Are any of the restrictions due to the fact a healthy chunk of San Fran is just bulldozed refuse from the 1909 quake and fires?
Itâs not randian, and itâs not tech related. Itâs humbly recognizing that even the king canât stop the tides - cycles of gentrification is what cities do. These cycles are like breathing. Best practice seems to be to make efforts to alleviate the pain for those negatively affected, but fighting change itself is a fight with no good outcomes, requiring weapons that are uglier forms of oppression than rising rents. You try to manage change instead. There is a strong argument that the city of San Francisco is doing a piss-poor job of managing the change. The people too. It seems to me that San Francisco can support a lot more low-cost housing than actually exists, and there is a raft of reasons why that housing doesnât get built. Anger and pressure in that direction might be productive. Anger at buses is thoughtless othering and lashing out. Not helpful. The buses are a positive force helping to manage the change and reduce its impact on people, even while being one of the more visible symbols of that change.
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If none of the tech people had ever moved to SF and instead decided to live some place else, what would have prevented tech people from displacing middle-income and low-income residents in whatever other city they were living in?
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The real social injustice these idiots should be focusing on is producing quality affordable housing in currently lesser desirable areas, and ending poverty in general through education and job opportunities.
Its funny I live in NYC near Columbia University and when they protest gentrification it blows my mind (As my grandmother lived and raised my mother in the very apartment I live in, and most of the people protesting have been here for less then 10 years). No one is entitled to live in any specific area, move somewhere cheaper if you canât afford it.
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I donât have any first hand knowledge but for #1, the size of buses may be a valid concern for the size of the road, but theyâre also removing cars from the road so isnât that an overall improvement?
As for #2, certainly they should make sure the private buses are properly integrated into the transit system in the sense that they donât cause impair the function of the public transit. But if thatâs broken itâs something you can fix without shutting it down.
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So to respond to your points:
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So they have an agreement with the city that likely involves parameters to eliminate/reduce the issues that would come from private cars parking there
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Itâs enabling the employees to live where they want, and reducing cars if they choose to live in SF. Itâs unfortunate that some people get priced out of accommodations (which could be fixed with rent control and/or new construction) but it seems like a fairly justifiable externality. Btw, what about the people on the penninsula getting priced out?
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Thereâs other ways to remedy this issue.
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So this is a decent point but Iâm not sure it holds up to scrutiny. It would certainly be cheaper for Google to give bus passes than run their own service so I donât think competition is a big concern. At the same time Google shouldnât be expected to fund an extension of the public bus service just for their employees.
There may be a concern of a larger private bus network with multiple companies competing with the public system. This is something to debate if it starts to happen (not necessarily bad) but itâs not an issue now.
It should only be illegal if you are blocking a city bus. If it is going to be illegal to use that spot, then anybody who pulls into that spot for even a moment should be at risk of being fined, regardless of whether they are discharging or taking on passengers. If youâre going to target Google, you have to also target Joe Citizen dropping off his friend to go shopping.
I donât blame Google. I blame the government for not taxing them appropriately.
As for the larger problem of higher wage earners displacing lower wage earners, itâs convenient to blame those earning higher wages but is it really their fault theyâre making more money than the people they are displacing? I mean, itâs not intentional, nor is it immoral (to the extent that capitalism in general is not immoral).
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What entitles people to make life unaffordable for folks already living in an area?
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Iâm fairly certain that some of those protests were a ruse by the guy who owned those self storage buildings to extract more money out of Columbia. I used to live where I could see out over the area. There were no lights on at night â no one lived there.
There hasnât been housing available to lower income folks in San Francisco since long before Google existed.
Itâs been one of the highest-rent cities in the country for decades.
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Landlords.
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Iâm a tech worker, in the bay area these days. I live and work in the South Bay, but I know people who work in many of the various tech companies and who live in various places, in and out of SF.
The shuttles have been using public bus stops, something that would generate a nearly $300 fine if a private car driver did it to drop off or pick someone up.I can't attest to SF in particular, but most cities I've lived in will tolerate dropping someone off or picking up someone in a bus stop. I've done it a few times in SF without an issue (small data point). Yes, the tech buses take longer, but so do other buses that use these stops. Tech buses aren't the *only* users of the stops besides MUNI buses.
