a lot of respect for your comments, but you don't bother to even read a reply and post a sarcastic response, just very disappointing.

And since jrockway deleted his comment where he was "99.9% sure that Google has permission", without any evidence of course, and then when presented with evidence, doesn't even read it and posts a sarcastic response to a youtube video, I'll take the time to note here, there is plenty more news out there reporting the same thing, that Google does not have permission, this doesn't mean they don't have some hidden deal hence why I still think it'd be valuable to get a MUNI spokesman to comment on the matter, but you can see in the archives of their meeting there are numerous mentions of citizens questioning if Google has permission:

http://archives.sfmta.com/cms/cmta/httpwww.sfmta.comcmscmtaS... http://archives.sfmta.com/cms/cmta/SFMTABoardNovember62007mi... etc...

Hey, I agree with you. I don't live in San Francisco. I don't live in California. I don't even live on the West Coast. I don't work for Google's transportation team. I don't work for Muni. Why am I even commenting? More speculation isn't helping anything in this already overheated thread.

I did like my sarcastic YouTube link, though. In that respect, I regret nothing :)

Thanks for your reply. As someone who does live in San Francisco, and has lived here for a decade, I would like to encourage discussion of this topic, as I think both sides of the issue can be doing more talking about solutions, rather than the tech world which is mostly ignoring the problem, and the protestors whom don't have a clear message or agenda outlined.

Sure. What is the problem for residents? In my experience, cities are basically vehicle chaos from 6AM until 11PM. Taxis unload in the bike lane. Black cars block the street waiting for their flaky passenger. UPS trucks, parked six-abreast, unload Amazon Prime packages. Traffic blocks the intersection as the light turns red, and much honking ensues. Crazy homeless guy pushes his cart of possessions the wrong way down the bike lane.

Certainly, having big buses pulling in and out of traffic doesn't help speed up the flow of traffic at that precise instant in time. But the situation was already pretty bad, and if you're taking hundreds of individual cars off the road, that's a step in the right direction.

(Public transit won't work because the jobs are all in the Middle Of Fucking Nowhere. Try walking to the Google campus some time. It's in the middle of a swamp, separated from the mainland by a jam-packed freeway.)

So I'm not sure what the solution is. Move Google to San Francisco? Sure. But then the protesters are going to complain about how they watched 5 N trains go by without stopping because they're full. San Francisco was never designed to be "the big city" (that's San Jose, right?), it organically grew. People liked it a lot, they moved there, and now there are too many people that want to live there, and not enough space for them. That's a problem, but it sounds like a problem that can only be solved by not wanting to live there.

Shifting blame on to other offenders doesn't take away from the problems created by the buses. Given an Apple bus picks up at one of my corners, and a Google bus at the other, I often encounter the buses and their employees. Sometimes, the two buses need to be in the same place at the same time, this means either us MUNI riders have to wait for the corporate bus riders to get on and get moving or that the corporate bus blocks traffic while it waits for the MUNI bus to move.

As for the Google Campus, I have taken public transit to it, it's not hard, can take either SamTrans or CalTrain + a walk. That's not to say it's a solution though.

The only real solution to the real problem (increased rent prices causing gentrification) is to increase the housing supply and reduce demand on that supply. Google has some levers it can pull to do that (build dorms, invest in real estate projects, etc.)

I think the problem lies with Northern California's chronic NIMBY-ism, which makes it impossible to build infrastructure other than roads. (Let me know when BART gets extended down the peninsula.)

The deeper issue is that people choose San Francisco because of the relatively low density, which does make for rather pleasant neighborhoods.

High-density low-income housing projects have been proven a failure in every other major city, so I'm not sure that's a solution either. Most cities have already town them down, settling on San Francisco levels of density. As an occasional visitor, I certainly find it nice. (Though taking the bus to the Richmond District from downtown is quite an ordeal. 30 minutes to go like two miles!?)

There really is no easy answer; I don't think anyone knows what to do, and I don't think NorCal has the risk appetite to try something experimental. That's the problem.

(My solution would be to make San Jose more appealing to the tech-worker demographic. It doesn't have the charming hills or coastal location that San Francisco does, but it is pretty close to a lot of jobs. I would consider living there if I moved to the Bay Area. It's even biking-distance to Google, and it's not quite the suburban wasteland that Mountain View is.)

