INEQUALITY - San Francisco's Private Tech Buses

"How private tech industry buses became a symbol of the economic divide in San Francisco" PBS NewsHour 3/18/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  The national battle over inequality, the rich vs. the rest of the population, has taken a curious turn in the San Francisco Bay Area, where buses carrying high-tech workers have become a symbol of the divide.

NewsHour special correspondent Spencer Michels has our story.

SPENCER MICHELS (NewsHour):  Every weekday morning, between 7:30 and 10:00, dozens of big, sleek buses roll down Valencia Street in the heart of San Francisco’s traditionally Latino Mission District and other city thoroughfares.

Using bus stops created for city buses, the private coaches pick up a cargo of workers who for the most part have moved into the city and work 30 or 40 miles south of it at places like Google, Facebook, Apple, eBay and Yahoo!  The free buses, generally referred to as Google Buses, are one of the perks for high-tech workers in high demand in Silicon Valley.

When they began rolling six or seven years ago, they were generally praised as an alternative to crowded highways and carbon emissions from cars.  But that’s not the issue, says writer Rebecca Solnit, one of the first to charge that the buses were more than a way to get to work.

REBECCA SOLNIT, Writer:  They’re unmarked, and with tinted windows, so you don’t know who’s inside.  They’re like a cross between a limousine and an armored personnel carrier, cruising around the central city.

SPENCER MICHELS:  Critics say the buses are clogging city bus stops.  And while the tech companies have recently agreed to pay the city a dollar per bus per stop for their use, the critics say it isn’t enough to make up for the congestion they cause.  So feelings are raw.