p.s. I think all MUNI lines except the street cars and ones with overhead wires should be privatized (with performance standards mandatory for contract renewal or extension).

But let’s call these elite forms of transport precisely what they are: Tech Limos. They are the black AmEx credit cards of transportation.

One has to wonder if Google Guy A sees a Yahoo Guy B on a competing transport and asks himself in his best Patrick Bateman, “I can’t believe that Bryce prefers the Yahoo bus to mine.”

Let’s stop pretending that these buses serve to benefit the public or that they ease traffic. They serve to benefit the few that ride them…and to make a statement to the rest of us.

Andy’s observation remains, though: perhaps these buses won’t ease traffic on the roads and will simply create traffic for sites like MissionMission.

That’s just often top of my old head the reasons this is flawed.

That being said, the one thing that keeps San Francisco as affordable(!) as it is(!) is precisely the fact that Caltrain and Muni are so unreliable and backwards. If there were REAL public transport connecting SF with the Valley and points between – something that lived up to the name of “mini bullet train” or whatever it is that Caltrain calls its pseudo express service, for instance – then it wouldn’t be the high incomes of the passengers on a few busses pushing the cost of everything inevitably higher, but a vast wave of surplus capital sweeping a considerable number of us away in the simple market logic of lots of money chasing relatively scarce commodities (housing and related amenities, including restaurants, recreation, etc. etc. etc.

So, I guess the bottom line is, thank god that we have the haphazard transit mess that we have; the tech busses are just the thin edge of the wedge!

If google cared about the issue they’d have their campus in San Francisco like any sensible and responsible company.