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San Francisco tech bus protests
Protesters in San Francisco obstruct a bus carrying tech workers on December 9, 2013
DateDecember 2013 – February 2016
Location
San Francisco, Oakland, California US
Caused byDirect cause
Private transportation services operating parallel to municipal services
Indirect cause
Gentrification / Displacement
Methods
Resulted inBus transport Commuter Shuttle Program since February 1, 2016
Parties

San FranciscoCity of San Francisco

 Silicon Valley tech
         companies

Community activists

The San Francisco tech bus protests, also known as the Google bus protests, were a series of protests in the San Francisco Bay Area beginning in late 2013, when the use of shuttle buses employed by local area tech companies became widely publicized. The tech buses have been called "Google buses" although other companies—such as tech companies Apple, Facebook, and Yahoo, and biotechnology corporation Genentech—also pay for private shuttle services.[1]

The buses are used to transport employees from their homes in San Francisco and Oakland to corporate campuses in Silicon Valley, about 40 miles (64 km) south.[2] Anti-tech bus protesters viewed the buses as symbols of gentrification and displacement in a city where rapid growth in the tech sector and insufficient new housing construction[3] has led to increasing rent and housing prices.[4]

In reaction to the protests, the City of San Francisco began provisional regulation of the shuttle services in August 2014, with some of the shuttle stops being closed or reassigned to other locations within the city.[5] A permanent solution, known as the Commuter Shuttle Program, took effect on February 1, 2016. This subjected the shuttle services to regulatory processes and monetary compensation requirements, imparting greater legitimacy upon their use. Owing to these new regulations, by May 2017 the protests had largely abated.[6]

Background

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A Google bus parked near Google's office buildings in Sunnyvale.

The core issues surrounding the use of buses were that only employees of tech companies were allowed to use them, and for a substantial amount of time the buses used city infrastructure without compensating the city for their use. According to Berkeley professor Abigail De Kosnik, the resulting protests can be viewed as "synecdoches for the anger that many San Francisco residents feel towards technological privilege and its facilitation of a widening of a class divide in the city", and that the Google bus protests were "attempts to disrupt the smoothness of technological privilege's spread."[7]

Transportation needs

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Growth in the technology sector of Silicon Valley at the beginning of the 21st century encouraged an influx of tech workers to the area, increasing demand for public transportation in the greater Bay Area.[8] Inadequate links between San Francisco and Silicon Valley workplaces became a leading factor in Silicon Valley employers' 2008 implementation of tech buses as viable alternatives for transportation.[8] As a net gain, busing ensured employees had a convenient way to commute to work while allowing for tech workers to live outside of Silicon Valley. According to a 2012 report by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), there were approximately 6,500 tech commuters who used shuttle buses to take them from their respective homes to work locations outside the city.[9]

Gentrification

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See also: Gentrification of San Francisco and San Francisco housing shortage

At the same time, the growth of the technology companies caused gentrification.[10][11] Rents were rising and evictions were increasing in frequency by late 2013.[12] The use of exclusive busing services, along with the suburban locations of tech companies, served to isolate tech workers from other San Francisco residents in a manner similar to gated communities.[8] One commentator remarked:

The buses roll up to San Francisco's bus stops in the morning and evening, but they are unmarked, or nearly so, and not for the public. Most of them are gleaming white, with dark-tinted windows, like limousines, and some days I think of them as the spaceships on which our alien overlords have landed to rule over us. Sometimes the Google Bus just seems like one face of Janus-headed capitalism, in that they contain the people too valuable even to use public transport or drive themselves.[13]

Dueling transportation systems

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Concerns soon arose over the busing, most notably the shuttles' use of public bus stops. Having different transport systems attempting to use the same areas at each stop in an uncoordinated fashion brought about unnecessary traffic congestion, for which the City of San Francisco was not compensated.[14][15] An internal city report stated:

Prior to August 2014, San Francisco did not regulate or collect fees from commuter shuttles. Shuttles operated throughout the City on both large arterial and small non-arterial streets. Shuttles loaded and unloaded passengers in a variety of places whether it was legal or not, including white loading zones, red Muni zones, and other vacant curb spaces. When curb space was unavailable, shuttles often would load or unload passengers in the travel lane. The lack of rules for where and when loading and unloading were permitted resulted in confusion for shuttle operators and neighbors, inconsistent enforcement, and real and perceived conflicts with other transportation modes.[16]

Protests

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The protests started on December 9, 2013, when activists from a group called Heart of the City blocked and entered a double-decker bus used by Google at 24th Street and Valencia in San Francisco's Mission District.[17] The main strategy used during the protests was to briefly detain buses while engaged at their stops loading passengers. Afterwards, messages by the protesting groups were disseminated through media, communicating their actions to larger audiences outside the city. This sparked other groups across the Bay in Oakland and out of state in Seattle to protest private tech commuter buses in their areas.[18][19] In the majority of incidents, protesters merely blocked the buses from leaving their stops.[20] At a protest organized by Eviction Free San Francisco on December 20, 2013, a group of protesters blocked a bus while an organizer using a loudspeaker from the back of a truck drew attention to the blockade, which lasted 30 minutes.

