Right, there would be more road maintenance, but there is also the fact that A) the buses pay gas tax and have to get license plates etc already and B) they're also reducing the number of cars on the road, which also wear down infrastructure and create traffic.

Parking meters are different because there's a limited resource (street parking) which the city owns and it's trying to ration use of it.

In the case of buses it's in the city's interest to encourage as much bus usage as possible. There's clearly SOME point at which google et al will just say "**** it, we're not paying this fee, have fun with the extra 35,000 cars on the road." If you believe that the buses reduce traffic on net and aren't creating maintenance problems above and beyond what their gas taxes etc pay (and remember to subtract out the road wear caused by the cars they've removed from the road) then yes, any fees beyond whatever extra "bus stop maintenance" they cause (lines have to be repainted every year instead of every 18 months?) is a money grab.


This is empirically false. How many tickets has google gotten?

parking and stopping are two different things.

Well you don't seem to know what parking means. So lol you

Yeah stopping is only 300 bucks. The point is the high fines show obstructing public bus stops is srs business

If charging a few million bucks in fees per year doesn't discourage google from using the busses (and it won't), clearly it's much better for the city to work out some sort of permit system.

No that's the whole point man. Google hasn't been getting tickets because it is google and it is moving rich people around. If some dude sets up a private bus service that competes with city busses to shuttle poors around the city they will get burned to the ground.

Doesn't California get their road maintenance money thru gasoline taxes?

tempest in a teapot. Google is using the bus stops, goggle will pay for a permit, everyone will be happy.

Yes? I mean, that's pretty much the definition of "cash grab".

In the case of parking meter fines, there would still be a social benefit even if the money all goes to a charity rather than the city. The fee itself is the source of the benefit, as that's how parking consumption is throttled.

In this case, the benefit is overwhelmingly to the city, the social benefit occurs with or without the fee.


you mean like a taxi?

Alright mods, this deserves its own thread by this point.

Taxis don't use bus stops

Are these bus stops separate lanes for buses to stop or are they just a sign placed on the side of the road?

When you start digging into the specific of where the bus parks and what not, you're basically missing the forrest for the threes. This isn't really about buses, it's about people who dislike SF being chummy with business and doing things for them that they're not doing for poors.

Which to me is silly because those shouldn't be mutually exclusive things. Hard to help the poors without business to create a tax base. If the real issue is that somewhere along the way the tax breaks you handed out to lure business in aren't doing that- then protest that. Don't **** with somebody's commute to make a point three steps removed from your real point.

(and make that your real point, not all this goofy feelings stuff about culture, which doesn't mean those aren't valid, but to me should take a pretty significant back seat to more immediate financial concerns)

And again, despite living in a city that heavily relies on buses and loves fining drivers, I've never heard of anyone getting a ticket for dropping someone off in a bus zone. It's just not that common.

pvn, if SF created a set amount of bus permits for private buses and auctioned them off, would you feel happier about it not being a money grab since it would actually be limiting the traffic problem?

Just because your dad ran out of steam/sold out doesn't mean it was the right thing to do. Embracing the modern world is not some universal goal and it shouldn't be. And just because you have to strain to see the merits of resisting corporate power doesn't mean others do, or that the cause isn't even bigger than Vietnam. It happens to mean you can't see well.

The issues of plutocracy and environmental destruction are in fact much bigger than one war. They are more complex and more critical to the survival of many more people than those who were at immediate risk in Vietnam.

Is your contention that more buses = greater traffic problems? I'm not sure I understand your phrasing.

It's a money grab because it's hard to see the cost associated with the use of the bus stop (assuming that the costs for just being a bus are already captured in some fashion). That doesn't make it wrong on face value in my eyes, but I don't know that I'd buy an argument that the current status is costing anybody money.

Maybe if Google had just asked nicely from the get go this would have all been avoided.

Take out an ad in the paper, have their media liaison craft his best hippie speak "Hey man would it be cool if we like, used your bust stops also. It would really help us out, and help you out by keeping less cars on the road. What do you say? Help a brother out? Sounds like a win/win dude. Peace."

Google providing their employees mass transit is...what, Google exerting their huge corporate power? Really?

And stopping Google from providing mass transit is a bigger cause than Vietnam?

I mean, I get that issues can be nuanced, and that the big (ie long-term) picture sometimes requires a different perspective, but I don't think that means that every issue related to corporations is more important than every issue not related to corporations.

pvn was complaining earlier that no matter what the fee is, Google et all will pay it, ergo the fee being charged doesn't accomplish anything and is just a money grab. With a limited number of permits, the fee would accomplish reducing the number of private buses and reducing congestion at bus stops.

I'm not endorsing this, just curious if it solves pvn's problems.

how would that be limiting the traffic problem? each additional bus reduces traffic.

My first thought is that it is a made-up limit (such as a limited # of permits), unlike the physical space available for parking which is actually finite, makes it still seem like a cash grab.

That being said, it does take time for buses to stop and pick up/drop off passengers, so perhaps the fact that time is finite should/could justify having limited permits. However, until demand for the permits exceeds the # they could give out, it might still seem like a cash grab.

He means the traffic problem specifically at bus stops. Whether or not it's an actual 'problem' is likely debatable.