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Comment by xanderstrike | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. The buses are cutting down on personal driving (a universally acknowledged evil), and paying for permits to use the stops (generating revenue for the city). Would these people rather the Google employees all drive personal vehicles, increasing wear and tear on the roads, congestion, pollution, etc., costing the city money?

Also, is it really the companies fault that the value of housing in the area is going up because they exist? Can you really expect them to get up and leave?

I don't really see what the companies are getting out of this in the first place. They don't have to shuttle their employees in to work, could save a whole lot of money by not renting/buying buses, but they do and it does nothing but positive things for the employees, the city, and the environment.

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They are not paying for permits. The MTA has proposed a permit system for a limited number of shared private/public bus stops, but it has not been introduced, voted on, or even released publicly, and has lingered since as early as October 2012[1].

Even if the pilot program succeeds (maybe some time next year), and Google, et. al., start paying for bus stop permits, there's still the issue of the city turning a blind eye to all the illegal stops that have gone on for the last 5 years or so.

It's great for the city to create a program that encourages mass transportation, but subsidizing it for only a select class of people is a poor use of public funds at best, and discriminatory at worst.

[1] http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/rules-proposed-for-co...

Yes, yes and yes.

Google & co. did not ask anybody before they started using the public Muni stops. They just used them. To hell with regulations, traffic laws, and the city of San Francisco.

Google & co. are bullying the city. This is the real issue.

The city isn't turning a blind eye at all, and there's no bullying. There's a conversation going on between the city and the private companies involved, in fact. They recognize that the coaches aren't permitted to use Muni stops, but there is currently no better solution - to eliminate them would greatly increase road traffic or choke Muni with the increased passengers.

This is a highly complex issue and you cannot pick on just one player. It doesn't help anyone.

Of course it's bullying.

The private companies have been violating traffic laws, repeatedly, for years.

They know what they are doing is against the law, but they keep on doing it.

Any impact on road traffic or Muni has got nothing do with the above violation of the law.

Just to be clear - you advocate fining UCSF for a decade of back-fines as well, right? Since their shuttles do the same thing.

Or are we only ok with bullying the tech companies back?

"it does nothing but positive things for the employees, the city, and the environment."

When you say something like this you really have to realize that there may be some bias here. I think these protestors feel pretty negative about this, I can't imagine that it's for no reason.

Assuming that everyone has a reasonable point, is also a bias. There are protests over gay marriage and "get the government out of medicare" and all kinds of ridiculous things.

First, i never said reasonable point, you did. I don't think its disingenuous to assume that a large group of people protesting have even a single reason to be doing so.

The person I'm responding to seems to believe they have NO REASON to be protesting. I'm simply saying that I don't think a bunch of people went and wasted their AM for no good reason.

The person you're replying to never said they had no reason to be protesting, only that the google buses benefit the city, employees, and environment.

This leaves an enormous number of reasons. For example, "Buses are, in reality, evil ghosts" is a reason to protest google buses, even if they are good for the environment, city, and employees.

But even protests over ridiculous things tend to have at least some understandable, and sometimes reasonable, argument. Sticking to this scenario, can you not think of a single one for the protesting residents?

There are already several reasons mentioned in the comments here:

- AFAIK currently the companies don't pay to stop at the MUNI stops.

- A working public transportation system for everyone would be greatly preferred to a system that's only working for employees of certain companies.

- By offering these shuttles companies contribute to more people living in SF, driving up rents (I'm not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to offer this, but it's an argument one could reasonably have)

- These shuttles might actually make an improved public transportation system less likely since none of the Google (and other companies') employees would most likely use it, even if something better than Caltrain existed.

BTW: I'm not generally against these shuttles, but you were asking for arguments against them and I think there are several.

Oh yes, I'm aware of several. My comment was strictly targeted towards the person I was responding to, who either has little imagination or was moving the conversation in a different direction.

No. At least the ones I've heard from, they want employees of companies in the South Bay and Peninsula to live outside of San Francisco. They believe that the mass influx of money is driving long time residents out, and that building more housing is the wrong solution. I remember reading one article that suggested there should be a wait list to get to live in the city.

They deserve the anti-development bed they create.

Right, and that simply does not work in a free country. These people moved to SF a while back, but they still displaced the local culture that was before them, and now they are settled in and they think they rightfully own the place. The draconian zoning laws and anti-development sentiment is only gonna hurt these people more, since the cost of living is being driven up artificially and the people they are trying to ward off are gonna move in no matter what.

Reminds me of this story posted by moxie[0] a while back:

There's an old wobbly story: A wobbly was riding a freight train across the midwest one summer, in between jobs. The train sided out in the middle of nowhere, and it was scorching hot, so the wobbly got off the train and started walking down a dirt road.

