[raldi]

The author writes about how corporate shuttles insulate tech workers from transit problems, and how if this weren't the case, there'd be powerful forces pushing to make public transit better.

She misses an opportunity to make a similar point about antidevelopment San Franciscans being insulated by their rent control, but she comes close to it when talking about the Ellis Act. What makes this law so terrifying to longtime, usually antidensity, residents is that it puts them on equal footing with all the new arrivals. It forces them to lie in the bed they've made.

It's like how the draft can turn hawks into doves amongst people who wouldn't otherwise have children in the military.

[thwarted]

Nevermind that the corporate shuttles exist mainly because of the transit problems. If the companies that provide the shuttles weren't aware of the transit issues, they never would have provided the shuttles.

[couradical]

That's her entire point though - in the past, the transit issues would've been fixed with the help/money of the companies moving there. Now, her issue is that companies have invested private money in the shuttles, mitigating the transit headache exclusively for their employees, rather than by providing a public good.

It's up to your own personal politics to decide which of those is more desirable though.

[thwarted]

Is that the point? "In the past" there was a massive plan to build BART lines to all over the Bay Area[0] that never came to fruition. There isn't even serious talk about doing this. Modern companies, which didn't exist, are having to deal with the short-sightedness of times past (however, this is a regular lament of the young). It's not that these companies don't necessarily not want to provide for the public good (I don't know if they do or not, it's inconsequential), it's that the public didn't want them to. Even if there were plans, by the companies, to contribute to "solving" transit issues, it's easy to have it tied up in frustrating planning stages, a la Geary Bus Rapid Transit[1].

Meanwhile, people have to get to work.

What we're seeing is the result of a number of strong, independent, competing systems (transit, property rights, rent control, NIMBY, etc), working in isolation, resulting in a massive, fustercluck that doesn't have a solid solution that does anything other than continue to perpetuate it's own bureaucracy.

And again, saying that the companies are not doing anything to "solve" the transit problems ignores the fact that busing employees, in fact, are part of "solving" transit problems, specifically those of highway traffic (and second order impacts like greenhouse gas emissions and roadwear).

[0] this makes the internet rounds with Bay Area people every few months, https://www.google.com/search?q=bart+map+1950s

[1] http://sf.streetsblog.org/2013/02/06/geary-brt-advisor-resig...