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Tech Rides Are Focus of Hostility in Bay Area

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gg_got_a_tesla

Model S: VIN 65513, Model 3: VIN 1913
Jan 29, 2010
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789
Redwood Shores, CA
Tech Rides Are Focus of Hostility in Bay Area

A little disconcerting given that my wife rides one of these from the Peninsula to San Francisco and back every day.

There's definitely this distinct sense of unease brewing here in the Bay Area with the widening income gaps particularly between the techies and almost everyone else. As Tesla owners in general and when riding solo in the carpool lanes in particular, I'm sure that, atleast on a few occasions, some of us may have unintentionally upset others. I've seen a few online comments too referring to Teslas as a new level of snobbery...
 
and then there is that old saying about those forgetting history being destined to repeat it.

It is never pretty when those that can
screw over those they can
just a little too much.

I'm thinking the French Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution,,,,. I wonder what forum our version will take.
 
Tech Rides Are Focus of Hostility in Bay Area

A little disconcerting given that my wife rides one of these from the Peninsula to San Francisco and back every day.

There's definitely this distinct sense of unease brewing here in the Bay Area with the widening income gaps particularly between the techies and almost everyone else. As Tesla owners in general and when riding solo in the carpool lanes in particular, I'm sure that, atleast on a few occasions, some of us may have unintentionally upset others. I've seen a few online comments too referring to Teslas as a new level of snobbery...

In Seattle the Microsoft connector shuttles respect and don't use the city bus stops. It is known that they are reducing congestion and are appreciated. Using/blocking/not paying your fare share is not cool and I would be in favor of stopping the behavior as well.

This is much more about shuttles abusing public bus stops and not really any Tesla or personal car angst
 
In Seattle the Microsoft connector shuttles respect and don't use the city bus stops. It is known that they are reducing congestion and are appreciated. Using/blocking/not paying your fare share is not cool and I would be in favor of stopping the behavior as well.

This is much more about shuttles abusing public bus stops and not really any Tesla or personal car angst

Seems it goes deeper than the buses though and more about hostility towards the class gap that's being widened. Folks who aren't riding the train seem to be hostile to it:

During a three-hour meeting at City Hall, angry residents complained that even a low-income San Franciscan has to pay $2 to board a city bus while the city planned to charge tech shuttles just $1 per stop per day, regardless of how many workers got on or off.

A San Francisco resident complained about the tech company buses during the meeting at City Hall earlier this month.

“These companies should pay a handsome sum of money to the city, not just one dollar,” said a retired social worker, Herbert Weiner, 75. “They are filthy rich.”

Google, for instance, is reportedly paying an unnamed midlevel engineer $3 million a year. “Google is not doing this because they are generous. They are doing it because that’s what it takes to prevent him from going anywhere else.”

Sheesh. The competition and growth seems to be creating a salary/class bubble that seems to almost NEED to pop.
 
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I couldn't imagine wanting to commute on one of these buses two hours a day. But I think commuting on a bus is so much better than driving for both the environment and traffic.

They actually went to one engineer's house "Last week, a group of activists stalked a Google engineer at his East Bay house, urging the masses to “Fight evil. Join the revolution.”
 
But I think commuting on a bus is so much better than driving for both the environment and traffic.

As long as it doesn't take two or more hours to do what a 15 to 20 minute car commute would do. That's the discrepancy here in DFW, unless you just happen to live on a route that doesn't involve changing buses.
 
There's no link to Tesla here, it's a matter of perception of private business transportation benefiting from public transportation amenities and how they use them. Combine anti-corporate/capitalist political activists with sense of fairness and pure envy and you have some chance for growth of opposition. Might need some reevaluation of costs, volume and public benefit.
 
In Seattle the Microsoft connector shuttles respect and don't use the city bus stops. It is known that they are reducing congestion and are appreciated. Using/blocking/not paying your fare share is not cool and I would be in favor of stopping the behavior as well.

This is much more about shuttles abusing public bus stops and not really any Tesla or personal car angst
The Microsoft Connector Bus service started WAY after tech companies here in the Silicon Valley began.