The shuttles make it much easier and more desirable for their workers to live far from their jobs. Rather than living down on the penninsula, the workers move to SF, and the high rents they can afford displace middle-income and low-wage long-time residents. Incentivizing choices that harm the community at large is a pretty crappy, self-centered thing to do. (Oh, it doesn't hurt that it's a way to squeeze extra work hours out of their own employees, of course.)
Sure, the shuttles make it easier, but all the people I know would not trade living in a city for anything. Pretty much all of them would get a car and drive if the shuttles werenât available. The life in the South Bay is not desirable for younger people just out of college. Iâm not a fan either, Iâm currently only doing it for convenience. It is true that the tech workers moving in are forcing out lower income residents and that sucks, but the city (and the suburbs down here) all need to build more reasonable housing (not places like this http://www.carmelapartments.com/the-village/ (the only apartment complex to open in Mountain View in the past two years)). Also, most of the tech companies donât force long hours. Since Iâve started out here Iâve been putting in 8 hour days, not counting my lunch in those 8 hours and I find myself coming in before and leaving after a lot of my coworkers.
Then those lower-income folks have to leave SF because there are few if any opportunities for housing nearby that they can afford. This makes THEM into long-range commuters as well, either putting more cars on the road (because those folks may have lived near their SF-based jobs - who serves all those lattes and washes the floors at all those clubs when the Googlers are done with their play time?) or straining the public transportation system further. (Do any of the much-touted numbers about CO2 reductions consider these increases2? Of course not.) (By the way, do the Google Cafeteria workers13 get to ride the shuttles if they live in SF? Who wants to place a bet?)
Your link to the Google cafeteria workers is coming up 404, but the answer to your question is yes, they can take the buses. The cafeteria workers are contractors, and contractors are allowed to use the buses. As far as the other concern, I donât like it either, but more housing all over must be made here.
Public transportation systems, which, by the way, the big tech companies are not helping to fund, because they're opting to invest in private transportation networks instead, further opening the gap between the elites and everybody else. And to the extent that they have to pay taxes at all (thanks to local tax breaks and overseas tax shelters), they're not generally paying it to the cities impacted most by their effects on housing and infrastructure (a perfect example of the way businesses shift their costs from the private to the public sector.)
Why would the tech companies pour money directly into the public transit system? Thatâs not their problem. All these tech companies and the companies that have been here in the bay area since the 80s have tried to rely on using the public transit system to get their workers around, but the broken system that exists here just isnât working for the tech companies. One perfect example is the fights that happen between BART and CalTrain. They donât work together to get people to where they want to go, they constantly fight and vie for an ever shrinking part of the transit pie.
The tech companies are trying to do what they can. I can assure you that if these buses werenât there about 50-80% of all of the workers who live in SF would remain, just with a car. Therefore they then have a car, and bring that onto the streets, and from there they will have less money to spend around the city.
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Except that Google isnât in the area where people are upset - their employees are. As mentioned, itâs a misplaced protest about San Francisco-ites being priced out of the area by high-paid tech workers like those from Google. Itâs not likely to have the desired impact there either, but it wonât affect Google.
Farnsworth: âHey! Unless this is a nude love-in⌠get the hell off my property!â
Free Waterfall Junior: âYou canât own property, man.â
Farnsworth: âI can. But thatâs because Iâm not a penniless hippie.â
Seriously though, ideally the government should be subsidizing affordable housing for people displaced in these areas, but then this is America, so you probably wonât be happy with that either.
Ok, well your post just seemed to confirm this is just silliness. These âprotestorsâ need to get a life.
In addition to the issues @casual_economy mentioned, thereâs a huge one that people seem to miss: the buses enable people to live in SF while working 35 miles away. If it werenât for these buses theyâd do what Silicon Valley drones have done for ages, which is live in Silicon Valley. Now we San Franciscans are forced to deal with them in unprecedented numbers, as they drive our rental and housing markets batshit crazy, displace the longterm residents, and generally make San Francisco a bland bedroom community for Silicon Valley.
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Again stupid short sited protest.
The protests already did some good, Google is now paying the city to use those bus stops.
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Thanks! I will.
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Iâm sure a lot of West Coast tech yuppies want to move to the bible belt⌠and tax-wise Google already moved out of the entire country a long time ago with its âDouble Irish Dutch Sandwichâ
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Charging Google 1 dollar per bus stop used will deter their usage of municipal property and teach them some decent common manners. Not sure what the bus fare is but 1 dollar will deter further usage.
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