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Comment by ryguytilidie | Hacker News Reader

"The alleged trespass of using 'public infrastructure for private profit' is unsupported. People pick up and drop off people at the sidewalk (required, no stopping in the middle of the street)."

I'm sorry but this is simply wrong. If you tried to pick up and drop off someone in a bus stop everyday, you would get ticketed for it. These buses do not. If you need to make things up to support these people it kind of worries me, especially when you seem to be mocking their opponents. I'm all for criticizing these protestors for certain things, but not so much for made up things.

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I dropped off and picked up my wife at the bus stop by 24th Street BART every workday for over a year and never had anyone challenge me about it.

Ton of people are downloading music and movies without paying, and no one challenge them. Does that mean it's legal ?

The parent comment didn't make a claim about legality; it made a claim about enforcement:

> If you tried to pick up and drop off someone in a bus stop everyday, you would get ticketed for it.

And I can say, from direct personal experience, that the claim is wrong.

Muni buses now have cameras and there is a team which looks through all the footage spotting violations, even parking violations, and then they issue tickets.

The city should have enforced the traffic laws right from the start and not allowed these corporate shuttles to fester and develop into a now much bigger problem.

According to a comment below they have a permit for it which they pay the city for.

The article says that the city is working on a permitting system, and that one does not currently exist. Which means that these buses are parking illegally everyday and instead of fining them, the city is coming up with a plan to accommodate them. Think they would do that for your parking tickets?

Hmm perhaps. Still seems like such a minor issue to protest over.

That's because they're not really protesting about the buses using public stops. What they're really protesting is gentrification -- a decreasing amount of affordable housing in the city. Which is another way of saying they are protesting their own collective refusal to add higher density housing in the city.

I disagree. Our police force having BLATANT double standards which favor corporations over people is EXACTLY what people should be protesting.

Probably because the city realises that having companies bus their employees around is a shitload better than having 20 extra individual cars on the roads?

20 extra individual cars on the roads

Those double decker buses hold about 80 people. Assuming a handful of people would carpool, we're still looking at 60+ more cars on the road, per bus.

The buses likely aren't loaded to maximum capacity are they? They also have to drive slightly extra. A car driver would go in a straight line to work, whereas the bus has to travel to all the different bus stops first.

Seems scalable. If we can come up with a hypothetical where companies are actually taking some cars off the road, just let them do illegal stuff in return.

I don't get the objection. It seems to me that while the buses may cause disturbances to transit, they're better than the alternative of having a bunch of private cars on the road.

Think they would do that for your parking tickets?

If those tickets were for behaviors that are actually socially beneficial, shouldn't they? And if they wouldn't anyway, how is it Google's fault?

I mean, how much do you supporters of the google buses want to grasp at straws? It just becomes a series of:

-make argument.

-have someone explain why your argument is wrong.

-make up new argument, disregard whether it is remotely related to the original point you made. Just grasp at straws to seem "right".

I mean, we start with "its not like the buses are doing something illegal" to which the answer is "yes, they certainly are" and then it turns to this assumption that every google employee would drive otherwise, ignoring that many employees moved to these bus stop locations specifically for the buses, or the fact that there is a train that runs from SF to Mountain view. But yeah, these buses should be able to do whatever illegal behavior they want because of the next strawman i've yet to anticipate you all making up...

Because it's such a minor issue and it's obviously a net benefit. It's not worth getting upset over, let alone protesting.

I didn't say they weren't doing something illegal. You must have me confused with someone else.

every google employee would drive

The strawman is on your part.

It's Google's fault because they did not get permission first before using public Muni stops to pick up and drop off passengers. Anybody else doing it would be ticketed and prosecuted for repeat violations.

To anybody who wants to defend Google, think about this - what next? Maybe Google should buy up whole city blocks, demolish them, and build residential apartments for their employees? To hell with eviction laws, zoning laws, right?

Did anyone else try setting up their own bus system and get fined? Did Google actually bribe anyone?

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