> A lot of technology workers in New York traveling 50 miles to work by subway? I'm just asking because that's about the distance from Trenton NJ to Manhattan.
1. If we're talking Noe Valley to the Googleplex, Google Maps puts it at 35 miles. 50 miles would get you beyond San Jose.
2. Google tells me Caltrain from 4th-and-King to Mountain View is 44 minutes. That's roughly equivalent with White Plains to Grand Central ride, which is admittedly only 23 miles. (I do have friends who do this commute.) One difference is that when you get to Grand Central, if you're not walking to work, you can get somewhere else in town within about ten minutes (to Muni's thirty). Certainly you're not taking Muni from Noe Valley to Caltrain, anyway.
3. In light of that, I guess it does raise the point that public transit is to move people from where they want to live to where they want to work. "The equivalent technology worker in New York" does live closer to work. You could attack politicians and blame them for influencing this situation...
But don't, at least not for the sake of this post, because the point isn't a superiority war with CA/NY, the point is that tech workers are in fact willing to take transit. It's just that SF public transportation is not good enough, not while employers are located in Mountain View. Perhaps the protestor could attack that directly if that's really what irks him? Perhaps he'd be satisfied with a proposal to move Google HQ downtown, so people could take the J train there. (cough i doubt it)