Private Buses or Public Boondoggles

A team of graphics artists has attempted to map the private buses that carry workers from San Francisco to Silicon Valley, reports the Wall Street Journal. At least six employers–Apple, ebay, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo–offer such services, but they are very secretive about where they go and how many people they carry.

Click image for a larger view.

The artists who developed the map estimate that these private buses carry about a third as many people as CalTrains commuter trains between San Francisco and San Jose. CalTrains cost taxpayers more than $110 million a year, but Silicon Valley firms obviously don’t believe they adequately serve their employees, probably because the rails don’t go near their campuses. Google alone has more than 100 buses in its fleet, about as many as serve the entire fixed-route system in the city of Stockton.

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“Just One-Seventh of Capacity”

The San Francisco Chronicle is aghast that new 140-seat ferry boats between South San Francisco and Oakland/Alameda are filling an average of just 20 of their seats (scroll down to “On the line”). The service, which cost $42 million to start up, was expensive enough at projected ridership rates, but actual ridership so far is just a third of those projections. Even before such low ridership was known, the paper opined that the ferry service may not be “prudent.”

It’s too bad Bay Area papers don’t put their analytical skills to work on other transit systems. If the ferries are just one-seventh (14.3 percent) full, how full are other transit lines?

According to the 2010 National Transit Database (summary Excel file here), San Jose’s light-rail line is pathetic at 11.1 percent (one-ninth full). San Francisco Muni’s light rail is not much better at 11.6 percent. By comparison, the BART system is doing relatively well, operating at a healthy (?) 15.3 percent of capacity.

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