After a couple of miles, the road passed by an apple orchard. The wobbly hopped over the fence, and sat down to rest under the shade of a big apple tree.

The wobbly sat there enjoying the shade for 20 minutes, until a farmer came across him. "You can't be here!" exclaimed the farmer, "This is my land!"

The wobbly looked up at the farmer and asked "Really? What makes it your land?"

"What are you talking about you dirty tramp, I inherited it from my father!" replied the farmer, almost bewildered at such an indignant question.

"Hmm, and what made it his land?" asked the wobbly.

"Why, he inherited it from his father!" replied the farmer, now really angry. "It's been in my family for three generations!"

"And what made it your grandfather's land?" asked the wobbly.

The farmer, now barely able to contain himself, yelled proudly "Why! My grandpappy fought the indians for it!"

The wobbly nodded, stood up, pulled back his sleeves, and replied "Uh huh. Then I'll fight you for it, right now."

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5222540 (Moxie's original post with comments)

"and that building more housing is the wrong solution"

People who own housing in an artificially supply constrained environment would think that!

Exactly, the people who are against building new housing are the people who already own houses, and there is obvious "I've got mine, so fuck you" attitude at work here. It's wonderful for them that the housing price gets artificially inflated and they can then rent out their 2 bedroom small condo for $5k a month.

That sounds painfully familiar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propiska_in_the_Soviet_Union

Would these people rather the Google employees all drive personal vehicles, increasing wear and tear on the roads, congestion, pollution, etc., costing the city money?

In fact (reasonably sized) private vehicles create very little wear and tear on the roads, where heavy vehicles like trucks and buses create a lot. So much that in many cities the roads at bus stops are specially re-enforced, surely at some not-insignificant cost.

Regardless, as others have pointed out, using the public bus stops is illegal, it can interfere with official transit operations, and it even generates citizen complaints. Which can't be followed up on because the charter bus companies don't identify themselves. Surprise, the companies doing this are not paying permit fees to do their illegal activities.

http://www.metro-magazine.com/channel/motorcoach/article/sto...

I agree that more shuttles and fewer cars would almost certainly be a good thing all around, but should the charter bus companies be allowed to break the law with impunity, just because we all think the end goal is a good idea?

As someone who's tried to get from San Francisco to Silicon Valley without a car, I'd love to see companies like Google advocating and supporting better public transportation as well as just providing a private solution.

between Nimbys and public sector unions and the fact that the Bay Area is essentially under one-party rule...no. It's just not going to happen. Private initiatives are the only hope.

Public sector unions and corrupt/incompetent government workers in SF Bay Area is the root cause of the atrocious public transportation in this area, money is not. There are plenty of cities around the world that spends less per capita on infrastructure but still has a way more effective system.

Yes, the muni is not as good as in Tokyo, Hong Kong or London, but so what?

Here's the problem in a nutshell.

Google & co. did not ask anybody before they started using the public Muni stops. I repeat, they did not ask anybody, they just did it.

The problem has become so big that the city is now forced to consider a pilot program where Google & co. pay for use of some of the muni stops.

If you or I started running a private shuttle service which made use of public Muni stops we would have been not only ticketed but prosecuted.

Basically, Google and other large corporations are bullying the city. This is the real issue.

Thank you. I've skimmed the article a couple of times now, and for some reason, misread it into thinking that they were already paying for use.

I've been wondering what the todo was about, and this explains it, or at least partially helps understand the motivation.

With a comparable cost of living? Over a comparable area?

It's perfectly possible that's the case, but "$/capita" doesn't make the case on its own...

The very fact that such a a place like SF has such a high cost of living is the problem. I recently just came back from Tokyo, truly a world class city with multiple times the population density of SF and the highest city GDP in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP You know what? Cost of living there is actually CHEAPER than here, food, transportation, hell, even housing is cheaper than the joke that is SF.

Arguably, but that doesn't mean you can ignore it, or that the increase in cost of projects due to a higher cost of labor is a sign if mismanagement of those projects.

If you would like to propose an intervention targeted at reducing the cost of living in SF, I'll certainly listen though I won't promise I'll agree.

A large part of cost of living is driven up by cost of housing. That has historical reasons in the case of California.

After the 70s California voters voted against raising property tax, the government had to get most of their revenue from income-tax, thus the highest state income tax in the country. Due to this, California government income fluctuates a lot with the economy (as we saw from 2008-2009), but that's a different topic.

One thing about property tax law in California is that it's calculated based on how much one paid for property, not its current worth.

The problem with low property tax is that when combined with federal tax incentive for housing mortgage and a cheap rate, it makes sense to invest in housing, and having the value going up does not punish the home owners like places with higher property taxes or places that calculate property tax based on the current values of the properties.

