Google's buses help its workers beat the rush

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That sentiment is not surprising. Even Googlers have to worry about the area's high real estate prices, which have sent families to the outer confines of the region in search of cheaper housing. And the hopping cultural and social life of San Francisco remains a magnet for young workers, even though the commute to offices in Silicon Valley, some 35 miles to the south, can take well over an hour. A recent survey showed that for the 10th year in a row, traffic was the No. 1 concern for the area's residents.

But on a rainy winter afternoon, as some 20 Google employees hopped onto the 4:40 p.m. back to the Mission and Noe Valley districts of San Francisco, those concerns seemed distant. The shuttle merged onto Highway 101, made its way across three lanes packed with slow-moving vehicles and into the carpool lane, where it began speeding past hundreds of commuters.

Inside, most riders appeared to abide by the shuttle's etiquette rules. Cell phone conversations are allowed if they are work-related and sotto voce. But loud personal calls are definitely out. In fact, except for a couple snuggled together, no one sat on adjacent seats. Many took out iPods or laptops and worked, surfed the Web or watched videos.

"People tend to be quiet and respectful that this is people's downtime," said Diana Alberghini, a 33-year-old program manager.

Google will not discuss the cost of the program, which it operates through Bauer's Limousine, a private transportation company in San Francisco. But the shuttles appear to be having the desired effect on recruiting. Michael Gaiman, a 23-year-old Web applications engineer who lives in San Francisco and was recently hired, said he turned down an offer from Apple before accepting the job at Google. "It definitely was a factor," Gaiman said of the shuttle.

Colin Klingman, 38, who works at Google as an independent software contractor--and hence has to pay a small fee for the shuttle to comply with tax rules--said he waited to apply to Google until there was a stop near his San Francisco house.

Those types of decisions have been noticed around Silicon Valley. Yahoo, a leading competitor to Google, began a shuttle program in 2005 that could be described as the Pepsi to Google's Coke. It shuttles about 350 employees on peak days to and from San Francisco as well as Berkeley, Oakland and other East Bay cities. Yahoo's buses also run on biodiesel and are equipped with Internet access, but the company's commute coordinator, Danielle Bricker, said the program was only "indirectly" inspired by Google's.

Meanwhile eBay recently began a pilot shuttle to five pickup spots in San Francisco. And some high-tech employers are coming up with other approaches. Instead of making it easier for employees to live far from work, Facebook, the social networking site, makes it easier for them to live nearby: it offers a $600 monthly housing subsidy for those who live within a mile of the company's Palo Alto headquarters.

There are signs that Google's shuttles could be affecting--albeit in small ways--the region's housing market.

When Adam Klein, a 24-year-old software engineer, moved to San Francisco in 2005 to take a job at Google, he looked for a rental apartment within a 15-minute walk of a shuttle stop. His walk to the Civic Center stop turned out to be a bit longer. "I didn't take into account the hills," Klein said. Many of his friends are moving close to other shuttle stops. "Those stops have attracted people," he said.

The area surrounding one of the shuttle's Pacific Heights stops had a dozen or so Googlers living nearby in 2005. That number has surged to more than 60.

For all their popularity, the shuttles have yet to earn Google the title of most commuter-friendly employer. The top spot in the Environmental Protection Agency's "Best Workplaces for Commuters" went to Intel, which allows telecommuting, offers transit subsidies to employees, and helps pay for shuttles that bring workers from transit stops, among other benefits. Google tied Oracle for third; Microsoft came in second.

But Googlers hooked on the convenience of the shuttles say nothing tops their commuting perk.

"They could either charge for the food or cut it altogether," said Bent Hagemark, a 44-year-old software engineer who boarded a Google shuttle in Cow Hollow, an upscale neighborhood in the north end of San Francisco. "If they cut the shuttle, it would be a disaster."

Entire contents, Copyright © 2010 The New York Times. All rights reserved.

[coryschulz]

Google continues to impress me

It's amazing the things Google is doing beyond search. It is not always what they do, but often how they do it. They are the most advanced process of evolution that our species has yet seen. They seem to be the most quality company that has ever existed.

It's a work of art, really. Beautiful...

[adamopolis]

You should get out more :-)

I agree it sounds like a great place to work - but this level of benefits and respect for individuals well being and own time, is by no means unusual in many countries in Europe. It does unfortunately make companies and economies weaker in the longer term.

[Marcus Westrup]

It all sounds good,

But, I'd like to hear from people who work within this Google culture. It can't All be that good - someone somewhere much have issues. That's human nature.

Otherwise, it starts to remind me of Fritz Lang's Metropolis...

[Commander_Spock]

Would "never" offer our crew/team these perks...

... like Google Buses... but will offer them holiday trips around the world aboard the CONCORDE whenever they begin to fly again; perhaps, even an outer space trip for those really "outstanding" geeks who can enable us to Google - Google. Duh!

[Hep Cat]

Silicon Valley Traffic isn't that bad....

Traffic there is high in volume and intelligence.

Here in the southeast, traffic is low in intelligence and midddling
in volume.

Google's aims are noble, and their approach is novel. But calling
silicon valley's traffic bad without context is par for the course
with C|Net.com. In fact, Silicon Valley's traffic isn't all that bad at
all, given the load per lane.

Try checking the same metrics for an interstate or state highway
in other major cities and you'll see that someone is doing
something right between the Diablo and Coast ranges.

Point is, C|net likes to fire for "affect" rather than effect.

[whogrant]

It definitely influenced my decision to even consider Google

I was asked to interview with Google a couple of years ago - until I learned about the bus I said no. Living in Oakland the commute to Mountain View would have been a couple of hours out of my life every day, not to mention the huge waste of gas since there is no practical way to take public transport across the Bay to Google HQ (and many other South Bay destinations). I didn't take the job there but without the bus factor I wouldn't have even considered it.

And to the person who says our traffic isn't so bad - I agree its now a lot better than at the height of the dot com era but commute times are high from most of the places Google runs a bus, and getting in the carpool lanes makes a huge difference. Its too bad the bridges don't have dedicated car pool lanes too - that would make cross bay buses and carpooling in general a no-brainer.