On April 1, 2014, April Fools' Day, protesters wearing blue, yellow and red costumes blocked a tech bus carrying Google workers at 24th and Valencia, preventing it from departing.[21] An organizer named "Judith Hart" — claiming to be the president of Google's new Gmuni division – began answering questions on a loudspeaker from the gathering crowd of onlookers while distributing Gmuni passes, which she claimed allowed the public to ride the tech buses for free. After several people from the crowd were denied boarding, the organizer acknowledged to arriving police that the bus driver "may not have received notice of the program" and the bus was ultimately allowed to depart.[21]

Across the bay in Oakland, protesters were more pointed in their blockade, with one protester breaking the window of a bus[22] while an unrelated second protester slashed the tire of another bus.[23] Other protesters detaining a bus in Oakland unfurled a banner containing expletives.[24] In one incident on April 2, 2014, a protester climbed to the roof of a Yahoo bus close by Bay Area Rapid Transit's MacArthur station in Oakland, and vomited on the windshield.[25] According to an organizer from San Francisco, the protests in Oakland were not affiliated with the San Francisco groups, with "the only real connection is that most of our communities are being heavily displaced and people are very angry".[24]

Reactions

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Law enforcement

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In almost all incidents, the protesters who were obstructing buses eventually moved of their own accord or at police direction. Very few incidents of arrests were made during the protests, due largely to so-called Graham factors, whereby use of the police power to arrest is considered inexpedient in cases where people are viewed as peacefully protesting. In these cases, San Francisco Police Department officers are trained to de-escalate the situation by using other, non-confrontational means, such as communicating with non-compliant subjects.[26]

SF Board of Supervisors

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With the accumulation of media and public interest that the protests garnered, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors held their first three-hour meeting on the protests at City Hall on January 7, 2014. Tech bus operators had been offered a solution whereby they would be charged $1 per stop per day, regardless of how many workers got on or off.[22] Angry residents, citing the $2 fee[a] San Franciscans had to pay to board city buses, demanded that the private bus services pay more for their share.[29][4] In the meantime, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was asked by the Board of Supervisors to commission a panel to begin gathering information on a long-term solution. Six months later, in July 2014, SFMTA began implementing its first preliminary fee of $1.00 for each public stop used by the buses, which was expected to raise $1.5 million during the 18 months that it was to be in effect.[23]

Tech companies

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In February 2014, Google donated $6.8 million to SFMTA to provide free public transit for low-income children in San Francisco.[30] 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 SFMTA's pilot program.[31]

Resolution

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In 2015 SFMTA released the results of its fact-finding pilot program, which found that about 47% of workers in tech areas would commute to and from work using their own vehicles if they did not have the tech buses available to them, increasing the amount of privately owned vehicles on area roadways.[1] This led SFMTA's board of directors to approve a broader solution, thereafter known as the Commuter Shuttle Program. The program allowed the city to regulate the buses by delineating where they could travel to, their size, and how much each bus was to pay the city as compensation for their usage of city bus stops.[1] Sporadic protesting continued until February 2016,[32] when SFMTA approved an extension to the program, allowing it to continue beyond its initial end date of March 31, 2017.[33] This extension carried tighter regulations of the buses, including limits to larger buses, final approval on all main roads to be used, and city provided safety training for the drivers.[32] Stricter coordination would also be made through continuous GPS tracking of the buses.[34] Finally, the extension made permanent the city's ability to collect their per-stop fee,[33] which as of October 2018 stood at $7.65 per stop.[35]