> Also our food is better

Good comment overall, but this bit doesn't strike me as quite true. It may be that certain cuisines (Polish, Italian, American, and several others) are better in Chicago, but in United States I've yet to see a city that beats New York or greater Bay Area for variety of quality food.

Some cities have their specialities (American and seafood in Pacific Northwest, East and South-East Asian in LA), but walking down Clement Ave in SF or Shattuck Ave in Berkeley alone is quite a religious experience for a foodie (not to mention many hidden spots of great ethnic food in South Bay).

That said, Chicago is unmatched in one respect: architecture (no, not even by New York). Simply a stunning and beautiful city.

> we have all four seasons

In my experience, people leave the Midwest for the West Coast specifically to escape that. Or at least the winter.

Having money or providing is does not entitle you to determine how other people live. Wealth entitles you nothing to deciding how society should be structured. You're having more market value than a janitor may give you the practical power to bully the people around you into behaving as you'd like - it's immoral for you to do so though.

Seriously? I'm kind of shocked at the raw stupidity of this comment- just a bunch of people thrilled to have an excuse to fuck up a bus huh?

These are actual real problems that need actual solutions, and the elitist attitudes really need to stop. Just because we know technology doesn't make us better than those who don't, and for the bay area to be a sustainable location it really needs all members of the community to work together. The tech companies have failed at this, and that's why these protests are happening. Not because people want to 'fuck things up'.

As far as the Chicago bit goes- yeah, it's not a bad city. I feel the bay area could learn a lot from it when it comes to scaling things up. I can live without the snow though.

> the elitist attitudes really need to stop

I hope everyone of these protesters standing in the way of the bus gets arrested (as opposed to protestors standing aside - no problems with them). It's not elitist to want people to be civil. It's not elitist to want to go to work. There's no solution to gentrification. Not a single one. There's nothing to be done about private entities buying private property at a price that the buyer and seller agree on. The next door neighbor has no say whatsoever over the process unless there's a pre-existing homeowner's association. If you aren't happy with it, tough luck. Annoying people isn't going to help anyone. Because there's absolutely nothing that can be done, short of a constitutional amendment that would never see the light of day.

If you're going to talk about following the law, how about the fact that the bus is illegally parked in a public bus stop? That's why these guys are protesting, because the individuals in the city have one set of laws they're supposed to follow while the tech companies are apparently immune.

Seriously, read what these people are saying. They've complained about the fact that Muni buses are dumping people into the middle of the road because these tech buses are literally parking themselves in the muni bus stops to pick people up. If any other citizen did this it would be a $271 fine, but for some reason having a tech company behind you means you're above the law.

The two tiered system- the economic apartheid- is the real issue here.

> If you're going to talk about following the law, how about the fact that the bus is illegally parked in a public bus stop? That's why these guys are protesting, because the individuals in the city have one set of laws they're supposed to follow while the tech companies are apparently immune.

and from below:

> Again, that's the main point of the main protest

This is just dishonest. When the organizing groups say they're going to have another protest in january and keep protesting until the Ellis Act is repealed, it's silly in the extreme to suggest that the "main point" has anything to do with using MUNI stops without permission. And that of course has nothing to do with the protest in Oakland (where the window was smashed), but I notice you put in "the main protest" there, so I assume you're referring to the one in the Mission.

Gentrification is a very real issue and constantly being brought up in these protests. When signs read "TECHIES: Your World Is Not Welcome Here" and that fake Google employee is saying "This is a city for the right people who can afford it", no, bus parking is an outlet for ire and certainly not "the main point".

> If you're going to talk about following the law, how about the fact that the bus is illegally parked in a public bus stop?

Well that's a perfectly OK thing to protest, but I'm not sure it's illegal though. Have you called the city and asked? I bet they have permission. Illegal means violating the law, are they violating the law or you just unhappy about the arrangement. I can see a valid argument being made about it not being a good thing, but I doubt it's illegal.

If it is illegal just call the police? What do they say?

They don't have permission, and the cops haven't done anything. Again, that's the main point of the main protest. They don't have permission- again, something that's been brought up at the protests, and is on the signs themselves. Yes, they are actually violating the law.

