Damn, I want to work for Google. From The New York Times piece "Google’s Buses Help Its Workers Beat the Rush":
But if the specifics sound quintessentially Googley, as insiders call the company’s quirky corporate culture, it is the shuttle program’s sheer scale that befits Google’s oversize ambitions. This is, after all, a company whose stated goal is to organize the world’s information — and whose founders’ corporate jet is a Boeing 767.
“We are basically running a small municipal transit agency,” said Marty Lev, Google’s director of security and safety, who oversees the program.
Not that small, really. The shuttles, which carry up to 37 passengers each and display no sign suggesting they carry Googlers, have become a fixture of local freeways. They run 132 trips every day to some 40 pickup and drop-off locations in more than a dozen cities, crisscrossing six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area and logging some 4,400 miles.
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.
Morning service starts on some routes at 5:05 a.m. — sometimes carrying those Google chefs — and the last pickup is at 10:40 a.m. Evening service runs from 3:40 p.m. to 10:05 p.m. During peak times, pickups can be as frequent as every 15 minutes.
Seriously – that's better than the BART subway, or any of the bus systems, which don't overlap across the bridges between San Francisco and other municipal areas. They've literally got the most extensive bus system around.
And that's just for starters. The rules in the bus:
Inside, most riders appeared to abide by the shuttle’s etiquette rules. Cellphone conversations are allowed if they are work-related and sotto voce. But loud personal calls are definitely out. In fact, except for a couple snuggled together, no one sat on adjacent seats. Many took out iPods or laptops and worked, surfed the Web or watched videos.
“People tend to be quiet and respectful that this is people’s downtime,” said Diana Alberghini, a 33-year-old program manager.
I can hear "Ode to Joy" playing in the background as I sit down for the quiet rides across Seoul that I can only have in my dreams.
Ahhhh.
