61–70 of 80 posts
This is from Rebecca Solnit's Wikipedia page. This is the longest way of saying, "Dropped Out of High School" I have ever heard.
The author writes about how corporate shuttles insulate tech workers from transit problems, and how if this weren't the case, there'd be powerful forces pushing to make public transit better. She misses an opportunity to make a similar point about antidevelopment San Franciscans being insulated by their rent control, but she comes close to it when talking about the Ellis Act. What makes this law so terrifying to long…
Nevermind that the corporate shuttles exist mainly because of the transit problems. If the companies that provide the shuttles weren't aware of the transit issues, they never would have provided the shuttles.
It's up to your own personal politics to decide which of those is more desirable though.
Yes, but the anger at the Google buses and the people who ride them is misplaced. These people really don't want to be paying $3000 per month for housing, and they have no power. In fact, many would be happy to live in low-COL regions (instead of cramming into SF) if it weren't for the career-limiting effects (at least at Google, you have to work in MTV if you want a decent shot at getting a real project; there are g…
Any company with $250k++ execs working 11:00-3:00 is not going to be around very long. Among the execs in those ranks I've known, if you're a corporate exec making $500k+, the company owns you. When the CEO calls at 2:00 AM Sunday and says, "We've got a problem is Shenzhen", you're on a plane a 6:00 AM, too bad if your daughter's senior recital is 2:00 PM that day.
Actually, there's something worse for a typical company than a typical exec making $250k++ while working 11-3: that same exec working a full day.
if you're a corporate exec making $500k+, the company owns you. When the CEO calls at 2:00 AM Sunday and says, "We've got a problem is Shenzhen", you're on a plane a 6:00 AM, too bad if your daughter's senior recital is 2:00 PM that day.
That's what they want you to think, so you don't hate them or covet their jobs. Ever hear of the complain-brag? It's not true. The politicking involved in getting those jobs is quite competitive, but once you're in the club, it's a pretty easy life if you want it to be. [ETA: being a CEO of a small or mid-sized company, on the other hand, is usually quite demanding.]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uh...have you actually ridden Caltrain? Outside of SF, Caltrain stops in the very heart of each down town. San Bruno, Burlingame, San Mateo, Belmont, San Carlos, Redwood city, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain view, San Jose all have stations that border the historical main down town (I think Sunnyvale and Santa Clara as well). In SF proper, it's probably more to do with geography than land purchases. Trains really don…
> Uh...have you actually ridden Caltrain? No, and that's sort of my point. I've lived in SF since the summer of 2008, and not once in all that time has Caltrain ever been useful to me. It doesn't pick up anywhere near anything, and it doesn't run to any place I want to go. Meanwhile, when I lived in New York, I rode the subway, the LIRR, the PATH train, Metro North, and even Amtrak all over the place, in no small par…
During the time New York was building some of it's latter public transportation infrastructure, my father and his brother, as teenagers, were wandering around what is now Xerox Parc and surrounding tech campuses and what would become 280 with their 30-06 rifles shooting anything they pleased. No one cared because there was no one around. It was just unused hill country. Much of the explosion of building in the Bay Area has been recent and during a period that no one wanted public transportation, they wanted a car. New York built up much of it's rail infrastructure before the car became commonplace and people really wanted to use it.
Consider this: how late in the history of New York were those grand stations built? Compare that to how far in to San Francisco's history they are building the Transbay Transit Center...
> In another era, the captains of industry would have said, “OK, our workers live here, our factory is there; let’s encourage, enforce, and subsidize the improvement of public transit.” Uh, what? This is kind of a silly point, but I think it exemplifies how misplaced all this tension is. For example, mayor LaGuardia put a TON of work into forcing the privately owned transit lines to become a public good in NYC. The "…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Uh...have you actually ridden Caltrain? No, and that's sort of my point. I've lived in SF since the summer of 2008, and not once in all that time has Caltrain ever been useful to me. It doesn't pick up anywhere near anything, and it doesn't run to any place I want to go. Meanwhile, when I lived in New York, I rode the subway, the LIRR, the PATH train, Metro North, and even Amtrak all over the place, in no small par…
But your argument as to why has little to do with the actual reasons to two public transportation systems differ and you make assumptions about the history of California that are flatly just wrong. Not to mention ignore the differences in geography. California has a certain flavor of liberal politics but remember that this is recent and has not always been so, and to this day varies quite a bit depending where you ar…
You're saying that the region's transit was built up during a time when people didn't care about public transit. I think that's mostly true, and it led to a milquetoast "well, let's just sort of put some train stations around the edge but not do anything that might upset anyone" plan that, today, serves the region a lot less well than New York's strategy of "let's cut-and-cover tracks right down all our major avenues".
> Consider this: how late in the history of New York were those grand stations built? Compare that to how far in to San Francisco's history
If you think you can't build good transit late in a city's history, how do you explain London or Paris?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Michael Bolton? Is that you? His setup is defective. He can either complain and live with it, or he can fix it.
Or Google could tune down the wifi on their bus? How powerful does it have to be?
Michael Bolton: Yeah, well, at least your name isn't Michael Bolton.
Samir: You know, there's nothing wrong with that name.
Michael Bolton: There *was* nothing wrong with it... until I was
about twelve years old and that no-talent ass clown
became famous and started winning Grammys.
Samir: Hmm... well, why don't you just go by Mike instead of Michael?
Michael Bolton: No way! Why should I change? He's the one who sucks.
(Also, assuming the wifi on these buses is not in violation of FCC regulations, this really is this guys problem, not Google's.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nevermind that the corporate shuttles exist mainly because of the transit problems. If the companies that provide the shuttles weren't aware of the transit issues, they never would have provided the shuttles.
That's her entire point though - in the past, the transit issues would've been fixed with the help/money of the companies moving there. Now, her issue is that companies have invested private money in the shuttles, mitigating the transit headache exclusively for their employees, rather than by providing a public good. It's up to your own personal politics to decide which of those is more desirable though.
Meanwhile, people have to get to work.
What we're seeing is the result of a number of strong, independent, competing systems (transit, property rights, rent control, NIMBY, etc), working in isolation, resulting in a massive, fustercluck that doesn't have a solid solution that does anything other than continue to perpetuate it's own bureaucracy.
And again, saying that the companies are not doing anything to "solve" the transit problems ignores the fact that busing employees, in fact, are part of "solving" transit problems, specifically those of highway traffic (and second order impacts like greenhouse gas emissions and roadwear).
[0] this makes the internet rounds with Bay Area people every few months, https://www.google.com/search?q=bart+map+1950s
[1] http://sf.streetsblog.org/2013/02/06/geary-brt-advisor-resig...
"I met a guy who lives at 24th and Valencia [Street]. He says the Wi-Fi signal on the buses is so powerful that when the Google bus pulls up in front of his house, it uses all the broadband and his Wi-Fi signal crashes." That's not really how WiFi works. Chances are his router is on the same frequency as the buses and he can fix this by changing to a different frequency. Even more likely (since one SSID shouldn't mak…
Actually wifi does work that way, notwithstanding the odd word 'crash'. It's entirely possible that so much bandwidth is being used by the Google network that his network has extremely high packet loss and is effectively useless, especially if Google is using better gear (like directional antennas). And you're aware there's only actually three channels, and each bus wouldn't be using the same one, right? But sure, us…
Why is that? Do these buses frequently drive next to each other?
(Honest question. I don't live in the Bay Area, nor do I work for Google.)