I had to get to the community police meeting and only had time for photos. I couldn’t confirm all the details, but Officer Alejandro said he heard it was a Google bus that took down the pole at 18th and Dolores this evening.
Rudy Fernandez watched it all go down while sipping away at Dolores Park Cafe. “This big-ass bus took a turn too wide…it all fell over in slow motion,” he said.
Fortunately, no one was injured, though the bus driver has probably had better evenings.
Enjoying the scene, Rudy said, “It’s like a big tourist attraction now. People sitting on it. Dogs peeing on it.”
By the time I left the scene, the Department of Public Works was on the way to clean up the mess.
Why doesn’t the city regulate these buses? I saw one on Market St yesterday pull-up to a MUNI street-car stops in the middle of the street (not one of the side ones but one of the stops in the median) and unload a bunch of yagooface employees… Blocking traffic. Its really sickening that private companies are completely taking over public resources (bus stops, etc.) without any compensation and without any regulation. MUNI buses aren’t allowed on Valencia and yet these massive double-decker Google buses troll up and down the street almost knocking over cyclists in their wake since the buses are too big to fit neatly in the narrow Valencia lanes adjacent to the bike lanes….
I’m sure you looked into whether these buses are in fact unregulated and whether they compensate the city before you posted this, right?
Read up: http://www.sfcta.org/images/stories/Executive/Meetings/cac/2011/05may/Final_SAR_08-09_2_Shuttles_052011_v2.pdf
These buses get large numbers of cars off the street, and in many cases mean people choose to avoid buying a car in the first place, removing parking pressure as well. Transportation policy planners used to consider the office locations that these buses serve as impossible to serve effectively with transit, and now there’s a new privately funded form of collective transportation.
There’s definitely room for improvement, but this uninformed rant doesn’t help anything.
p.s. if you think Muni “isn’t allowed” to run buses on Valencia, you may want to look up the 26 Valencia. It was discontinued during the last round or two of cutbacks because the 14 and 49 are running on Mission just one block over.
Ah, you must work for one of them ben.
And come on, nice people ALSO choose not to buy cars too, not just the mean ones!
hey forthright – I got your joke re: the ‘mean people’ typo on Ben’s reply. I think Ben meant to say ‘this means people…’ but I could be wrong…
Seriously! Debunking FUD with facts is a sure sign of someone with bias. I mean, none of the stuff he said is public information, right? …or, you know, maybe he’s just someone who’s not cool with poisonous individuals spreading lies.