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Comment by jarek | Hacker News Reader

> The buses don't compete with public transit as they cover cross-county routes for which there basically is no feasible public alternative vs driving.

So try to fix that. The distance is hardly unbridgeable with public transport and express point-to-point public services are hardly a novel idea.

> And the constituent counties have historically often resisted cooperating with each other to expand public transit agencies.

So try to fix that.

Ah but that's more difficult than putting a private system on public assets.

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I sometimes barbecue on my sidewalk where I live. I assume it's legal (I'm taking a risk), or at least it's tolerated by my neighbors and police officers walking by. This is probably because it's only me, I'm not causing any trouble, I share, and clean up. I assume if everyone started BBQing (or someone started complaining about me) the local government would need to look into it and figure something out: Is he breaking a law? Do we need a law? A guideline? A public BBQ? Etc. At this point common sense and public debate can start. It'd be silly for me to run for mayor or start a statewide proposition for sidewalk BBQing when I just want some hot dogs.

Tech workers needed to get from their houses to their office, but there was no existing convenient way of doing this. So they bought a bus. Then more. Others followed. Now there are some questions arising and society (read: government) needs to get involved. How many busses are allowed? Can they use bus stops? Should we charge them? A little for usage or a lot for subsidizing other's transport? Should Muni buy new comfy buses with wifi and run new routes to mountain view? Can they do that or does the other transit authority have rules against that? Would people ride this, or would it be a waste of money?

Perfectly reasonable questions, which should be debated and negotiated. But not from day one.

But let's be honest: it's not about the busses. It's about inequality.

> I share, and clean up

You're doing more than Google :)

It's not their job to fix all of the problems and politics of the bay area. If they wanted, they'd be well withing their rights to just say "fuck it, you lot can drive". Long term, it'd be nice if the public transportation improved, but you know what? The haters would find something else to whine about, like public dollars going to transport workers at a huge company like Google, because they had "meddled in the political process with their fat wallet", or some such thing.

> It's not their job to fix all of the problems and politics of the bay area.

No. But currently they're hardly solving any problems, creating more, and wondering why they're not popular.

> they're hardly solving any problems

They got a bunch of people off the roads by providing a bus. That's good for the environment, traffic, and their workers, who don't have to deal with a stressful drive. Seems like a pretty good solution to me, even if it's not perfect.

To me it looks like people just want excuses to hate on successful companies in the tech industry.

> _hardly_

I can't make it 36 pt unfortunately...

"The haters would find something else to whine about"

Because people who don't agree with you are "haters that whine"? It's not exactly hard to find out what they want and that it's not primarily about the buses.

There's also plenty of reasons why the buses aren't good for people in the tech industry. Especially for entrepreneurs that want to compete with these companies.

I thought this article did a pretty good job of explaining things:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/

Yeah, there are plenty of people with legitimate gripes, but having grown up in a place with its fair share of them.... it seems there is a category of people who are just out there looking for something to get riled up about. And it seems quite wrong to target the people and companies when they're just doing what they do and happening to make money at it. If there's a housing problem, address that, no? They might as well shake their fists at the internet itself, because that is what's helping the companies make the money, with which they pay the people, who drive up the prices.

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