The large buses that shuttle technology employees between San Francisco and their Silicon Valley workplaces have become a political flash point. Bowing to residents’ outcries, San Francisco recently cut the number of places that buses can stop in the Mission District and other popular neighborhoods.

The result: More employees appear to be driving.

Last month, Facebook told city commissioners in Menlo Park, where the company is based, that it is seeing an increase in the number of employees commuting alone — a group that represents a little more than half of its workforce.

“That has ticked up in the last couple of months, because of some ongoing issues we’re having with SFMTA and a wetter winter than we anticipated,” said Lewis Knight, a Facebook development manager, referring to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. About one-third of Facebook’s employees live in San Francisco, Knight said.

Since a pilot program to regulate shuttles began in August 2014, the San Francisco agency has closed 33 shuttle stops, while adding others. With an official program in place as of April, the total number of stops has gone from 125 to 110. Four stops near Dolores Park vanished, for example. Resentment has simmered citywide about the economic inequality associated with the thriving technology industry, and many residents didn’t like 45-foot-long buses blocking narrow streets in their neighborhoods.

Some tech workers say that instead of walking the extra blocks and waiting for the shuttle, they are finding other ways to get to work, according to Rosie Silva, a union steward who represents bus drivers with Loop, a transportation company that employs drivers of shuttles that pick up Facebook employees. Silva said there has been a decline in the number of Facebook employees on routes that once went to 18th and Church streets, near Dolores Park, after the stop moved to 16th and Sanchez streets. The drop could be10 to 20 people per bus, Silva said.

“We don’t make the rules, we just do it,” Silva said. “They just were upset that we’re not picking them up at the regular stops because they would have to walk two blocks or whatever.”

Loop declined to comment on its shuttle ridership.

Too far to walk to stops

On a recent morning, several workers waiting for the shuttles at 16th and Sanchez — one of the few stops left in the Mission District — said they found the stop changes inconvenient. Some of these workers, who were commuting to Facebook and Google parent company, Alphabet, in Mountain View, were concerned about stops moving even farther away.

One staffer said he chose where he lived based on the original shuttle stop and now is considering moving. Another worker talked about her half-mile walk from around the Duboce Triangle area to the shuttle stop.

“If it were farther, I would probably end up driving,” she said.

The tech employees did not provide their names, citing company policies that restrict them from speaking to the media. While a reporter was interviewing one Facebook worker, a company spokeswoman interrupted the discussion and told the reporter to email Facebook’s press team.

Facebook spokesman Jamil Walker declined to clarify Facebook’s issues with the MTA. In a statement, the company said it is “committed to being a good neighbor.” Alphabet and Apple, which also uses corporate shuttles to transport workers from San Francisco, did not respond to a request for comment.

If technology employees are now driving the roughly 30-mile commute from San Francisco to Menlo Park solo, “that would be a really unfortunate thing,” said Adina Levin, a Menlo Park transportation commissioner. “While some people don’t like (the buses), they really help to take commuters off the road. It’s certainly better to have commuters in a bus than to have individual people driving in their cars emitting gases and pollution and (causing) congestion on the street.”

Programs tested

The MTA’s new program allows tech buses to share Muni stops for at least a year but also requires buses longer than 35 feet to stick to major thoroughfares. When stops were moved, the new ones were a half mile or less from the old ones, the city said.

“Shuttles can operate in San Francisco whether we like it or not,” agency spokesman Paul Rose said. “What we can do as a city is regulate them so they don’t just stop wherever they feel like or use small residential streets.”

Rose said the agency is conducting a study looking into the number of riders; it will be released this year. In addition, the agency is still evaluating whether it should have a hub model, where tech buses would pick up passengers downtown in areas like the Transbay Terminal instead of residential neighborhoods.

In an email to the agency obtained through a public-records request, Facebook employee Ali Price expressed her disappointment that her employer would no longer provide shuttle pickups at 15th and Church and 18th and Church, saying “we’re now rendered helpless.”

Price, who described herself as a “pregnant mother,” wrote in the May email that she’s lived in the Mission for seven years and had been working at Facebook only six months.

“I took this job because it gives me the opportunity to do work that I love that has an impact on millions of people around the world, but I wouldn’t have taken the job if I wasn’t able to count on a shuttle to get me from my home in the Mission down to Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters every day,” Price wrote. A longer commute would negatively impact her family life, she added.

Price did not respond to multiple requests from The Chronicle for comment.

Traffic in and out of Facebook’s offices in Menlo Park has increased, according to data from the city. For example, on May 9, trips entering Facebook’s complex at One Hacker Way increased by about 16 percent to 12,400 compared with May 8 of last year. (Those numbers include cars, shuttles and other vehicles.)

About 54 percent of Facebook commuters drive alone to work, according to Menlo Park’s data — considerably below the 75 percent figure for the city as a whole.

Cities consider tax

Municipal officials in Silicon Valley continue to grapple with issues of transportation, housing and commercial real estate, as the technology sector continues to grow. In Cupertino, the hometown of Apple, the mayor recently floated the idea of a tax based on the number of employees at a company to raise money for a shuttle connecting Caltrain to Cupertino, which would directly impact its largest private employer, Apple.

In San Francisco, three supervisors recently proposed a tax on tech companies.

For now, Facebook’s Knight said the company believes it can reduce the number of employees who drive solo to work. At the June meeting in Menlo Park, he said the company expects to “resolve some of those regional issues.”

Facebook said in a statement that “We understand our growth affects the everyday lives of our neighbors, and we want to be respectful and thoughtful about how we approach our expansion.”

Rose with the MTA said it is continuing to get feedback on the shuttle program. Over the last three years, the agency has been responsive and made changes where appropriate, he said.

“We need these shuttles to work,” Cupertino City Councilman Rod Sinks said. “It’s in everyone’s interest that they do. The roads would be one hell of a mess if they didn’t have all the private buses.”

Wendy Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: wlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thewendylee