|
 "San Francisco, not for sale" and "Stop evictions now" numbered
among the slogans yellow-vested protesters chanted as they
surrounded the double-decker bus. Google's offices are in Mountain
View, about 34 miles away from the incident.
The protest, organized by an advocacy group called Heart of the
City, took aim at private commuter buses which whisk thousands of
employees from stops around San Francisco to jobs at technology
companies south of the city such as Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and
Google.
Advocates of the buses say they ease traffic on already clogged
highways as workers give up driving individual cars for the
convenience of riding in the buses, which usually come with plush
seats and Wi-Fi.
Foes say the buses jam up municipal bus stops and remove potential
customers from cash-strapped public transportation systems,
including regional rail service, that could use their revenue.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is proposing a set
of rules around commuter buses and the use of public bus stops, a
spokesman, Paul Rose, said via email.
"The proposed policy balances the need to minimize impacts on Muni
with the benefits that shuttles provide by taking thousands of cars
off the street," Rose said. The agency plans to present the proposal
to its board in January. If approved, a pilot test will go into
affect in the summer, he added.
"We certainly don't want to cause any inconvenience to San Francisco
residents and we and others in our industry are working with SFMTA
to agree on a policy on shuttles in the city," a Google spokeswoman
said.
Bemused Google workers spent about a half hour sitting on the bus
until the protesters disbanded, many of the workers sending Tweets
about the incident.
"My shuttle came under siege this morning," tweeted Alejandro
Villarreal, who attached a photo of the scene as it appeared through
the bus window. Villarreal's LinkedIn profile identifies him as a
program manager at Google.
"Don't hate on me for my job," tweeted @FashionistaLab, whose
Twitter description identifies her as a style editor at Google
Shopping. "You think I LIKE commuting to Mountain View? This protest
is dumb."
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A man who screamed at protest organizer Erin McElroy, 31, was later
identified as a union worker who was pretending to be a Google
employee upset at being delayed by the protest.
Increasingly, graffiti has appeared around town complaining about
the buses.
"Google scum," read one notice pasted to a light controller at the
corner of South Van Ness Street, a major artery for the commuter
buses, photographed by local resident George Lipp on Sunday. "Keep
catching your bus," read a notice on the other side of the light
controller.
The commuter-bus situation "has become very symbolic of what's
happening to the city in terms of gentrification," said McElroy in a
phone interview. "It's creating a system where San Francisco is
being flooded with capital, and creating a technology class where
other people can't compete."
Heart of the City is planning a demonstration on Tuesday against a
developer that plans to evict residents from rent-controlled
apartments, she added. The total number of evictions jumped 25
percent to 1,716 in the 12 months ending in February 2013, according
to a report by San Francisco's budget and legislative analyst,
despite strong tenant-protection laws.
San Francisco protests against gentrification and evictions have
occurred with growing frequency in recent months.
Last month, message service Twitter's IPO sparked a demonstration
outside its headquarters.
Many residents feel left out of the technology boom and blame it for
rising rents.
The median rent on a two-bedroom apartment rose 10 percent over the
last year to $3,250, more than any other city in the country,
according to online real estate company Trulia. Rents in greater New
York rose just 2.8 percent
The current situation evokes the late 1990s, when a slew of small
Web startups popped up throughout the city, causing tensions over
rising rents and traffic.
(Reporting by Sarah McBride; editing by Richard Chang and Paul Simao)
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