San Francisco's guerrilla protest at Google buses swells into revolt

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/25/google-bus-protest-swells-to-revolt-san-francisco

by wybo • 12 years ago

43 70 12 years ago

wybo2• 12 years ago

Is this really happening? If it is, it brings up an interesting issue.

Private public transport can out compete public transport. But then school buses already do this as well (compared to Europe). Though I did commute using SF buses, and I fully understand why one would not prefer ones kids to travel on them, and even why one would prefer company buses.

As for rents, true, but can that not mostly be blamed on restrictive building regulations? Not so much with regards to standards as well with regards to limits to flats and highrise buildings. As there is an undisputed market demand for more housing in the bay-area.

Imho protesters are a tad misguided in who they are targeting.

paul_f2• 12 years ago

Let me fix that for you:

protesters are misguided.

datphp3• 12 years ago

I'm not sure I agree with that.

There is a legion of people making six figures, who together have a lot of power if they were to try to do something. I know disruption or even violence won't help at first, but it raises awareness. Maybe then people can start talking about intelligent measures to help those who need it.

I know if I was making 200k I'd be glad to be taxed an extra %, if that money was going towards help for people who've seen the place they lived their whole life slowly push them out, even though they're still needed there.

That's an important point. The big fishes need the small ones to survive, so there's demand, demand for people to do lesser paid activities and being in a constant struggle.

Then again I'm Swiss, and we have a history of voting ourselves tax raises, most of which goes to to the lower classes in some way. We live in a pretty happy and safe society though, infrastructures are great and affordable (mostly free if you don't make much). Seems to me like a good tradeoff for passing on a new TV or some designer clothes once a year.

brudgers3• 12 years ago

Let's get terms straight. Google is providing private mass transport. It's no more public transport than a charter liquor and gambling bus to Atlantic City. If it was public transport non-Googlers would ride for similar tariffs - ok that's probably inaccurate since poor riders would have their transport subsidized rather than Google's subsidy to those more affluent.

Google's buses are solving more traffic problems in MountainView than San Francisco and relieving the congestion that most impacts commuters from San Francisco to their campus. If the service had to meet the requirements for public transportation i.e. meeting public needs, Google would shut it down.

wybo2• 12 years ago

If you take the terms technically, it is private mass-transit. However, considering its function, it does cut directly into the market for public transport (that already is difficult in many US cities due to lower density and more car-use). The terms don't matter that much (except for politically perhaps).

As for solving traffic problems, they don't necessarily do this more so than public transport would, if Googlers took that.

I think the issue is more that MUNI might have to think about introducing first-class busses, or first-class sections, or something like that. Because many people don't like sharing a bus bench with smelly (homeless) people.

alangpierce• 12 years ago

It isn't necessarily the case that Google would shut down their bus service if it had to meet the requirements of public transportation. It looks like Google already funds a free shuttle from the Mountain View Caltrain station to Google HQ and the surrounding area, which actually is public transit.

http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/Shuttles/Shoreline_Shuttle... (See the fine print at the bottom for details.)

It's potentially possible that a similar approach could be done for the SF to Mountain View commute, where Google subsidizes the creation of specific public bus lines in exchange for Google employees riding for free, or something like that. That would probably make the community happier about the bus issue, although it wouldn't fix the rent/displacement issue at all.

macspoofing8• 12 years ago

If it was public transport non-Googlers would ride for similar tariffs

...and be subsidized by tax-payers (because public transit systems in big cities don't break-even on fares - and forget about capital projects, those always need government funds). So this is still a net-win for the city. Googlers subsidize a system they don't use to get to work.

joeblau4• 12 years ago

There is one thing that I've really come to love and respect about the city of San Francisco. They fight for what they want. I've seen protests for everything ranging from wars, to working conditions, to America's Cup worker wages. Most other places would just get rolled over by whomever has the money. Underneath this issue, there are some serious socioeconomic issues at hand that need to be addressed.

One thing I've done to try and give back is during the holiday season, create some care packages and hand them out to the homeless. Put together basic stuff like dental floss, razors, deodorant, hard candy, socks, pop-corn, etc in a zip-lock bag. As I walked around the city and saw homeless people, I would give them a bag. It was about $400 bucks and about 4 hours of time between two people to make 20 bags. All you have to do is hand them out as you're doing your daily things around the city. You would be surprised at how eloquent, smart, and appreciative some of the people on the street actually are. If you live in San Francisco, you _know_ you're going to run into someone homeless on any given day.

That being said, I realize that I'm not the regular San Francisco transplant and most Engineers can't logically rationalize giving something away for free to someone who has done "nothing" for them.

wavefunction• 12 years ago

>most Engineers can't logically rationalize giving something away for free to someone who has done "nothing" for them.

