But most of these issues aren't nearly as viscerally visual and high-profile as an exclusive "you can't get on" bus fleet. It's simply an incredibly in-your-face reminder of everything else that is wrong with San Francisco.
> "I find this particularly hilarious because I would argue that ride-share companies are exactly the tech companies who are working on real problems."
As someone who lived in SF, and now lives in NYC, I find this statement sad yet hilarious.
Uber and Lyft exist because of a fundamental dysfunction in Bay Area transit. Lyft isn't even a thing here in NYC, and Uber is barely on anyone's radar - because we have working mass transit. These are only "real problems" because MUNI and BART represent the transit savviness of a wet paper bag. I used to spend more than a NYC subway monthly pass's cost on Ubers when I lived in SF every month, because the transit in that city is so utterly and completely fucked. Even among my social circles of relatively-highly-paid tech-workers, none of us have used Uber more than once or twice.
To be blunt, Uber and Lyft are solutions to the problem that San Francisco can't get its shit together to save its life.
Others in this thread mention that if the investment made in private company shuttles were poured into the public transit system then everyone could benefit. It would be nice, but I don't think this is actually true - the problem with MUNI, Caltrain, and BART isn't due to lack of funding, it's due to extensive corruption and mismanagement. At the agency level, at the municipality level, and at the regional level. Google could've thrown truckloads of cash at them and it would've disappeared into the ether with little to show for it.
I don't blame Google, Facebook, and Apple for running their own shuttles. It was the most rational, least evil choice in response to a fundamental governmental dysfunction. The protest against the growing divide is a red herring - the divide largely exists and is perpetuated by a woefully incompetent and corrupt city government.
There is a growing collection of startups whose primary purpose is fixing SF/Bay Area dysfunction - Uber and Lyft being among them. I'm disappointed at how revolutionary people seem to think they are, when they seem more like they're solving problems that shouldn't exist in a competent, working city, in a highly exclusive and upmarket way. Transportation is horrifyingly broken and people can't get around? Solution: upmarket shiny black sedans priced completely out of reach for everyone except the monied techno-elite. It may be necessary, but forgive me if I don't cheer loudly.
At the risk of making a crappy analogy, the roof is leaking and you're congratulating the guy who came along and put some buckets on the floor.