Take the Google Line To Work
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03.11.07
Google gets hugs for its solar panels, if less so then for their giant jet, but you know they are the real thing when they do the less obvious, more expensive and really effective things. They essentially have built a private transit system of 32 buses with leather seats, wireless internet and bicycle racks. “It’s the most useful Google fringe benefit,” said Wiltse Carpenter, a 45-year-old software engineer. It’s changed my quality of life” Riders can sign up to receive alerts on their computers and cellphones when buses run late and to top it off, they use biodiesel.
According to the Times, They pick up workers as far away as Concord, 54 miles northeast of the Googleplex, as the company’s sprawling Mountain View headquarters are known, and Santa Cruz, 38 miles to the south. The system’s routes cover in excess of 230 miles of freeways, more than twice the extent of the region’s BART commuter train system, which has 104 miles of tracks. ::New York Times
UPDATE: This very sensible letter by Dan Savage was published in the New York Times:
Here's an idea for Google: locate your offices near where people live rather than transporting them all over the San Francisco Bay area.
Most "Googlers" are young and live in San Francisco, where they can find affordable housing and enjoy an urban lifestyle. Surely Google can afford a high-rise office in downtown San Francisco.
Given the obvious need to curtail carbon dioxide emissions, enlightened companies should set an example by locating in downtown areas, where mass transit is ready and waiting.
Establishing corporate campuses in suburban communities like Mountain View, where only a handful of the richest Googlers can afford to live, and busing in thousands of urban employees, makes little sense in an environmentally challenged era.
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I wonder how the travel time compares to car travel? Some times no matter how ecologically sound private or public buses are, they waste another natural resource which we can't get back no matter how hard we try.... time.
I considered a public express bus when I started at my job 8 years ago. Started a few miles from my house and ended right at my employer's door, with only a few stops in between (thus the "express"). I could have sold my car and saved a few thousand each year as I saved my emissions.
The problem? A 45 minute one-way trip vs. 1 1/2 hours one-way on the bus. Mostly because it had to use non-interstate roads for most of its route to connect to the few other points on its route. My personal route was 95% on the interstate (which was easier on the car, too). I couldn't justify spending almost 8 extra days of my life per year on the bus... just like many people won't go back to trans-ocean ship travel even though it is better than air travel.
Hopefully the Google buses don't have the same lag problem.
I work at yahoo and we also have shuttles (biodiesel...but no leather seats) from SF (three routes in SF and two in the East Bay) Just to note, it is actually more expensive to live in San Francisco than the suburbs due to the high price of real estate and rent.
Anyway, there are about forty people on my bus every day and it adds about twenty minutes to my commute over driving. But it is so worth it, I just sleep on the way to work! Also, 'most' googlers and yahoos do not live in San Francisco. Most live in the San Jose/Mountain View/Sunnyvale area, so moving to SF would cause more people to drive farther (I would love it though). The reason for all this commuting is that people with families can't afford to live close to work and many people (like me) don't want to live in the suburbs. I don't own a car.
Look, I may not have grown up in the bay area, I just go to SJSU, but from what I've seen, Santa Clara county has one of the most amazing public transportation systems I've seen.