The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) will meet today at 1 p.m. to adopt a pilot program to regulate the use of Muni stops by private shuttles. The buses now use the stops at will.
Earlier this month the SFMTA, the Mayor’s office and the tech companies agreed on the details for the 18-month pilot program. But just in case Google employees decide to venture down to the hearing at City Hall, Google offered some tips on what to say.
To help our readers prep for today’s meeting, we have turned the agency’s PowerPoint presentation into a slide show and linked to the documents for today’s meeting. The latter include the staff’s recommendation that the agency adopt the Commuter Shuttle Policy and Pilot Program.
The newly regulated buses will help the city recover its costs by charging the companies $1 every time one of its shuttles uses a stop. It’s unclear whether there is a separate permit fee.
Absent from the alternatives the SFMTA considered was any thinking about using the Caltrain stations in San Francisco or the large parking lot at the Daly City BART station as a place where the shuttles could pick up and drop off tech workers. At present, San Francisco State University’s shuttles pick up students at the Daly City BART station.
For those who feel strongly about the issue, today’s meeting begins at 1 p.m., Room 400, City Hall 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place.
I don’t see anything THAT wrong with Google offering people talking points. And actually, those talking points are kinda nice. We do want people to love our city… Too often in this conversation people seem to forget that its actual humans who are writing these memos and working in these companies. And many of them do really care, have lived in the city for years, and are a part of the community.
The techcrunch article criticizes the memo, I think unfairly, but does offer a very good idea:
Create a Google.org initiative that focuses specifically on Bay Area-centered infrastructure improvements. Lots of non-profits are suffering – my own is threatened by rising rent costs. If we can brainstorm together to make this work for us, its preferable to trolling and sniping online.
I don’t see anything THAT wrong with Google offering people talking points. And actually, those talking points are kinda nice. We actually do want people to love our city and we actually do get along.
The techcrunch article criticizes the memo, I think unfairly, but does offer a very good idea:
Create a Google.org section that focuses specifically on Bay Area centered infrastructure improvements.
We are two high school students working on a documentary about gentrification in the mission. Growing up in San Francisco, we have experienced the ever changing nature of our city and feel impassioned about documenting it. The process of filmmaking thus far has been exciting, interesting, and eye opening to say the least. Because we are taking on this project as a personal endeavor rather than part of a class, we are faced with the reality that it takes funds to create a quality documentary. That is why we’ve come to you to ask for your help in supporting our project. Please check us out at:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missionfilms/mi-casa-no-es-su-casa
I imagine that for the big meeting with HappyFace Surveillance Corporation, Ed Lee crammed his flabby white flesh into a mesh bodystocking, sloppily applied way too much red lipstick, and got down on his knees begging to be humiliated, his tears causing his mascara to run down his cheeks.
The HappyFace Surveillance Corporation lawyers surrounded the pathetic kneeling figure, unzipped, then offered $1 per stop, and Lee whimpered “thank you, thank you, master, thank you”.
$1 per stop is a pittance, a token charge. Make it $1 per employee picked up.
But the point is that this is not a profit center for the city, and this should not be an attempt at extortion.
Rather the idea is that the charge should cover the tiny, marginal and incremental cost of having a bus use a city stop just ten times a week for a minute or two each time.
A buck sounds about right to me.
I’m all for the Google/Facebook, etc buses but I wish they wouldn’t drive in the left-hand lane on the freeway. They cause more traffic issues by requiring cars that want to pass to have to move to the right to pass.
Calling these mammoth behemoths that are the size of Greyhound buses and barrel through pristine Victorian neighborhoods “shuttles” is an obscenity.
What do they think, that we don’t know what shuttle buses actually look like?
A charge to use MUNI stops does nothing to solve the REAL problems they cause.
Make them pick up their passengers at 7th & Market, period end of story.
The word “shuttle” refers to the frequency and convenience of the transit service, and tells you nothing about the vehicles’ size and mass.
I routinely see tourist buses of similar dimensions, and trucks that are even bigger and heavier.
If the city wishes to develop new rules for vehicles based on weight and size, they can do so. But picking on vehicles based on their use makes you look prejudicial and envious.
Envious?
Why is it you Republicans call anyone who objects to corporations trampling all over us “envious”?
I happen to be pro-Google and in fact yesterday I apologized to a man waiting for a Google bus for the despicable harassment commuters have suffered.
But Google it needs to stop running their leviathan double deckers through quiet and pristine residential neighborhoods and pick up their passengers downtown, period and of story.
That should apply to any large vehicle and Prius’s
hey something went down at a google engineers house in berkeley this morning
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/01/21/18749504.php
What the fuck?
It’s that much-fabled Berkeley tolerance and respect for differences.
A day without one of John’s cynical tu quoque fallacies is a day without spurious rhetoric.