FWIW, I started at thread about this same topic at MNL: Bay Area class tensions relating to tech workers & shuttles. It kinda got OT though...

Maybe month or so ago, I recently showed one of the stories I that I posted on MNL (or something related to it) to someone who's lived in SF for over 7 years and works in the South Bay (Santa Clara, more specifically). She was unaware of this tension, probably because her company doesn't provide any shuttles to/from SF.

There ended up being San Francisco approves tech shuttle bus pilot program | Internet & Media - CNET News and Google bus backlash: S.F. to impose fees on tech shuttles - SFGate.
Under the program, the bus operators will pay $1 per stop per shuttle, an average of $80,000 to $100,000 per operator each year.
 
The illegal stops are just one point (I heard of them doing a deal with the city to address this, but I didn't know it was as cheap as $1 per stop), but the bigger issue are the tech employees moving into the city and taking up the apartments and boosting up the rental market. There's been a whole bunch of evictions related to this and I'm betting that's what has people pissed off.

However, I don't think this really bleeds off into anything against the Model S. The reaction when people see one seems to be: "ooh a Tesla!".
 
The problem in the Bay Area is that tech stock gains drive up housing prices.

If Google and others make it easier to live in SF while working in Silicon Valley by supplying private buses, that drives up housing prices in SF and housing prices there are already insanely high. Housing prices in the neighborhoods near Google took an appreciable jump shortly after Google IPO'ed.

The fact that these are large buses that have wifi and probably bathrooms, drinks, potentially more and use public bus stops rubs lots of salt into a pretty bad wound. I don't blame the city for charging Google lots of money to use the city bus stops. Google has to figure out a better way to give back to the communities. Maybe funding food banks instead of free wifi?

Model S's on the hand, not so big a deal. You get a few people who look down on you because they think you're a crazy eco-freak or because they think the car is a big expensive rolling high-tech toy. But there's less of that every day in part because there are more Model S's on the road here every day. It helps that the S is the same price as a standard large German sedan and cheaper than a Ferrari or Porsche 911.
 
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but the bigger issue are the tech employees moving into the city and taking up the apartments and boosting up the rental market. There's been a whole bunch of evictions related to this and I'm betting that's what has people pissed off.
Yeah, I get that, but the at the same time, these wealthier people moving are helping the SF and Oakland city economies by patronizing the businesses, paying taxes, paying the landlords, etc. And, these shuttles help prevent already terrible traffic from becoming worse. Some (but not all) of those folks who really want to live in the city would instead drive their own cars or carpool, but the traffic would be a lot worse than with this shuttles.

As some of other stories I pointed to, the appearance of shuttles themselves is symbolic of the divide.

IMHO, it seems like the whole Occupy Wall Street movement which seemed to have run out of steam long ago has ended up partly morphing into this.

(I work a company in the South Bay that's much smaller than Google or Apple and we do have some free shuttles including at least one to SF. Some colleagues outside my immediate team use the shuttle. Hope they don't become targets too. Personally, given my work's distance from SF, I think it's semi-nuts to want to live in SF, even w/the shuttle, due to the commute time. And, I'm not a fan of living in SF unless I really needed to, for some odd reason.)

Someone else I know in another forum posted this:
Cassidy: Google bus protesters had the wrong target all along - San Jose Mercury News
The editorial isn't all that interesting. The less-than-sympathetic comments are.
 
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Yeah, I get that, but the at the same time, these wealthier people moving are helping the SF and Oakland city economies by patronizing the businesses, paying taxes, paying the landlords, etc. And, these shuttles help prevent already terrible traffic from becoming worse. Some (but not all) of those folks who really want to live in the city would instead drive their own cars or carpool, but the traffic would be a lot worse than with this shuttles.

As some of other stories I pointed to, the appearance of shuttles themselves is symbolic of the divide.
I agree, as a whole, the shuttles are a good thing and it's just the symbolism of them that the protesters are targeting.

As for the point about bringing in business, tax revenue, paying landlords, etc. the protesters are going to argue that they are already doing that, but it's the "techies" moving in that is displacing them and expanding income inequality in the city (making housing/rental costs rise for everyone).