Notes

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  1. ^ At the time of this meeting on January 7, 2014, regular cash bus fare was $2.00.[27] As of July 1, 2019, regular cash bus fare was $3.00.[28]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Kelly, Heather (November 17, 2015). "Tech Buses to Become Permanent in San Francisco". CNNMoney.
  2. ^ Sarah McBride (December 9, 2013). "Google bus blocked in San Francisco protest vs gentrification". Reuters. Archived from the original on December 9, 2013. Retrieved December 9, 2013.
  3. ^ Clark, Patrick (June 23, 2017). "Why Can't They Build More Homes Where the Jobs Are?". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on August 28, 2017. Retrieved December 1, 2017. San Francisco's metropolitan area added 373,000 net new jobs in the last five years [2012 – 2017]—but issued permits for only 58,000 units of new housing.
  4. ^ a b Gumbel, Andrew (January 25, 2014). "San Francisco's guerrilla protest at Google buses swells into revolt". the Guardian.
  5. ^ Lee, Wendy (July 9, 2016). "More Tech Workers Driving Solo After SF Cuts Shuttle Stops". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved July 18, 2017.
  6. ^ Pender, Kathleen (May 22, 2017). "Will Occupy Silicon Valley be the sequel to Occupy Wall Street?". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved July 18, 2017.
  7. ^ De Kosnik, Abigail (November 2, 2014). "Disrupting Technological Privilege: The 2013–14 San Francisco Google Bus Protests". Performance Research. 19 (6): 99. doi:10.1080/13528165.2014.985117. S2CID 220340395.
  8. ^ a b c de Koning, Rosanne. "Google Bus and Spatial Justice: A Call for Greater Social Responsibility in Urban Governance". Digital Academic Repository of the University of Amsterdam. University of Amsterdam. Retrieved March 4, 2015.
  9. ^ Paine, Carli (September 4, 2012). "Private Shuttle Policy Development Memorandum" (PDF) (Press release). San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency SFMTA. Retrieved July 18, 2017.
  10. ^ Solnit, Rebecca (2014). "The Google bus: Silicon Valley invades". Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness. Trinity Univ Pr. pp. 267–268. ISBN 9781595341983. OCLC 1023229989.
  11. ^ Miner, Casey (December 17, 2013). "In A Divided San Francisco, Private Tech Buses Drive Tension". All Things Considered. National Public Radio (NPR).
  12. ^ Attoh, Kafui A. (March 20, 2014). "What Type of Public Transit for What Type of Public?". New Labor Forum. 23 (2): 58–66. doi:10.1177/1095796014527919. S2CID 155637981.
  13. ^ Solnit, Rebecca (2014). "Diary". London Review of Books. 36 (4).
  14. ^ Weiss, Todd R. (January 7, 2014). "Google, Apple, Others to Pay Bus Stop Use Fees in San Francisco". eWeek.
  15. ^ Streitfeld, David (January 21, 2014). "Activists Accuse Tech Community of Throwing San Francisco Under the Bus". The New York Times.
  16. ^ "Item 11 Commuter Shuttle Program Continuation – Staff Report" (PDF). San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. SFMTA. December 19, 2016. p. 6.
  17. ^ "Google Bus Block" (Press release). San Francisco, CA: Heart of the City (direct action affinity group). December 9, 2013. Retrieved July 18, 2017.
  18. ^ David Streitfeld (December 20, 2013). "Google Bus Vandalized During Protest". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 29, 2014. Retrieved December 20, 2013.
  19. ^ Nick Wingfield (February 10, 2014). "Seattle Gets Its Own Tech Bus Protest". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 29, 2014. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  20. ^ Bhattacharjee, Riya (April 2, 2014). "Protesters Block, Vomit on Tech Commuter Buses". NBC Bay Area.
  21. ^ a b "April Fool's Protesters Block Google Bus In San Francisco Ahead Of Key Vote". CBS SF Bay Area / 5KPIX. April 1, 2014. Archived from the original on September 23, 2017. Retrieved September 23, 2017.
  22. ^ a b Streitfeld, David; Wollan, Malia (January 31, 2014). "Tech Rides Are Focus of Hostility in Bay Area". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 12, 2014.
  23. ^ a b Cabanatuan, Michael; Kurtis Alexander (January 21, 2014). "Google bus backlash: S.F. to impose fees on tech shuttles". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on March 12, 2014. Retrieved March 12, 2014.
  24. ^ a b Oreskovic, Alexei (December 20, 2013). "Protesters block Apple, Google buses in San Francisco area". Reuters.
  25. ^ Huet, Ellen (April 2, 2014). "Protesters block, vomit on Yahoo bus in Oakland". The Technology Chronicles.
  26. ^ San Francisco Police Officers Association (April 6, 2016). "Use of Force Proposed General Order / Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST)" (PDF). SanFranciscoPolice.org. SFPOA. p. 2.
  27. ^ "Possible Changes to Fares, Fees, Fines, Rates and Charges: Public Transit and Paratransit Fares" (PDF). San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. SFMTA. April 1, 2014. p. 1.
  28. ^ "Fare changes July 2019" (PDF). SFMTA. Retrieved December 29, 2019.
  29. ^ Oremus, Will (January 16, 2014). "Has the Tech Backlash Gotten So Bad That Googlers Need Private Security?". Slate.
  30. ^ Coté, John; Marisa Lagos (February 28, 2014). "Google says $6.8 million for youth Muni passes just a start". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on March 13, 2014. Retrieved March 13, 2014.
  31. ^ Rodriguez, Joe Fitzgerald (March 31, 2014). "Opposing sides rally troops for tech bus throw-down". San Francisco Bay Guardian Online.
  32. ^ a b "Protest Blocks Tech Buses as SF Supes Mull Program Extension". NBC Bay Area. February 9, 2016.
  33. ^ a b San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (February 23, 2017). "Commuter Shuttle Program / Project Updates". SFMTA.
  34. ^ "Commuter Shuttlre Program Policy: GPS Real-Time Location and Movement Data" (PDF). San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. SFMTA. January 2017. pp. 2, 12.
  35. ^ "Commuter Shuttle Program / Project Details / Fees" (PDF). San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. October 2018. p. 2. Retrieved October 7, 2018.

Further reading

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