You're not the only engineer who feels this way. Thanks for your story and a great suggestion on how to help ourselves become better people through service to others.

Solving a technical problem gives me an ephemeral and fleeting feeling of elation, which I admit is nice. The positive feelings I get from assisting someone, however, persist throughout my lifetime.

paul_f2• 12 years ago

I love how you told everyone what a wonderful and caring person you are. And then slammed engineers. Well played.

Next time I'd advise telling your story and avoid the temptation to smear an entire profession.

joeblau4• 12 years ago

I'm also an Engineer and I'm not smearing the profession. Most of us don't want to work on something that doesn't make logical sense.

macspoofing8• 12 years ago

I'm glad you're able to make yourself feel better (and superior at the same time - 'most Engineers can't logically rationalize giving something away for free to someone who has done "nothing" for them' ) for $400 and let everyone know it. Money well-spent.

nirnira5• 12 years ago

Nice. But if you think it's so worthwhile to help homeless people, why don't you help them full-time, instead of just dabbling? And if you're going to help them, are goodie bags really the best way, or can you think of more powerful, uplifting ways to help them improve their station in life? That's the economically rational course of action, after all - devote the maximum amount of your time to the activity you consider most valuable (whether to yourself or others - wherever your priorities lie), and try and be as effective in that activity as possible - otherwise you're just splitting your time, jack of all trades, master of none.

joeblau4• 12 years ago

I'm not spending my full time doing that because helping homeless people isn't my life passion. My life passion is to create technology that will impact the world for a greater good. That doesn't mean that along the way I can't do things to help others out who are less fortunate than I am along the way. I don't think taking a few hours every year to help others would qualify me as a jack of all trades. I spend far more time burnt on HN, DN, and running my OSS GitHub project, than I do helping. I just feel that if everyone helped a bit, we would probably be received better.

infinity0• 12 years ago

Ignore the haters commenting on this post, being all self-sensitive at you simply making an observation based on how you see things, and nit-picking on an incorrect use of the word "most". I'm an engineer and I'm not offended, and I can definitely see your point. A lot of highly-paid people don't see, or refuse to analyse, the surrounding consequences of their wealth, as well as their own actions.

1010011010• 12 years ago

Why people think California is awesome (other than the weather) is a mystery.

joeblau4• 12 years ago

I love the food and the the fact that the Bay Area has a high concentration of brilliant minds in a very small area. Attending Meetups and talks from some of the leading thinkers in technology has been something that isn't as accessible elsewhere.

edit: Rent prices are crazy though.

choult• 12 years ago

Having just gotten back to the UK after my first trip to SF I can see why people like it - it's got a great buzz, and the culture is varied and attractive.

My biggest concern - though it might just be because I was downtown, or that I've not spent much time in US cities - was the large number of homeless. Maybe the Googles and SalesForces in the area could help those guys out?

davidgerard• 12 years ago

I just got back to the UK after my first trip to SF and was disconcerted at the lack of culture shock. Evidently I moved into a J. G. Ballard short story some time ago.

rtpg5• 12 years ago

I'm extremely biased because I think any effort to "normalize" a 40-mile commute is poison to any environment, but I still don't get why, if everyone working at places like Google want to live in SF, why can't Google and co. just have offices in the city?

I get that they wouldn't be able to build their own little disneyworlds that way, but instead of having Google build an entire ecosystem, they could just have offices and people could just go downtown to eat, or not need laundry services because they don't lose 2 hours a day in a bus.

If offices were built closer to the city, they could be smaller but I'm fairly convinced most people would consider it an upgrade to quality of life in general.

When I did some work in Tokyo, going outside at lunch and just breathing some fresh air during the 10 minutes spent transiting really helped to refresh the mind.

I've never worked in Google-like environment, but the whole closed-off , prison-like state of the campus seems very off-putting. It's basically the business equivalent of gated communities with their own services, to the detriment of services shared with everyone. I can get why people can get mad.

myko• 12 years ago

I've never worked in Google-like environment, but the whole closed-off , prison-like state of the campus seems very off-putting.

Where is this prison like Google environment you're talking about?

fallinghawks4• 12 years ago

Agree, that's a most ridiculous statement.

btian• 12 years ago

Have you even visited Google's campus in Mountain View? There is no such thing as closed-off prison-like campus...

JoeAltmaier7• 12 years ago

Texas has prisons out in the dusty plains, where prisoners are not bound nor fenced. Its the distance that makes it a prison.

So in this way a very remote campus IS a prison - you have no practical choice but to exist in that ecosystem.

rtpg5• 12 years ago

No I haven't. I meant more in that it seems very isolated, so it's made into a sort of self-sufficient bubble. Plus if you're going by bus you're pretty much stuck there. Having gone to a school in a similar situation ( way off city center, so in a bubble), I saw how the social environment ends up becoming very "lord of the flies"-y.