Maybe you should like, educate yourself on the issues because picking a side? That way you can actually be informed, instead of spouting reactions that really don't make sense in the context.

In SF they have permission yet people still protest. Some shuttle stops even have signs which look like they've been installed by the city, ie "No Parking/Shuttle Stop 6am-10am" on Van Ness

So if they move their buses to a legal area for pickup, will you be satisfied? Or is that not the real issue here?

Yes it's illegal. The city has turned a blind eye to the problem, but now it's gotten too big, with buses stopping everywhere.

The city says there may be a trial next year with designated bus stops being used by these private buses for cash, but until then, the law is being flouted.

If you got a car or van and started transporting people across the city using the public bus stops, sooner or later, you would be fined and probably arrested too.

So affected cities have a few choices: fine every delivery vehicle and bus which parks 'illegally or illegally uses municipal bus stops. Modify code to allow stop sharing. Disallow non municipal buses from using municipal bus stops. Allow them to use side street. Or, if they mean to disallow private buses altogether, prepare for an increase in traffic and commute times.

Interestingly, I don't recall protesters protesting the delivery vehicles who constantly block traffic lanes all over SF. That gives me pause and think the protesters' 'narrative' is questionable.

Are the same people protesting the Megabuses and Bolt buses when they 'illegally' use the same bus stops as municipal buses? Otherwise this does look like it's targeted.

I'd support the buses loading unloading on side streets, but still, imagine all the cars which would have to be on the road to replace the buses, if they were made illegal. Having buses bus people is actually a good thing.

What I think bothers some of the protesters is that the careers they chose aren't as remunerating as those chosen by 'techies'. I know artists who resent the fact the the average person does not value 'Art' as much as they value low brow entertainment. They feel at a loss and upset at the fact they have to 'sell out' doing advertising gigs to make money --that doing 'Art' is not profitable and that the government should subsidize it more because "they know it's good and it's an intangible part of a good society, etc." Much of that may be true, but the reality is most people (the proletarians and the vilified middled classes) don't have an appreciation for 'Art' and ironically it's the wealthy who 'get' 'Art'.

Why don't they take Muni?

MUNI routes are not optimized for all people and some people work in a different municipality, etc. Academy of Art College, UCSF, etc. all have private buses and shuttles to address that shortcoming. I can almost hear the outcry that 'techies' are overcrowding our buses!

Have you seen the size of the UCSF shuttle buses? They are tiny compared to the tourist coach sized google buses. Also they don't just take UCSF staff and students, they also take patients.

Googlers can take the Caltrain to Mountainview and hop on the free shuttle buses which drop them off at their campus. Why don't they do that?

Or since Google has an office in San Francisco here's a better idea - let people who live in San Francisco work from that office, and people who live outside work at Mountainview.

> Googlers can take the Caltrain to Mountainview and hop on the free shuttle buses which drop them off at their campus. Why don't they do that?

Have you ever tried to use Caltrain? It will make you want to gouge your own eyes out.

I took the train from SF to mountain view. 50 minutes of train time with large sections of no 3G/LTE.

So what? That doesn't give corporations the right to break traffic laws in SF, not just once or twice, but repeatedly for years. The city has failed to do it's job of enforcement, but the violator is still guilty.

Do you think all the laws which fail to get enforced regularly should get enforced regularly, or just the laws you think should be enforced regularly?

Because Muni is incredibly slow--I can walk from Fort Mason to Market Street faster than I can take a bus, and that's with a foot injury that has me limping and unable to stand by the end of the walk--and doesn't go anywhere useful. Caltrain is slow and expensive, lets off a several mile hop from Google, and requires an hour or more on the aforementioned awful Muni bus to get to the starting part.

If the public transit was functional, like in DC or NYC or Boston, we'd use it.

> for some reason having a tech company behind you means you're above the law.

Which tech company is behind Academy of Art[1] and UCSF[2]? When I lived in San Francisco half a year ago, I saw far more of these than the tech company shuttles.

1. http://www.academyart.edu/news/articles/transportation-syste...

2. http://campuslifeservices.ucsf.edu/transportation/services/s...

Academy of Art and UCSF shuttles have their own stops, usually fronting the massive amount of real estate that they own. I've never seen one idling at a muni stop.

