'Google Buses' Are Bad For Cities, Says New York MTA Official

An anonymous reader writes "The Director of Sustainability for New York's MTA is calling out Google, Apple, and Yahoo for 'deliberately' building their campuses away from public amenities like restaurants, and public transportation. 'With very few honorable exceptions like Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, who recently moved his company headquarters from suburban Henderson to downtown Las Vegas, tech companies seem not to have gotten the memo that suburbs are old and bad news,' he writes. Instead of launching their own bus services to ferry people from the city to their campuses, as the tech companies have done, the Googles and Apples of the world should 'locate themselves in existing urban communities. Ideally, in blighted ones,' says Dutta." Maybe cities just don't have the right mix of amenities, price, space, parking, and other factors to make them better places to put certain businesses.

Comments

Ain't no body got time for that

[mikehilly]

I would rather the campus be located away from urban area. Less traffic, less driving, cheap/free parking, cheaper food, less chance of crime happening to me or my properly while at or traveling to work and for most people closer to home. This is double so if locally aimed marketing and walk in customers are not very frequent.

Re:Ain't no body got time for that

[Albanach]

I'm not sure you follow. Google run buses because driving is horrible, time consuming, unproductive, and because even in the suburbs land space for parking is expensive. They provide food because in the suburbs there are few other options.

It's only close to home, because marketers decided every American should have a single family home (detached home in the rest of the world), and planners followed along, emptying city centers of residential accommodation. But then property prices skyrocket around large employers and many employees are still forced to commute to work simply to find property they can afford.

Re:Ain't no body got time for that

[harrkev]

So, Google decided to do something about traffic. Instead of having dozens of cars on the roads, spewing greenhouse gasses and burning foreign oil, they decide to do the "green" thing and provide buses, and they are condemned for it?! Are these buses running off of fuel made from baby seals?

Who can blame businesses for wanting to be away from crowds? If you can get a large campus for much cheaper, why not?

Imagine having to move into an existing urban area.... If you want to have a new, large facility, then you possibly have to purchase the land from multiple owners (maybe the site already has multiple smaller buildings, each separately owned). Then, you have to demolish the old buildings.

Of course, you could always move into an existing building. How old is it? Does it have asbestos in it? Are there any maintenance nightmares in store? How does the building look? What is the floor layout? Will you need to remodel?

Whether you tear down and rebuilt, or use an existing building, there are other questions... Is there a crime problem? Who are the neighbors? How bad is traffic? Where will the employees park? Do you also need to build a multi-level parking garage for your employees (vastly more expensive than a regular parking lot)? Do you just let them use public paid parking?

All of this stuff simply means that it is probably far easier just to get a few dozen acres away from town and build a new building there. If you want to change this, then you need to change the economics of the situation. Tax breaks for urban areas ("tax breaks" and "urban" are not normally used in the same sentence). Maybe make the permitting process easier. I do not know what the answer is. I do know that if I were running a business, building the exact building that I want away from town where the land is cheaper just seems to make a lot of sense.

Re:Ain't no body got time for that

[Anonymous Coward]

"because marketers decided every American should have a single family home (detached home in the rest of the world), and planners followed along"

No, it's because those of us who have bought such homes do not want to follow the Japanese model. It's the only thing I've ever heard a frenchman say that I will quote - "the Japanese? Why would we want to live like the Japanese? They live like ants!". I do NOT want to live in a big box with thousands of other people. That is NOT living, it's mere existence, if that. Marketers now are pushing you into those hovels because they can make a LOT more money off of you, with very little cost to support all of you ants. No thanks.

Re:Ain't no body got time for that

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... people move to the outskirts of a city so their kids don't have to fear getting mugged or shot in crossfire between inner city gangs. You cannot raise children in almost all US cities safely, so virtually any fit parent has to do the suburban thing so the strays the kid sees are puppies and kittens, not .40 rounds.

Yes, city managers want employers in their cities. It means more revenue for them (taxes, fines, parking issues, etc.) However, a company is best served by having their campus well on the edge of a town for expansion reasons and the fact that they have a buffer between the city council and their politics and day to day functioning.