I like the illusion of an escape hatch.

dredmorbius4• 12 years ago

Contrasting your typical office-park space, in which if you plan on eating off-campus you'll almost certainly have to drive someplace (typically several miles, often in choking noontime traffic), a city office space often offers a highly diverse environment within easy walking distance -- a few blocks.

To say nothing of the vastly greater transit service (though this is often overwhelmed and/or unreliable), and option to commute by other means (often bicycles).

macspoofing8• 12 years ago

If offices were built closer to the city, they could be smaller but I'm fairly convinced most people would consider it an upgrade to quality of life in general.

What is this 'solution' solving exactly? These protests are targeting tech workers and tech companies because tech workers want to live in San Fran and thereby drive up the price of housing. How would that change if Google had offices in San Fran?!

rtpg5• 12 years ago

Because then things like restaurants downtown would have more foot traffic during lunch time to help make sure local businesses don't shut down. Also, it could help make downtown "bigger", so even if the end result is the same (higher rent), there'd be more apartments available (instead of the suburbs that take a lot of space for not many families).

dredmorbius4• 12 years ago

Clearly: if the offices were in SF, Googlers would 1) overrun Muni, 2) Ride fixies to work, and/or 3) operate Google Shuttles within city limits only.

The lack of an attractive neighborhood and/or housing near Google HQ is another component of this issue.

I find the protests highly misguided, generally.

darkstar999• 12 years ago

I thought the protest was about Google using the public bus lanes, etc for private use? This could eliminate that.

wuster• 12 years ago

Google is rumored to be looking for a campus in Mission Bay: https://www.google.com/search?q=google+mission+bay&oq=google...

icebraining• 12 years ago

Guardian, what about a link to the study? Or to the protestors' pages? It's called hypertext for a reason.

The study is here: http://www.danielledai.com/academic/dai-weinzimmer-shuttles....

copx• 12 years ago

That is what you get if you're going to San Francisco. The city has been a left/liberal activist stronghold since long before Google even existed. And yeah, things like gentrification and private luxury buses do tend to provoke that crowd.

Maybe Google should consider relocating to a military town in Texas. It seems there is a great convergence between Google's massive (and permanently growing) data collection and the total surveillance efforts of the government.

Claudus• 12 years ago

I'm sure Texas would be more than happy to have Google offices in any of the major cities, and there's plenty of space.

stigi• 12 years ago

"Well organised protesters have blocked buses[...]"

Bet they've been using Google Drive to organise.

tehwalrus• 12 years ago

The underlying problem, as with all property bubbles including the UK's, is planning restrictions.

In the past, people would move to areas of high employment from areas of low employment, and new housing was built for the economic migrants - this is how cities expanded. Now, restrictions on building new accommodation entrench expensive neighbourhoods, and mean economic migrants can't move nearer to the employment. This leads to both a property bubble market and lower employment overall in the nation.

This was all proposed/explained in this article a few months ago:

"Stay Put, Young Man", http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/november_december_...

(discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6563854 )

macspoofing8• 12 years ago

This is a quintessential embarrassment of riches. San Fran is powered by a real 21st century economy, which many other cities and countries are trying to recreate, and you still find something to complain about? What's the solution here? Not have tech companies that employ thousands of people (for upper-middle class wages) in the area?! Not have thousands of young educated people from all over the country and the world, want to move to, work and live in the city? Not have those employees wanting to live in the city, but instead go down the route of the 1950-1980s generations and settle suburbia, and leave the downtown-core decrepit and crime-ridden?

Even in this specific case, what's wrong with a corporation providing a mass transit option to their workers so they don't have to drive in and needlessly congest the roads and pollute the environment.

rtpg5• 12 years ago

leave the downtown-core decrepit and crime-ridden

The companies aren't in downtown, they're out 40 miles away instead, so not paying local taxes or helping the local economy. Instead you just have the workers who basically just sleep in SF, paying property taxes but not even opting to using the public transportation to make it better.

San Fran is powered by a real 21st century economy, which many other cities and countries are trying to recreate, and you still find something to complain about?

Based off of complaints from the tech community, it also seems to be a city with a lot of homelessness, really shitty public transportation, and dysfunctional regulations that end up causing rent to be even higher.

If you told anybody of a city where most of the world's innovation happen, you'd at least imagine a city with a functional system of mass transportation, but we can't seem to even get that right. San Fran should be the best city in the world.

The problem isn't that workers are living in the city, it's that they're not working there. People spend a lot of money where they end up working.

macspoofing8• 12 years ago

The companies aren't in downtown

The employees live in the city.

