Speaking of busing to work…

Google, it seems, is providing free transportation to its employees. Yesterday, Bus Nerd’s friend Alex sent me this article from the New York Times:

In Silicon Valley, a region known for some of the worst traffic in the nation, Google, the Internet search engine giant and online advertising behemoth, has turned itself into Google, the mass transit operator. …

The company now ferries about 1,200 employees to and from Google daily — nearly one-fourth of its local work force — aboard 32 shuttle buses equipped with comfortable leather seats and wireless Internet access. Bicycles are allowed on exterior racks, and dogs on forward seats, or on their owners’ laps if the buses run full.

I love that Google is taking responsibility for how its employees get to and from work (and I’m loving that their efforts are apparently reducing the number of people who drive to Mountain View), but I have a hard time believing that a system with 1,200 passengers spread over roughly 200 miles is especially efficient.

They pick up workers as far away as Concord, 54 miles northeast of the Googleplex, as the company’s sprawling Mountain View headquarters are known, and Santa Cruz, 38 miles to the south. The system’s routes cover in excess of 230 miles of freeways, more than twice the extent of the region’s BART commuter train system, which has 104 miles of tracks.

Employees who live in far off towns where very few other employees live probably have very limited travel times. If they don’t, the shuttles are probably taking a lot of two- and three-person trips.

Google could probably make a much greater dent in Bay Area traffic (if not as great an impression on potential employees) by:

1) Partnering with local transit agencies to increase/improve service in areas where it has high concentrations of employees.
2) Giving employees free transit passes (it’s highly possible they already do this).
3) Allowing employees who are willing to share office space to work from home at least one day per week.

Ideal system or not, one thing’s for sure: Employees who spend their commutes kicked back in leather seats with free wi-fi get a lot more work done than those who are stuck staring at other folks’ tail lights.