Were I making a campus for a large company, I'd probably look how a city handles traffic. Being in Texas, I can compare Austin and Abilene for examples. Abilene can have their population double overnight and not have a major commute time increase. Austin has not done a significant traffic improvement since 1995 (other than Perry's toll roads), and has almost doubled in size. You bet if I had a choice to locate a business for people to be productive, it would be Abilene.

Re:Ain't no body got time for that

[cayenne8]

It's only close to home, because marketers decided every American should have a single family home (detached home in the rest of the world)

Who the hell "likes" sharing walls with people?

I personally was so happy when I could afford to live in stand alone houses. I now, don't have to listen to other peoples noise (stereo, crying babies, fscking, etc)...and I don't have to be terribly cognizant of my own levels of noise production.

I like having a back yard, where I can plant and grow a nice sized vegetable garden, where I can set up my smoker and my grills....where I can set up my homebrewing apparatus, where I can set up and invite friends over for a large crawfish boil, etc.

Why would I possibly, want to live in a smaller box, share walls, and have to squeeze all my outdoor fun on some small balcony, that in some places has regulations against open flame outdoor cooking?

Living in a city can be fun for a young, single person on the move....they're usually out partying and not home that much, so who cares about the dwelling? But once you get a bit older, and maybe even have a family, you like to have a bit more privacy and room to stretch your arms and enjoy things more of a homebody style of living.

Re:Ain't no body got time for that

[jeffmeden]

Ummm... people move to the outskirts of a city so their kids don't have to fear getting mugged or shot in crossfire between inner city gangs. You cannot raise children in almost all US cities safely, so virtually any fit parent has to do the suburban thing so the strays the kid sees are puppies and kittens, not .40 rounds.

You are confusing the downtown (city core) with the blighted near-suburbs. Few cities have truly crime-ridden core areas, but many have suburbs that are so. They also have a core and near-suburbs that are much safer (and naturally higher cost) which is where the truly affluent (or perhaps single/childless) live, while the rest endure the commute in favor of the extra space they can afford in the far suburbs.

Re:Ain't no body got time for that

[redmid17]

Any major city, excepting Detroit, has a pretty nice immediate downtown and a ring of shitty stuff out of that. It's the non-gentrified areas around essentially the business districts and bar districts downtown. Chicago, Atlanta, NY, LA and most of other cities I've been to or lived in follow that model.

Re:Ain't no body got time for that

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that the buses are a great solution as I support all forms of public transportation but I think you lost me with the inner city squalor. I live in a city. Not SF but another major metro and I live five minutes from the subway in a condo in a restored victorian home. I'm not particularly looking for bars and dance clubs but I did move here for the subway access. 30-min. commute to work, easy to go to a nice restaurant without driving after drinking, lots of jobs, being able to walk to my bank, food store, mechanic etc. Perhaps you consider that squalor but I enjoy it alright.

Re:Ain't no body got time for that

[jbmartin6]

I have a solid state drive so my fscking is silent. You're welcome, neighbor!

Why

[Drewdad]

Why is commuting from suburbs to town centers good, but commuting from town center to a suburb bad?

Re:Why

[CimmerianX]

Because the mayors of town centers want the business and all the revenue it brings inside the city. The suburbs may be a whole other municipality and city. Just follow the money.

Indeed

[ysth]

This: "Maybe cities just don't have the right mix of amenities, price, space, parking, and other factors to make them better places to put certain businesses."

The Director of Sustainability demonstrates the ludicrous line of thought that puts stadiums downtown.

Re:Foxconn and friends were faster

[afidel]

Workers never get to leave the company's premises.

Not true, they leave for Chinese Newyear. I was listening to an interesting piece of NPR and apparently the entire country shuts down for 2-3 weeks and the backlog of orders carries on for 2 months after that so if you outsource you have to have it built into your timetables. Part of the backlog is apparently caused by 15-20% of the workers failing to return because they found work closer to home or they decided that farming wasn't that bad.