Very tense atmosphere at a Google Bus stop in San Francisco
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
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)
Edit: grammar
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.
It would be like buses picking up workers from their residences in Manhattan and transporting them to their office in Trenton, NJ.
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-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.
1. If we're talking Noe Valley to the Googleplex, Google Maps puts it at 35 miles. 50 miles would get you beyond San Jose.
2. Google tells me Caltrain from 4th-and-King to Mountain View is 44 minutes. That's roughly equivalent with White Plains to Grand Central ride, which is admittedly only 23 miles. (I do have friends who do this commute.) One difference is that when you get to Grand Central, if you're not walking to work, you can get somewhere else in town within about ten minutes (to Muni's thirty). Certainly you're not taking Muni from Noe Valley to Caltrain, anyway.
3. In light of that, I guess it does raise the point that public transit is to move people from where they want to live to where they want to work. "The equivalent technology worker in New York" does live closer to work. You could attack politicians and blame them for influencing this situation...
But don't, at least not for the sake of this post, because the point isn't a superiority war with CA/NY, the point is that tech workers are in fact willing to take transit. It's just that SF public transportation is not good enough, not while employers are located in Mountain View. Perhaps the protestor could attack that directly if that's really what irks him? Perhaps he'd be satisfied with a proposal to move Google HQ downtown, so people could take the J train there. (cough i doubt it)
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.
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.
Let's be honest the only meaningful public spaces we have in cities are roads and sidewalks, probably 80% of public space. Roads and parking lots together are probably 25+ percent of many cities except New York. Those spaces are as big as they are because of cars. If we didn't have cars, the overwhelming majority of roads would not have to ever have more than one lane in each direction.
Does Google supply their people with cars? Do cars use the city bus stops? Most people do not share your "no greater symbol of frivolity and privilege than owning and driving a car in the city" view. Cars are still part of the US's culture.
A private bus that uses city stops is seen as a much bigger symbol of privilege than any car. It is a single focus point and can be spun into the "let them eat cake" vibe a protest like this is looking for.
If you own a car in Raleigh, NC or Austin, TX for example, it's part and parcel of living in urban sprawl. The trade off is lower housing costs for greater transportation costs. If you live in NYC and San Francisco, a car is optional unless you make a living in a job that requires frequent daily travel. For everyone else living in a dense urban area it's a luxury that comes at the cost of everyone else since cars compete directly with buses for the use of the commons (roads).
I used to live in São Paulo, Brazil, and besides maybe Beijing, PRC (where I also once lived), there is nothing more damaging to the public good than all the people with the money to own and operate private vehicles in a sufficiently populated area that can't really afford having everyone own a car. São Paulo has about 5 million cars in a city of about 20 million. The cars directly compete with buses on the roads and every car hurts the average bus user. Every person who gets sick of buses and buys a cars is screwing over all the people they once shared the bus with making it a little bit worse so that the threshold for getting a car is crossed for a few more people, perpetuating a vicious cycle. There are days when it rains in São Paulo, where the traffic is so bad that it takes 3-4 hours to cross the city in a car. In a bus? I can't even imagine that hellish experience.
On the 7th of September for example, 3 million cars will leave the city over the course of like 48 hours, clogging up every major road for hours. I used to go to a place called Maresias on the coast, which is 2.5 hours by car and 4 hours by bus normally without traffic. With traffic it can get as bad as 4-10 hours by car and 6-12 hours by bus.
There simply is no mode of transportation more selfish than the car and it is only second in level of privilege to transportation by helicopter.
The retort from some single mother of two who has a car because she needs to drop her children at daycare (not on bus line) and then drive to work because "common" people don't have onsite daycare or fancy buses right to the door will be amusing. I will bet the reporter could even find a more sympathetic story. Bonus if the single mother needed to move farther away from her job because of higher rent.
If you think the above is silly and off topic then you are missing the attack vector. Welcome to modern attack politics.
Why the buses are the symbols and not the limousines or private planes that executives take to work; and are probably also provided by their respective companies.
It's so strange to me that in this situation the "haves" are such (relative to the aforementioned executives) modestly compensated tech workers.
Those aren't trappings of the people displacing the people in the neighborhood. Look at the actual income stats in the US and you will see the "modestly compensated tech workers" are actually in the 90+% of income earners. $120,000 is 97%, $150,000 is 98%. These are the "haves".
And yes I know that a six-figure income probably places you in the 90%.
However these people aren't the decision makers and can't affect change the way Google's or Apple's executives can. Until the protesters start protesting rational targets it's hard for me to commiserate or take this seriously. (clarification: I absolutely commiserate with people "gentrified" out of their neighborhoods, I just think the protesting has been directed at the wrong things)
So many of the articles include a quote from a protester that the "techies" don't interact or integrate with their neighborhoods. But I've also read many quotes from techies stating that they are unhappy with the situation too, no one wants to displace people from their homes or neighborhoods and high real estate prices hurt everyone.
If I were involved in one of these protest groups I would take the first step, get the employees involved too, and make it about something bigger than these red-herring buses!
Why? The tactic they are using has worked countless times. It is a tried an true game plan. Keep it simple and demonize all of them. The workers are better defined as part of the problem and, yes, 6 figures means you are the "haves". Those workers are renting in the area and seen as kicking out the normal folks.
