San Francisco's guerrilla protest at Google buses swells into revolt

Is this really happening? If it is, it brings up an interesting issue.

Private public transport can out compete public transport. But then school buses already do this as well (compared to Europe). Though I did commute using SF buses, and I fully understand why one would not prefer ones kids to travel on them, and even why one would prefer company buses.

As for rents, true, but can that not mostly be blamed on restrictive building regulations? Not so much with regards to standards as well with regards to limits to flats and highrise buildings. As there is an undisputed market demand for more housing in the bay-area.

Imho protesters are a tad misguided in who they are targeting.

Let's get terms straight. Google is providing private mass transport. It's no more public transport than a charter liquor and gambling bus to Atlantic City. If it was public transport non-Googlers would ride for similar tariffs - ok that's probably inaccurate since poor riders would have their transport subsidized rather than Google's subsidy to those more affluent.

Google's buses are solving more traffic problems in MountainView than San Francisco and relieving the congestion that most impacts commuters from San Francisco to their campus. If the service had to meet the requirements for public transportation i.e. meeting public needs, Google would shut it down.

There is one thing that I've really come to love and respect about the city of San Francisco. They fight for what they want. I've seen protests for everything ranging from wars, to working conditions, to America's Cup worker wages. Most other places would just get rolled over by whomever has the money. Underneath this issue, there are some serious socioeconomic issues at hand that need to be addressed.

One thing I've done to try and give back is during the holiday season, create some care packages and hand them out to the homeless. Put together basic stuff like dental floss, razors, deodorant, hard candy, socks, pop-corn, etc in a zip-lock bag. As I walked around the city and saw homeless people, I would give them a bag. It was about $400 bucks and about 4 hours of time between two people to make 20 bags. All you have to do is hand them out as you're doing your daily things around the city. You would be surprised at how eloquent, smart, and appreciative some of the people on the street actually are. If you live in San Francisco, you _know_ you're going to run into someone homeless on any given day.

That being said, I realize that I'm not the regular San Francisco transplant and most Engineers can't logically rationalize giving something away for free to someone who has done "nothing" for them.

I'm extremely biased because I think any effort to "normalize" a 40-mile commute is poison to any environment, but I still don't get why, if everyone working at places like Google want to live in SF, why can't Google and co. just have offices in the city?

I get that they wouldn't be able to build their own little disneyworlds that way, but instead of having Google build an entire ecosystem, they could just have offices and people could just go downtown to eat, or not need laundry services because they don't lose 2 hours a day in a bus.

If offices were built closer to the city, they could be smaller but I'm fairly convinced most people would consider it an upgrade to quality of life in general.

When I did some work in Tokyo, going outside at lunch and just breathing some fresh air during the 10 minutes spent transiting really helped to refresh the mind.

I've never worked in Google-like environment, but the whole closed-off , prison-like state of the campus seems very off-putting. It's basically the business equivalent of gated communities with their own services, to the detriment of services shared with everyone. I can get why people can get mad.

I'm not sure I agree with that.

There is a legion of people making six figures, who together have a lot of power if they were to try to do something. I know disruption or even violence won't help at first, but it raises awareness. Maybe then people can start talking about intelligent measures to help those who need it.

I know if I was making 200k I'd be glad to be taxed an extra %, if that money was going towards help for people who've seen the place they lived their whole life slowly push them out, even though they're still needed there.

That's an important point. The big fishes need the small ones to survive, so there's demand, demand for people to do lesser paid activities and being in a constant struggle.

Then again I'm Swiss, and we have a history of voting ourselves tax raises, most of which goes to to the lower classes in some way. We live in a pretty happy and safe society though, infrastructures are great and affordable (mostly free if you don't make much). Seems to me like a good tradeoff for passing on a new TV or some designer clothes once a year.