Google bus protests

Protestors in San Francisco obstruct a bus carrying tech workers on December 9th, 2013

In late 2013, San Francisco Bay Area activists with Heart of the City began protesting the use of shuttle buses by Google and other tech companies to ferry employees from their homes in San Francisco and Oakland to corporate campuses in Silicon Valley, about 40 miles away. This sparked other groups in Oakland and even Seattle to protest private tech commuter buses in their areas.

Protesters viewed the buses as symbols of gentrification and displacement in a city where the rapid growth of the tech sector has driven up housing prices. Activists also opposed the unpaid use of public bus stops by private companies, which transit officials said leads to delays and congestion. In a number of incidents, protestors blocked the tech company's buses from leaving the stops. In one incident in Oakland a protestor broke a window of one bus and slashed the tires of another. And in another incident, someone impersonated a Google employee and only was later revealed to be a protest participant.

One group involved in the bus protests in Oakland, called The Counterforce, also unfurled a banner outside the house of an engineer who works on Google's driverless car project and distributed leaflets accusing the engineer of "building an unconscionable world of surveillance, control and automation".

On January 21, 2014, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency imposed a fee of $1 per day for each public stop used by a private company. This fee, which is expected to raise $1.5 million a year, was the largest the agency could impose without a vote from San Francisco residents. In February, Google donated $6.8 million to the transit agency to provide free public transit for low-income children in San Francisco.

On February 5, 2014, Alexandra Goldman with UC Berkeley City Planning released details of her research on the "shuttle effect" stating that rents rise up to 20% around Google bus stops. The average change was 5%.

On March 31, 2014, tech-advocacy group sf.citi, led by Ron Conway, angel investor in Google and other tech companies, released a statement of support for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's pilot program.

Rosanne de Koning has analyzed Google buses from a spatial justice viewpoint. In addition to causing gentrification by encouraging affluent tech workers to move to San Francisco, the exclusive buses and suburban locations of tech companies serve to isolate tech workers from other San Francisco residents, in a manner similar to gated communities. She identifies inadequate public transit between San Francisco and Silicon Valley as the cause of Google buses' development.

References

"Evict Google" mural at San Francisco's Clarion Alley