The end result is that existing homeowners in California are very much against new development since they've got a "I've gotten mine, so fuck you" mentality since they want to keep their existing properties valuable, and this is ESPECIALLY true for owners that own multiple properties that can use it for rental.

Imagine you bought a few apartment complexes in SF right after the recession back in the 90s, the places would be worth multiple times as much now but your property tax has not gone up, but you can charge $3k for a small one bedroom apartment, then you'd vote with all your power to make sure new development and new supply for housing is stalled.

This is one of the reasons why direct democracy doesn't work, since people are very short sighted when voting for important issues that could have long lasting effects. A suggested solution would be lower income tax, but make property tax to be calculated off existing values of properties, thus thwart artificial inflation of property values. Of course things like this will NEVER get passed since no politicians dare to piss off existing homeowners.

To be honest, I am personally pessimistic about this state's ability to change for the better, a big reason being the state's obsession with direct democracy that resulted in many bad policies in the past.

While I think in many cases the counterarguments are stronger than you present them, I don't think I disagree with either taxing current value of homes, or reducing the impact of direct democracy in CA (at the very least, we should require something stronger than simple majority of votes cast).

There's enough blame to go around- city councils and affluent voters in communities in the peninsula and points beyond who can't break out of NIMBY enough to allow BART to expand from the East Bay are a big cause for why the transportation system is so badly Balkanized.

So what kills me in every one of these conversations about shitty old rules and regulations and nimbyism, is that to this day I've never seen one comment by one person on HN explaining exactly what we can do to advocate against the current rules and regulations to allow more housing to be built.

There must be some way for us all to be able to get involved in the right places in the right way to get these arcane regulations changed. Would hosting a daytime bike party during city council meetings with an obligatory stop at city hall help? Are there specific people to write to write to to voice our opinion?

Most people haven't the foggiest clue on how to engage effectively with local city politics.

Anyone have any effective suggestions here?

Question 1: Do you think the underlying complaints of the protests, which are presumably about problems like gentrification, are valid?

Question 2: If so, what do you propose the people do?

As to one of your questions:

Presumably, the protesters want the city and those companies to sit together and create a public transport system that works for everybody. It's fine to have lines and stops specifically laid out to be beneficial to the primary users, as long as everybody else can ride along. That's what tends to happen over on this side of the pond, and I find it an exceedingly reasonable suggestion, because everybody would win even more.

No, the companies and their employees would NOT win more if it were public. Want to have a semi-confidential conversation? Better be on the private bus. Want to have the bus have wifi VPN'd back to the home office? Works better on a private bus. Want more certainty of finding a seat, or having a power outlet to charge your laptop? Works better on a private coach. Want special hours to accommodate a hackathon, or a holiday party or other special event? Works better for a private service. Want to keep protesters from annoying your employees...?

It's not the case that everyone would win more, IMO.

One general objection to two-tier systems is that they are a symptom of people with the ability to effect change saying "we know this is broken, but we've decided to just fix it for ourselves, not for you". The emergence of the new tier shows they have the power to effect change, even as it removes their incentive to cause further change.

For example, if the boss has a reserved parking space it's a sign the other parking sucks and he/she doesn't plan to fix that. If the politician puts their kids in private school it's a sign they think public schools don't work, but they don't plan to fix them. If the affluent community installs gates and hires their own guards. In countries with public healthcare, if upper middle class families buy private medical insurance.

When the powerful eat the same dog food as the rest of us, the theory goes, we get better dog food than otherwise.

A person with this view might think Google should use their evident power fix the public transport system instead of putting in place a parallel private system.

If that's the view, why would this person imagine that Google had any power or obligation to fix the public transit system?

If a politician were doing it, I would understand the inclination towards protest -- a politician who felt that a public transportation system that was inadequate should try to fix it, assuming they had sway over it -- assuming of course that there aren't more pressing matters, like rampant crime, poverty, etc.

Otherwise, I'm having a hard time identifying here. Should I be obligated to fix the train system because I choose to fly? Why not? Am I not rich enough to be held responsible?

There may be some large piece that I'm missing here, I don't know, but there's really very little about this situation that makes sense to me.

Edit: It's been explained elsewhere that Google is using the municipal stops illegally. Somehow or another, that wasn't clear to me from my reading of the article. This at least helps me understand the motivation.

Politicians putting their kids in private schools is hypocritical because they are in charge of the public education system. Google has no responsibility whatsoever for the public transportation system and would probably prefer one (since they wouldn't have to pay for and deal with their private bus system.)

Your argument applies to anyone who has ever solved any problem for themselves rather than the common good.

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