The google bus and the regular bus seem equally annoying to be stuck behind.

Normal bus uses the bus stop, which is on the sidewalk and does not block traffic. The question that started this tangent was "why can't the private bus just stop 20 feet in either direction."

Actually, i asked like a hundred-million questions ago if the bus stop was a special stopping lane or just a sign on the side of the road.

The fact that they're apparently a special stopping lane means that "using the bus stop" is actually a thing.

A SF bus stop is a section of the curb (parking) lane, painted & marked.

Many parts of SF have effectively no street parking available. Long ago it used to be common to use a bus stop when stopping for just a few minutes. They raised that ticket from $20 to infinity so nobody does that anymore. Drivers who need to stop for a few minutes double park. Private person, delivery truck, taxi, cop: everybody does it.

MSPAINTS TIME

Bro I'm pretty sure the cops are pretty relaxed about stopping in the bus lane, probably just give you a heads-up for you to move if it's not too much trouble

Assuming SF's bus patterns are like Seattle's, it's not at all hard to coordinate things such that there should never be a time that googlebus and regular bus conflict.

Lots of SF busses run every ten minutes and if they're anything like all city busses everywhere are sometimes late. It seems like coordinating two separate bus schedules in rush hour SF traffic so that there would be no conflicts ever would be extraordinarily difficult.

Amazon has shuttles around Seattle AFAIK, or at least they used to at one point after they moved offices to South Lake Union. Didnt stop at bus stops IIRC.

So we're not talking about the "middle of the street"???

regardless, see my previous point about conflating the normative and the positive.

what do you think should be the solution here?

if private bus operators can just pay a license fee and use the bus stop space, how is this different than the status quo? There will still be backups, right? are the license fees going to be distributed to the drivers who have to slow down?

buses here just stop in the "middle" of the street (i.e. the rightmost lane). drivers know this and get the **** out of that lane when they see a bus in front of them.

MSPaints always make me happy.

I wonder how the guys that invented MSPaint got to work.
Well, you're right that it doesn't actually change anything but it seems fair that they should pay for the use.

Everyone should move out to the sticks, problem solved!

Microsoft has a lot of busses and shuttles. They stop regularly at Overlake TC. Microsoft also has an allowance for using public transportation instead. There a few public transportation bus routes that cater to Microsoft employees. It is probably a good idea given all the folks that derive a paycheck from Microsoft directly or indirectly. Also given the Puget Sound area traffic situation.

I mean jesus ****ing christ man. YOU MEAN YOU'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE EXACT POINT OF THE STREET EQUIDISTANT FROM THE CURBS???? BOOM GOTCHA CHECKMATE

If we're talking practical terms, there are plenty of lines where the google bus stopping won't matter and some where they should never stop. It's not hard to figure out which is which.

There's a similar unconventional commute option in SF: stranger carpooling. The bay bridge is expensive and congested, but it's cheaper and quicker in the carpool lane. So people who drive go to well known spots to pick people up for the ride across the bridge.

At first this was just a thing people did. Then the city decided it was worth supporting, so it made the drop off / pickup areas officially for the carpoolers. It's marked where to queue if you want to go to <destination>.

Which just makes sense, the carpoolers are helping. As are the google busses.

+1, duh

FEEEEEEWINGS

I'd be slightly surprised if the super high volume bus routes were the ones where the googlers were being picked up. (those are for poors).

Do you guys even know what you're arguing about anymore? Because I sure don't.

Yeah people seem to be trying to put appropriate feelings to these protesters when they are just annoyed by the corporations taking over their world or whatever hippie bull****.

The techie Puritans. If they are doing their job coding Farmville and disrupting the system why won't the poors do their job and be unseen?

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1...gn=mostpopular

Let's be real: this is all about people who don't work at Google/Facebook/et al. being jelly of those who do. Everything else is just a bunch of meow chow.

Keeed doing terrible work itt

I like the one guy who says they are free.

Also I wonder how much google employees pay in the various tax revenues that go to the city proper. I bet it is fairly significant.

Why do those dirty hippies want all of google employees to drive individual cars anyways?

SF buses tend to not come for an hour then 6 of them pop up over the hill at once.

Muni gotta have those 40 days/year of no-call/no-show then OT then next day on your day off - or whatever.