Google Buses Have Some Crying Foul

(TNS) -- The Google bus and its commuter shuttle compatriots would have to stay off San Francisco’s residential streets, pay higher fees and avoid labor disputes if they want to keep sharing Muni bus stops, according to a plan to be released Friday.

The controversial, and temporary, corporate shuttle program ends early next year, but Municipal Transportation Agency officials are recommending the program become permanent — with some critical changes.

“The pilot program is better than what was happening before, and this will make the program even better,” said Paul Rose, an MTA spokesman.

Those modifications, many in response to an MTA analysis of the program released early this month, are scheduled to be released Friday. An open house on the program will be scheduled in early November, and the MTA board will hold hearings in the next couple of months.

But the changes in the plan are not likely to calm the most vocal opponents of the program, who contend the sleek shuttles that haul tech workers to and from Silicon Valley are exacerbating the city’s housing affordability crisis and growing income inequality.

Those critics want the city to conduct comprehensive studies on not only the environmental effects of the shuttles but also the impacts on housing and gentrification.

“Rents have clearly gone up in relation to the proximity of shuttle stops,” said Erin McElroy of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.

The MTA recommendations don’t address impacts on housing or the economy but call for changes in four general areas: fees, driver wages, air quality and traffic impacts on neighbors.

• Higher fees: MTA officials say state law limits them to charging no more than the costs of running and enforcing the program, and they set that fee at $3.67 every time a shuttle visits a Muni stop. The agency plans to step up enforcement of the shuttle program and to make improvements — boarding islands and new shelters, for instance — that will be included in calculating a new per-stop assessment.

How much that will add up to depends on how many shuttles register for the program and how many stops they plan to make, MTA officials said. Critics have called on the agency to charge much higher fees.

• Driver pay: While the proposed policy says nothing about how much corporate shuttle drivers should be paid, it does incorporate a Board of Supervisors Labor Harmony Resolution, which urges the shuttle operators to maintain labor peace with their drivers, and allows their permits to be revoked if labor disputes disrupt operations at the shared stops.

Low wages have been a sore point among drivers, some of whom are so poor they have to live in their cars. Drivers for a number of companies have joined unions, and several companies have agreed to increase wages and improve working conditions.

• Air quality: In an attempt to cut emissions from the diesel-powered buses, the MTA is proposing rules that would put more new vehicles — which run on cleaner fuels and tend to be better maintained — on the streets.

Any operators joining the program would need to use buses manufactured no earlier than 2012. Existing operators would have until 2020 to meet that requirement.

• Residential streets: Many of the complaints about the shuttle program are from residents who think the big, lumbering buses don’t belong on narrow residential streets. MTA staffers agree and are proposing that buses longer than 35 feet, which include most of the commuter shuttles, be limited to wider streets.

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