> I've never seen one idling at a muni stop.

Here you go: http://www.sfbg.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/Full_325_...

Economic apartheid... Not sure how to digest that one. That's a tad hyperbolic.

The article clearly states that the tech companies pay the city for the right to use the bus stops. Elected officials made a decision to sell public bus stops to publicly traded corporations.

> The article clearly states that the tech companies pay the city for the right to use the bus stops. Elected officials made a decision to sell public bus stops to publicly traded corporations.

What you are saying is factually incorrect. They are not paying anything at the moment. They are in talks to start paying next year, but the reasons those talks happened is because people started protesting this.

I see talks of facts and no substantiation.

The ability to buy out public infrastructure inherently amounts to plutocracy, which is unacceptable.

You have 1 vote. Make it count.

Even the Oakland Police Department won't break the windows of your vehicle in retribution for parking it illegally.

Way to totally miss the point, though. Trampling on the ostensible-if-fictitious rule of law is outrageous, and accordingly instills outrage, which is often manifested in such ways as breaking windows of vehicles.

Ah, ok, so it is not about the rent prices?

> If you're going to talk about following the law, how about the fact that the bus is illegally parked in a public bus stop?

A vehicle temporarily pausing to pick up or discharge passengers is not usually regarded as "parked". A car is unambiguously "parked" when it stops and the driver leaves. If the driver is still present and you want to charge him with something, it's more likely some sort of moving violation would apply. "obstructing traffic", perhaps?

>I hope everyone of these protesters standing in the way of the bus gets arrested

Technically there is something called "civil disobedience" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience) and I think this guy kinda made it famous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi

And, he expected to be, and was arrested for it plenty of times.

Yes thats true.

And exactly how many windows did Ghandi break?

>everyone of these protesters standing in the way of the bus

And at least one of the protesters broke a window on the bus. Again: how many windows did Ghandi break?

I got a solution. No more private property and money. Done.

Nay, not possible, this just means that all property belongs to those with political power.

> not elitist to want to go to work.

To the employed elite, I can see why it would seem that way. Of course elite isn't a precisely appropriate term, but relatively speaking, it is an elitist stance.

> not elitist to want people to be civil.

Actually, yes, it is, and quite so. Try being "civil" when you're homeless or struggling to fill your stomach. Seriously, just try it.

s/arrested/arrested and thrown in jail/

Yes jail is an awesome solution!

Absolutely!

Actually, if you live in Oakland, you'll realize that indeed, there are a lot of people looking for an excuse just to fuck up a bus.

Look at the difference between the SF and Oakland protests on the same issue.

If you always try to think in terms of the "actual real problems" you will find yourself unable to make judgments about a lot of obviously terrible ideas, so long as they are distantly related to an "actual problem".

EDIT: Nevermind, this comment thread is a little toxic and I'd rather not add to its length.

Yes, there are actual real problems that need actual solution. These people, however, contributed nothing whatsoever to solving those problems.

> I'm kind of shocked at the raw stupidity of this comment

> the elitist attitudes really need to stop

Hi pot, it's me the kettle. Guess what? You're BLACK!

Be careful when you oppose tptacek. He's a highly karmic figure on HN and has an army of ardent followers who can downvote you to oblivion fairly quickly :)

FWIW, Google Chicago is expanding and moving to the old Fulton Market Warehouse:

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/06/21/google-moving-chicago...

Nice. Does this finally mean that you guys will have enough cafeteria space?

I wasn't aware of a shortage, but then again, I've only visited the Chicago office once! (I moved to NYC to work for Google. Strange, eh...)

> We'd be happy to have you.

> I, with all my obscene class privilege, would be happy to have you.

FTFY.

Chicago is a 40 minute train ride preceded and followed by 15 minutes of getting to and from the train.

If I had to design hell, it would look something like 2 and a half hours commuting each day.

You sound as if you are describing Plainfield, not Chicago.

I don't know anyone who lives in the city. Anyone with a family lives in the burbs off the train line, with house and rent prices increasing geometrically as you approach distance to the train stops.

Most of the people who work for us in Chicago live in the city. I live in Oak Park, 5 minutes walk from the Green Line, in a house that costs 1/10th as much as the same house in MTV.

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