[sustran] Google buses

[Eric Britton]

Todd is so right on so many scores. But that word "should" - which I have
run into so often over the last decades, and often from the mouths of my
dearest and most respected friends and colleagues -- is one of the major
reasons why eco-thinking has not made the much needed dents until now. We
should (that's a joke) assiduously avoid it. Righteousness is not an
effective instrument of social change in pluralistic democratic societies.

Politics is the art of the possible. (Thanks Otto for the heads-up).

Or ". . . the art of reconciling the often internally conflicting
interrelationships among people in a society.'

So with that in mind here, what I get from this Google experience is not
what they are doing or have done wrong, but how the bits and prices are
fitting together and what we can learn from them about future policy and
support decisions.

So thanks Google, and keep on truckin'.

Eric Britton


Hi,

To look at this story a bit more broadly, it is about corporate and also
personal responsibility...

While it is clear that it is better for employees to go by this shuttle
bus rather than in their own cars, the main issue is that Google and its
fellow Silicon Valley resident companies have their HQs in a low-density
area with possibly inadequate public transport to the front door. The
very successful CalTrain commuter railway - which goes from San
Francisco to Silicon Valley - is not mentioned directly.

The sitings of these Internet behemoths was the first mistake. So now
everyone has to pay the price for that. And only a minority is using
public transport. These companies should move to denser population
centres - perhaps with incentives. Maybe one big facility should be
split, e.g. with communication between a Google North and Google South
done electronically or via the railway with local feeders (including
cycling), which should be much more efficient per passenger than using a
small shuttle bus.

The greener mode of transport - I would call it "boutique public
transport" - which is the main focus of the article does not mention the
other problems with long-distance commuting, from the difficulties it
creates for people staying connected - physically - to the places they
live (including their children), and also to their colleagues. Both are
important, and achieving both with a motorised solution - even a kind of
communal one using bioDiesel (from what sources?) - is not necessarily
sustainable.

In proximity,
T