The reporter writing the articles will be sympathetic as his/her career has probably felt the same pressure from tech. It might be a nice analogy for one of them to use (tech: residents -> force out of homes, reporters -> force out of careers).
For what it's worth, a recent study said that about half the people on those buses wouldn't be living in the city at all if they had to drive. Traffic jams aren't our biggest problem; it's housing. So I think some ire against the buses is perfectly reasonable; they're importing substantial housing price inflation.
I also think the buses are pretty visible reminders of class differences. It's sort of like somebody taking a company limo to work: the fanciness of the vehicle and being driven are bound to generate some envy. Also, my understanding is that since there's wifi available, time on the buses can count as work time. And there's the direct delivery to nice neighborhoods; other people who work down the peninsula have to schlep over to Caltrain on their own. Those are all pretty sweet deals for people who already have pretty sweet deals.
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.
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.
Ridesharing on a bus with other people is now considered to be aloof? I must have missed the memo.
Stats and logic are poor defenses against symbols, demonization, and rhetoric in politics.
These employees might drive to work (worse for the environment) if this bus service was not provided since public transportation might not service where they live.
It on the other hand provides a tangible, accessible symbol to demonization and attack with rhetoric.
Don't like it? Then you might think a bit when a news network or a comedy show starts hammering a group.
[edit] I should add I don't agree with the protestor's plan of action or targets, I'm just trying to explain why and how effective their targeting is. Its a long tradition and very easy for the public to buy into.
However Google "hands out money" to it's employees which they then use to by things like cars. Also Google gives it's employees health care for "free". The buses are a benefit of the job no different than paycheck or health care.
It's a perfectly broken system, because it's working exactly as it's supposed to: more economically productive people get more access to scarce resources. No one is individually at fault, but there's an emergent order that is grotesque.
The issue is what should someone upset at this do? The people being priced out obviously can't be reskilled to make their labor worth the amount a Googler gets, and the city is, as far as I can tell, incapable of addressing the problem--someone is doubtlessly going to chime in something about rezoning, but it's simply wishful thinking to think that constructing a couple thousand extra housing units per year would do anything besides maybe slightly slow the increase of housing costs, which are already too high for most people.
Lashing out at the buses is a strategy I'm not particularly impressed with. At best it might incentivize tech companies to figure out how to solve the problem themselves, but that's difficult to see happening, both because it's simultaneously a very hard problem to solve and a problem that will resolve itself--in a way neither I nor the protesters will like much--in less than a decade (at least in San Francisco--Oakland and Berkeley probably have a bit more than a decade).
I've intellectually played around with some fairly radical strategies and solutions--for instance, a high land value tax that's used to fund a basic income for residents--but none of them seem like a slam dunk answer, and all of them can be described, at best, as "maybe not impossible." But I'm incredibly eager for any ideas.
Part of the reason people are commuting from SF is that vacancy rates in the valley are even worse than here. If Google wants to hire more people, the first step should be making housing available near Google. That may also require going beyond mere bulk construction to make the place more appealing to their workers. The same goes for the other companies that are flush with cash and hiring rapidly.
From my perspective, the buses are an ugly hack to temporarily ameliorate a deeper problem. A hack that shifted the impact of the problem to SF.
I also think that it is an entirely over-optimistic point of view that these few tech companies are going to shake a few hands and rents will decrease even when talking about a multi-year time scale.
I'm not talking about a few handshakes. I'm talking about them using their substantial financial and political power to influence the city and regional governments on the peninsula. If you think billion-dollar companies can't influence the areas where they are based, you haven't been paying any attention to local US politics.
When you buy a car, you own the car. You don't own the roads. Roads are shared property.
You are welcome to use the car the way you like, but you may not do the same with roads.
>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!..."
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.
Communities end up getting some control over what goes on with the roads that pass through them in the form of: speed limits, crossing signs, speed bumps, bike lanes, third party bus stops (as in non-city transit, these do exist), parking spots, etc.
While there's nothing legally binding yet, communities do exert a degree of control over what goes on around them and they could theoretically block the Google busses. Local DOTs respond to community action.
You do not have a right to remain free of uncomfortable feelings that come when people tell you what they think of your views and actions. Protest is a vital part of democracy.
Didn't one of these protesters put up a webpage not too long ago, specifically targeting a Google Employee and showing up his house and where he lives, and using very strong language against him just because he's earning more than them and using the Google bus in their neighborhood ? If that's not a threat, I don't know what is.
> Protest is a vital part of democracy.
Blocking buses which are allowed to freely run on public streets is not a reasonable form of protest. The transportees are using these buses to go to work, their work is taxed and the taxes go back in one way or another to the community. They should be allowed to use them as freely as they can use their car. Unless you have a strange conception of Freedom.
Civil disobedience is a time-honored protest tradition. Your "if it makes money it's good" is one theory of community, but not the only possible one.
“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.”
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.
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".
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.
If zoning were truly the major obstacle, we would see more building where there is the least amount of zoning.
"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."
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.
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.
So you're wrong. Stopping the buses would make a substantial difference.
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.
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-...
Glad someone else recognizes this.
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.