You are describing different parts of the elephant. The fact that these buses create a feeling of segregation is indisputable. Those companies do have a choice between providing their own private buses or working within the respective communities to create a better overall public transit system.
It seems to me like this should be in the interest of the employees as well. After all, what if I want to take a bus somewhere else on the weekend, or want to go somewhere with friends?
Maybe these aspects (community integration, public transit in general) are not part of your personal objective function, but that does not make the uproar ridiculous. It just explains why you personally do not care about it.
It's a large (mostly private) vehicle masked as public transport that stops at regular public bus stops. There's a reason public buses clearly state where they're going: it's so that _everyone_ has easy access to them. Personal freedom is not the issue at hand here: many of the employees can probably afford BMWs. It's about bad public policy that creates a rift in society.
Google isn't paying for the roads or the right to use the public bus stops. It's taxpayer money; not every taxpayer (an aging lady, for instance) might want their money to go towards making a Google Bus possible.
"Google isn't paying for the roads or the right to use the public bus stops. It's taxpayer money..."
Google and its employees are taxpayers. Google pays corporate income tax to California. The fuel Google buys to run the buses is taxed by California; fuel taxes typically go (or at least are intended to go) towards funding roads. Google employees pay state income tax, sales tax and SF real estate taxes.
And are you sure private companies don't pay to use the public bus stops? These stops are presumably owned by SF, so if they wanted to charge Google to use them they could easily do so.
I don't know about US, but here in Europe, companies and entrepreneurs pay so called "road tax", a compulsory amount for each vehicle in their fleet. For commercial vehicles and buses, it is a pretty nice sum.
That gives them right to use the roads. In this case, the Google bus is no different than other private bus or shuttle.
> You are describing different parts of the elephant. The fact that these buses create a feeling of segregation is indisputable. Those companies do have a choice between providing their own private buses or working within the respective communities to create a better overall public transit system.
I don't really buy this argument. That's why all nations have and pay governments and governments should care about providing an overall public transportation system that works. That's why employees and companies pay taxes. I can totally understand that companies want to provide for their employees to do better work, but improving the public on their own is definitely outside of the scope for most companies.
If we wanted companies to fix the infrastructure themselves, we'd get a situation kinda like in Snow Crash.
It seems to me like this should be in the interest of the employees as well. After all, what if I want to take a bus somewhere else on the weekend, or want to go somewhere with friends?
Maybe these aspects (community integration, public transit in general) are not part of your personal objective function, but that does not make the uproar ridiculous. It just explains why you personally do not care about it.