S.F. tech bus program targeted in lawsuit Coalition seeks to stop pilot program for shuttles

A group of Google employees load up on a Google bus at 24th Street at Valencia Street in April. A group of Google employees load up on a Google bus at 24th Street at Valencia Street in April. Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close S.F. tech bus program targeted in lawsuit 1 / 14 Back to Gallery

Tenant activists and labor leaders filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging San Francisco's pilot program that allows private tech shuttles to use public bus stops for a small fee, saying the project violates the state traffic code and environmental law.

The lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court seeks to end the pilot program, which was approved by city leaders this year and upheld by the Board of Supervisors last month. The 18-month pilot, scheduled to begin in July, allows shuttles with permits to stop in certain red zones for a charge of about $1 per stop per day and will net the city $1.5 million over that time.

The group, calling itself the Coalition for Fair, Legal and Environmental Transit, has targeted the buses, many of which carry technology workers to the South Bay and Peninsula, as the most visible symbol of the tech boom that they blame for pushing up housing prices and driving long-term residents from San Francisco.

"What the buses do is facilitate the ability for highly paid tech employees to live in our city who otherwise would not, and when we have an extremely limited pool of housing stock available, what that does is push folks at the lower income levels out of the city," said Sara Shortt, head of the Housing Rights Committee, a tenant advocacy organization and a party to the suit.

Impacts of tech buses

"We have observed with our own eyes, and looked at numerous research studies that show the shuttle buses are impacting our communities and our neighborhoods by increasing the cost of housing, and causing rising rents and, in fact, even heightened eviction activity in areas adjacent to shuttle stops," she said.

The lawsuit alleges that the city's pilot project violates the California Vehicle Code by allowing private shuttles to pull into red zones designated as bus stops and state environmental law that requires a review of any project with possible environmental impacts such as damage to roads and increased traffic congestion.

It comes after the same group last month asked the Board of Supervisors to delay the program and require a full environmental study. The board rejected that appeal 8-2.

A spokesman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera said his office had not had a chance to review the suit. But Christine Falvey, a spokeswoman for Mayor Ed Lee - who has aggressively courted tech companies and workers to locate in San Francisco and spoken extensively of their benefits - said the traffic concerns raised by the suit are exactly why the pilot project is needed.

The housing issue, Falvey said, is something the mayor is also concerned about and is tackling with an aggressive plan to add 30,000 units over the next six years and by supporting local and state legislation to keep people from being displaced and help tenants who are being evicted.

"The bottom line is that shuttles were operating on our streets already, and now we have the opportunity to regulate them, to charge them revenue, and to collect data that's going to let us maximize the traffic and environmental benefits and minimize the impacts to Muni," she said.

The group behind the suit wants the city to go back to the drawing board. In addition to city departments and Lee, it names a number of transportation companies that operate the tech shuttles and several organizations that hire them, including Google, the city's Health Commission, UC San Francisco and Williams-Sonoma.

Shortt said the pilot program was developed "hastily" without input from residents, and the suit "isn't about animosity toward individual tech employees" but seeks to send a message to tech companies that they need to work with the community.

"The whole issue needs to be much more thought out and thoroughly understood before the city makes policy decisions about it. Perhaps we can come to some compromise where shuttles still exist but they are not wreaking havoc," she said. "I think we would love to see them paying more of a fair share in terms of helping mitigate the impacts, helping to improve Muni, for instance, or Caltrain, or help set up affordable housing funds and provide assistance for eviction defense services."

Google did not respond to a request for comment, but Alex Tourk, a spokesman for sf.citi - a nonprofit group made up of tech companies that promotes civic engagement - called the lawsuit "divisive."

"This lawsuit has nothing to do with environmental quality, it is about a political agenda," he said in a written statement.

Supervisor Scott Wiener, who represents neighborhoods such as Noe Valley that have seen a dramatic influx of the shuttles in recent years, said the suit is counterproductive and does nothing to address the city's housing shortfall. Shuttle critics should welcome regulation and oversight, he said.

Supervisor's view

"What they are trying to do is delay or (they're) trying to kill our ability to actually regulate these shuttles. The whole point of the pilot program is to make sure shuttles use appropriate routes and bus stops, to try to reduce the conflicts with Muni and to have adequate staffing to enforce the rules," he said. "To attack the pilot program ... actually undermines our ability to appropriately regulate and oversee the shuttle program. In addition, it implies to the public that getting rid of the shuttles is somehow going to help our housing crisis, when that's completely untrue."