from Hacker News

Buses for Tech Workers in San Francisco Will Pay Fee

by brnstz on 1/22/14, 4:42 AM with 68 comments

by girvo on 1/22/14, 5:09 AM
As someone in an entirely different country (and lives in a state where they've decided a 30% increase in public transport prices every year is acceptable and not idiotic...) can someone explain to me why there is such a fuss around companies making their employees lives easier by taking care of transport for them?
Heck in some industries, they give you a car, and yet I've never seen anything like this before. I've read a whole stack about this issue but still can't seem to make it click.
by sprizzle on 1/22/14, 5:42 AM
$1 per stop is chump change for a company like Google. I don't see how this fee will create any difference for what the protestors are demanding.
And this type of fee reminds me of a Freakonomics article that talked about how a daycare started charging parents a late fee of $3 and it had an unintended effect of increasing the frequency of late parents, because it rid the parents of moral guilt for being late. In a similar way, despite the fee, the big tech companies are going to continue doing what they're doing, but now they won't feel as bad for it. I don't see how this solves anything.
Freakonomics article: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/0515-1st-le...
by mphillips2357 on 1/22/14, 6:03 AM
People in the comments below have already started complaining that the 1$ fee isn't enough. What would be enough anyway? What do you feel charging a fee is going to accomplish?
The controversy surrounding these buses is just a symptom of the much larger problem, affordable housing development. If you want this issue to go anywhere, stop worrying so much about these buses full of people headed to work. Getting rid of the buses isn't going to solve the real problem. It's just something that people have latched on to.
by blackjack48 on 1/22/14, 6:13 AM
Putting aside the tangential issues of housing and gentrification, the real problem that needs to be addressed is street space. The Mission (where most of these buses are stopping) is a densely-populated urban environment, and yet residents often expect available on-street parking so they can use their basements as storage. Making bus stops and loading zones longer would go a long way towards reducing traffic problems in the area.
by prostoalex on 1/22/14, 5:26 AM
Sure hope the same standards are applied to charter tourist buses and those double-deckers that carry tourists back and forth.
by cbgb on 1/22/14, 5:22 AM
"In a small, cramped city, ...". San Francisco certainly may be small, but I've never known it to be cramped. I feel like its not being cramped is precisely the root of the problem for which "Google" buses erroneously take the blame.
by spikels on 1/22/14, 7:09 AM
This is so stupid. The fee is equal to the cost of the program. Flushing $1.5 million a year down the toilet. Bizarrely this is a victory as the activists wanted the buses outlawed completely.
SF will always be a second best city until it can face it's true demons: decisions made by ideology, that is, without regard to reality or even common sense. I want the tolerant SF of the late 1960s back - a bunch of dockworkers, businessmen, soldiers, factory workers who were cool enough to let freaks and weirdos take over their city. Now the cultural descendants of those freaks complain if you don't look, talk or get to work like them. This needs to stop.
by w1ntermute on 1/22/14, 5:38 AM
Read this book to understand the real problem and how to solve it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0078XGJXO
by eob on 1/22/14, 6:59 AM
Meta-comment: did this post just get kickbanned [1] from the front page?
I've heard it happens on HN but (as only an occasional commenter) I've never noticed it. It just went from #5 to nonexistent.
[1] excuse the IRC lingo
by manifesto on 1/22/14, 5:13 AM
“You allow these companies to illegally use public spaces.” The fix is either stop them from doing so, or make such action not illegal.