I like the idea of Hell being Hell for demons rather than the Damned. 
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First, I’m sure the extra commute time does suck for you, but I’ll take any opportunity to make a joke at the expense of a tech bro. Come on, I’m sure there’s at least one of these types on your bus:
To be more serious, as I noted in a comment you haven’t gotten to yet the resentment of the corporate shuttle buses isn’t really aimed at the passengers but at the thoughtless corporations that have contributed to the higher housing prices without doing much (besides this special-case workaround) to alleviate the larger problem for everyone of overwhelmed commuter infrastructure in the Bay Area sprawl.
How do you reach that conclusion? In the post to which you’re responding I clearly said:
I’m fine with [the corporate buses] being used to both take additional cars off the road
I’m really curious how you got from that statement to thinking I’m encouraging more people to drive their own cars. Or would you prefer to double down and accuse me of endorsing the window-smashing, too?
I’ll take your word that you’re not a tech bro, but I have to say that’s some classic callow tech-bro thinking from my old dot-com days right there. Salaried workers – especially in tech where the expectation of long hours is the norm – should always be cognizant of every single hour over the base 40 per week that their employers demand of them. Thinking that way is the difference between a CS grad with a $100k/annum salary making the equivalent of $50/hr and his colleague with the same salary making the equivalent of $33/hr.
tl;dr; real professionals who value their time as well as their money always think in terms of hours if not minutes.
Other related tips: HR is not looking out for your best interests, and your employer is not giving out free bus rides and snacks and letting you bring your dog to work because they think you’re a cool dude.
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Wow, I read that as “Better to serve in Houston” at first.
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Presumably you don’t get upset at the sight of buses passing by to destinations you aren’t interested in. Why would this case be any different? Under my proposed scenario, anyone going from key point A to key point B is welcome to board the bus, even if they don’t care to be taking the trip all the way to the Google campus. It doesn’t need to be advertised as a special “Google employees only” route, nor would the employees need to be given special cards or IDs or anything of the sort. Simply make a deal with the transit authority where the ID is also acting as a monthly pass, irrespective of route. BART uses RFID-enabled fare cards, and I’m damned near certain that Google/Apple IDs have RFID chips too.
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This won’t happen because if you allow the public to use your buses, you change from contract carrier to common carrier. This brings with it vastly different regulatory and liability requirements.
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There is already one shuttle shared by several tech companies that is also open to the public. It is funded by several companies contracted out to mvgo.org.
Right now it only goes from the Cal train stop near us to three different routes among all the tech campuses. So you have to take the Cal train first if you live further out.
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I feel like you may have missed part of the previous conversation.
Though, on a re-read, I do see I haven’t explicitly said that I’d expect the transit authority to operate the service. So, to be clear: This service would be operated by the transit authority, with the corporate partner guaranteeing revenue in exchange for significant say in the route and stop locations.
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Understood - yes I did miss this. Part of the reason this would be challenging is the counties run their own transit agencies and there’s little cross pollination. There’s several counties and transit territories in between SF/East Bay and the Silicon Valley area.
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That would be a challenge, yes. Is there room for gradual progression, perhaps? Or do multiple transit systems have to be navigated by the majority of riders in order to get to the corporate campuses?
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For the same reason people are getting upset by Google buses using public bus-stops (I don’t think this feeling is contingent on the Google buses interfering with regular buses).
It’s percieved as a powerful corporation getting special treatement.
So it’s not an express bus anymore and it’s slower than the dedicated Google bus.
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Not sure how you got from “key point” stops to “not an express bus.” Do express buses operate purely as taxis where you live?
But yes, it would in fact be slower than the dedicated Google bus – and, presumably, faster than the regular public transit routes, by virtue of a) not having to make the full number of stops regular buses do; b) not having to make a 45-min detour; and possibly c) being able to take highways for parts of the journey. I’m not from the Bay area, so I don’t know whether this is realistic. I’ve certainly ridden my share of express city transit buses elsewhere, however, and many of them were partly routed along local highways rather than sticking to streets.
