

Facebook launches employee ferry service from SF - jfb
http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2014/02/12/facebook-launches-employee-ferry-service-from-sf/

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kunle
This won't be a popular thing to say, but both Facebook and Google (and many
others) are now at the scale where they can really effectively impact policy.
They already do this at the national level (Eg immigration/SOPA) - and
focusing on changing _housing_ policy at the local level (to encourage more
density & units) would go a long way to alleviate these issues.

This isn't for charity - the housing shortage isn't particularly pleasant for
their employees either, as it makes everything scarcer/more expensive
(parking, grocery, other cost of living).

Edit: A couple of references on housing:
[http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-San-
Fran...](http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-San-Francisco-
creates-its-own-housing-crisis-5139869.php#src=fb)

~~~
erehweb
They can certainly try to impact policy, but are they able to? Immigration
reform is stymied, net neutrality is lost. In California, major issues include
Prop 13 limiting property tax increases, resistance to development in SF, and
arguably rent control in SF. See no evidence that FB or Goog would be able to
make any difference to these - big blocks of voters like things how they are.

~~~
rdl
Tech companies do have power on the Peninsula itself. The best thing they
could do is try to fix the building height restrictions along the Caltrain
corridor, and licensing rules for food/bar/entertainment, to make the
Peninsula a more attractive place for 30something (if not 20something)
employees.

Mountain View and Cupertino, at least, seem to behave relatively sanely. Santa
Clara almost goes _too far_ as an industry town.

~~~
Crito
I'm not sure anything could piss off SF tech company protesters more than
Facebook/Google attempting to fix building height restrictions.

At the core of it, these people have a xenophobic fear of change. They might
be making noise about rent prices now, but if these companies tried to address
this concern, the concerns would shift.

~~~
rdl
I think one of their explicit goals is "techies get out" \-- if everyone moved
to San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and SF tax base dropped, it'd be self-
correcting.

The problem is the Peninsula actually _is_ boring, at least for single people
who don't drive. I'd rather see SFBA tech contribute $10-20b on making the
Peninsula an awesome place to live, rather than trying to fix SF's
infrastructure and politics. Plus, there's money to be made doing it.

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cylinder
Odd, I don't live in Northern California but I was just wondering last week
why these companies (sad the public sector doesn't handle it) don't use
ferries instead of buses. Ferries are effectively used in other large cities,
NYC, Sydney, Seattle, to name a few.

~~~
rdl
There are actually lots of ferries in SFBA, just not on silly routes like SF
to RWC. They're funded using the justification of "water emergency
transportation" (i.e. post earthquake or something else which takes out a
bridge), but basically are just to keep wealthy and prominent voters in a few
places happy. Essentially they're heavily subsidized (true operating costs are
around $50-150/ride; price is about $8; ridership levels are very low on many
routes).

[http://sanfranciscobayferry.com/](http://sanfranciscobayferry.com/)

In Seattle it makes sense because it's between islands, some of which have no
bridge access. In the Bay Area, there are bridges directly on many routes, and
aside from a couple of tourist places, everywhere the ferries run is at worst
two bridges or two segments of ground travel away. (In Seattle, the transit
authority is actually fairly competent too, by comparison)

~~~
nkurz
Your numbers struck me as surprisingly high. It seems hard to believe that
running a ferry across the bay with 100 passengers can cost $10,000. But there
are definitely articles backing you up:

[http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/South-
San-...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/South-San-
Francisco-ferry-loaded-with-subsidies-3659513.php)

While basically matching your numbers for the new routes, the article also
mentions that the effective subsidy for the older routes is about $15 per
ride. I guess part of the question is how to distinguish "start up costs" from
"operating costs".

~~~
ChuckMcM
Nice article, it says basically that a 140 seat Ferry is $8M. The compares to
about $300K for 60 seat bus, or at most $900K for equivalent seats. I could
not track down a solid dataset for operating cost per mile for a large vessel.
I know that in general it is quite high because it takes much more energy to
push through the water than it does to roll on freeways (and even less to roll
on rails). Further there are weather systems that would keep a boat at the
dock but a bus or train could drive through. Of all the transportation modes
trains are the most economical to operate on a marginal cost basis but have
the high startup and operating costs from the essentially dedicated
infratstructure.

It would be interesting to see if they could build a floating train somehow
(trust me, this is the kind of project that gets you promoted at Google :-)
basically float a monorail track between up and down the bay such that you got
the energy/operating costs benefits of rail setup without the huge
land/tax/easement costs of a land locked rail line.

~~~
rdl
If you're willing to shut the train down during 100 year storms, I wonder if
you could just build a regular monorail along the bayfront. It's not very
deep; there's a bunch of marsh/slough crap on the coast. Other than a few
areas, the bay view is pretty ugly already. An electric elevated monorail
should have minimal environmental impact (just pylons; not sure how much
during construction).

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suyash
How about opening an office in San Francisco instead? I know Google already
has one but probably other companies from peninsula/south bay need to start
expanding their presence in SF as well.

~~~
bluthru
I don't understand, wouldn't this be a good investment opportunity with San
Francisco growing? Facebook could build its own tower and lease out space for
condos, apartments, offices, ground floor commercial, etc.

I'm really kinda bummed they're building a huge sprawling building. I think
Amazon is being the best citizen in this regard.

~~~
fiatmoney
To a close approximation, San Francisco won't let anyone build anything.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Been here lately? There are over five million square feet of commercial space
actively underconstruction, 20000 housing units actively under construction,
and 50000 housing units permitted and in some stage of development planning.

~~~
rdl
There's still the problem that most of the construction within SF is in areas
where "people don't want to live", at least not "trendy" startup people.
Generally 20something tech people want to live in the Mission and work in
SOMA. Transit _within_ SF is kind of defective, even for that pattern.

HP/Bayview would be the natural place to fix, and the third street
rail/mission bay/etc. was supposed to open that up, but Bayview still appears
to be the ghetto. Fixing Bayview will bring even more cries of
racism/gentrification/etc. than other parts of the city, due to demographics;
plus much of the available space in HP is either nuclear waste dump or dirty
industrial, so it's expensive to remediate.

~~~
aboodman
I don't know what the relative numbers are by neighborhood, but I've lived
here for a decade and there does seem to be a gigantic surge of construction
over the last few years in "places people want to live (and work)". Not much
in the mission, but all up and down market near duboce triangle, folsom,
harrison... these are great locations, and I'm super excited to see the
change.

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nctalaviya
Looking something from Facebook. Good

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w1ntermute
I wonder what kind of impact this will have on waterfront real estate.

~~~
sliverstorm
Man, oceanfront property might get _expensive_

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fennecfoxen
Oceanfront property in and immediately around San Francisco is not the
expensive property: it's far away from downtown and way too foggy! Also, as
long as we're talking ferries, you don't send your ferry all the way around
the peninsula, through the Golden Gate, and out the other side to a non-
existent dock to pick people up from some of the lower population-density /
lowest computer-programmer density zones of San Francisco. If anything, you
send the people a bus that point, and even with traffic it's a better plan.

Now. Bayfront property, on the other hand, is different.