Based off of complaints from the tech community, it also seems to be a city with a lot of homelessness

None of that is caused by having Google in the area. This is a cultural and a government regulatory problem (municipal, and state and federal to lesser extent).

The problem isn't that workers are living in the city, it's that they're not working there.

If you're an employee you spend money where you live, not where you work. It would be nice for San Fran if all engineers worked in San Fran as well, but you can't have everything. Plus it wouldn't be so nice for Mountain View, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, etc. In fact, those municipalities have more to complain about since they can argue they are nothing more than commuter cities.

San Fran should count their blessings.

dredmorbius4• 12 years ago

leave the downtown-core decrepit and crime-ridden?

In the case of San Francisco, this is most definitely not the case. Downtown office space (especially in fashionable areas) is in high demand, rents are high, vacancies low.

Of course, the city is small enough that once you get outside the relatively small historic downtown (the Financial District) and the new downtown (SOMA), there is older and less-featured office space. Even this is under high demand.

And of course there's the push of office space into traditionally industrial areas such as Mission Bay (UCSF, Salesforce.com). These are almost suburban in their single-use planning presently, though that might change.

Though reachable via CalTrain, BART service favors downtown SF and the near SOMA neighborhoods.

And as I've said, the bus protests themselves are really asinine.

macspoofing8• 12 years ago

n the case of San Francisco, this is most definitely not the case. Downtown office space (especially in fashionable areas) is in high demand, rents are high, vacancies low.

That's not what I meant. In the last twenty years, "the downtown" has been rediscovered in most North American cities as a place that people want to work AND live in. Contrast this to the 1950-1990 period in which the thing to do was to live in suburban neighborhoods and commute to work.

BjoernKW• 12 years ago

"Anthony Levandowski is building an unconscionable world of surveillance, control and automation," they wrote on flyers left near his house. "He is also your neighbour."

What were those people thinking? They're subtly but very clearly trying to intimidate that guy. This is like saying "We don't want the likes of you around here."

If those protesters really wanted to do something against surveillance and control they should hold those accountable who are responsible for the NSA disaster and things like Guantanamo. Instead, they chose to pick on an individual who isn't any more responsible for those issues than a factory worker producing weapons is for the war crimes committed with these weapons.

If they want to start a revolution they should be heading to Washington, D.C. instead of starting a petty revolt by bullying some guy who's neither responsible for the issues at hand nor for their own failures in life.

If gentrification helps driving people out of town who display such obnoxious behaviour then we can't have enough of it.

raverbashing3• 12 years ago

"If gentrification helps driving people out of town who display such obnoxious behaviour then we can't have enough of it."

Yes, let's remove every current resident of SF by charging outrageous rent rates and only have rich Google engineers there. Because, that's why. There's no other place they can live, of course, right?

But don't complain then when they don't have anywhere to go for laundry, or the only coffee place is an overpriced Starbucks, or groceries are double what you pay somewhere else.

JoeAltmaier7• 12 years ago

Its supposed to be a free country. Sad when your rent goes up, but a free market allows that. I'm a little offended each time the self-styled old-guard want to 'protect the neighborhood' by which they mean 'keep my cheap rent'. How about you live where you can afford, like everybody else?

brudgers3• 12 years ago

The wheels under the Levandovski story is Google agitprop. The protest was in fucking Berkeley. It was over condominiums proposed to be built in fucking Berkeley. And the warmongering angle was just fucking Berkeley's historical anti-warmongering manifesting itself.

The only nexus between the story and Google's buses is Google. And if any one in the world is in a better position to spin a story, it wouor constitute an improbable event.

JoeAltmaier7• 12 years ago

It smacks of 'protest chic'. Cool to wave signs somebody else made and get in the new for being all liberal.

If those guys were going to a factory job, they'd be ok neighbors. But because they're going to a better job, it's cool to make trouble for them.

nirnira5• 12 years ago

Christ, it's painful to read about these people with such stupid, lazy attitudes and opinions - yet somehow still able to muster the energy to go out and throw a huge tantrum and make a huge mess for other people. Instead of thinking constructively about how to make themselves genuinely more valuable to other humans, they just bitch and moan about what they believe themselves entitled to - conditions which were never contractually promised to them. Yeesh. Admirable in a way, I suppose, but still.

Still, this is a really interesting clash of interests - between the infrastructural needs of potentially the great city of the 21st century, and its cultural roots. You need a mix of both - you can't just turn SF into a grid of mega-skyscrapers, although that'd open the gates for great companies, and real progress - you need something of the old sense of city and style - but you can't just pretend the city can still function and thrive as a museum of genteel Victorians and arts and craft co-ops, while the future brews down in San Jose... You need capacity and character to build the launchpad of the future.

San Francisco's guerrilla protest at Google buses swells into revolt

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