In Sydney, the arterial route commuter buses mostly run on dedicated bus lanes. The bus is usually quicker than a car during peak hour.
Fortunately for me, motorcycles are also allowed to use the bus lanes. 
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You answered your own question, yes the public bus is slower than a dedicated Google bus but faster than a regular bus.
But I think there’s more than just route speed, the Google bus can skew route frequency more than a regular bus might be able to get away with.
But I think a really big thing that hasn’t been discussed is that Google can extract more productivity from employees on a Google bus than employees on a predominantly Google public bus.
Google can offer better wifi than a public bus, seating arrangements to make laptop usage easier. Plus, if you stick a bunch of Google employees together it basically becomes a mobile office and people start talking shop, and some of that shop-talk is going to translate into better products for Google.
Once the bus becomes non-exclusive the employees have to start worrying about confidentiality and you lose a lot of that information exchange.
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Or, he’s not a very good writer, despite being a professional writer. Hint: This is the case (IMHO, at least).
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I’m sorry, I don’t see it. Here’s an explicit description of what is a common-carrier provided express bus service looks like (in my experience, obvs.)
- Fewer stops than a regular service following the same route or serving the same major destinations. Only major destinations/transfer points are served.
- Reduced travel time between major destinations. At least 20% time savings, but can be as much as 70%.
- Operates during high demand times for the route. This can mean round-the-clock service or it can mean rush hour only. It can even be one-directional; to the city core 6-9am, to the outlying bus terminal 4-7pm. Whatever the high-volume traffic pattern happens to be.
- Frequently, though not always, a higher fare than a regular service bus.
- On some routes, the bus would be reconfigured for the purpose. Airport express service in Toronto has roughly 30% fewer seats in exchange for additional luggage space.
As far as I can see, the corporate buses already match most of these points. They aren’t taxis that start from one stop and then head straight to the campus. They pick up at multiple locations around the city. Here is an old map of the private shuttle routes. I’m still not seeing your point about how these differ so drastically from transit authority-operated express lines.
If you’re using a different set of criteria for determining what is and isn’t an express bus, please share it and let’s see if we can reconcile the two.
Google can provide better wifi on a public bus at a negligible cost. It can even provide a separate network for employees, if security is a concern and employees aren’t already logging in via a VPN. I’d argue that’s a non-issue. The cost to Google from non-employees using a better mobile router would be negligible. As far as seating arrangements, if the passenger load justifies it, it can be done. I’ve mentioned something similar in my point 5.
I take your point on confidentiality, but I have to wonder: How many work conversations are likely to happen on the bus, anyway? Google’s a very big company and people don’t choose their housing based on where the rest of their work team lives. The chances of people on the same team taking the same bus aren’t huge.
(Also, work conversations? In the morning? Before coffee? You must deal with that exceedingly rare breed of developers who are morning people.)
As an aside, I came across this while researching Google bus routes, which seemed relevant to the thread if not to our specific exchange: What Would Google Bus Commuters Do if the Google Bus Didn’t Exist?
It glides as softly as a cloud.
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Yeah but places like Tulsa do have a problem in respect to certain minorities. Not saying the Bay Area is much better now (especially since the tech boom has effectively killed the LGBT community’s historic presence) but it’s still safer than being in a sleepy burb in the Great Plains. Some places just don’t grow up when it comes to such matters, unfortunately. Wichita isn’t any better in the north either, heh.
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That’s a fair point. For those of a minority subculture, there may well be areas where they do not feel safe.
OTOH, there are lots of areas which are quite safe but don’t necessarily have a large and thriving minority community.
If such a community is a necessity, a location on the “Clinton archipelago” is probably going to be a must. Still, there are bound to be lots of good locations that are a lot cheaper than SF/NYC/Boston.
