“Hi, good morning,” Stan Lui said once he was inside the car. “Passes, please. Transfers.”

Passengers began shifting in their seats. Some groaned, others rolled their eyes and one rider bolted out the one unmanned door.

Lui and his two co-workers, using handheld devices, scanned riders’ Clipper cards and Muni tickets and checked the date and time of transfers. Kevin Smith, 48, who scanned a woman’s Clipper card, found it had not been tagged and contained only 60 cents — insufficient for the $2 one-way fare. After some back-and-forth, Smith let her off at the Montgomery station platform.

“I will give you a chance,” he said. “Go load your card, ma’am.”

“Yeah, I’ll load it,” she said, walking away irritated. “I always do.”

Upon getting off, the three fare inspectors encountered a man lying against a wall between the two platforms with his belongings scattered on the ground. They asked him, too, for his proof of payment, and when he failed to come up with it, they escorted him out.

“Thank you for allowing your tax dollars to go here, asshole,” the distraught individual yelled from outside the fare gate doors.

“You’re f—ing this, you’re f—ing that,” said Sgt. Larry Nichol, supervisor for the other two men. “I used to keep a journal of what people say to me.”

In the nine months that Lui, 33, has been a fare inspector, his impression from the public he has direct contact with is they generally don’t like him and his colleagues in the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Proof of Payment Unit.

“I hear from people that the No. 1 hated ones are parking control officers, police officers and fare inspectors,” Lui said. “That’s how I see it, because when people verbally abuse you, that means they don’t like you.”

Catch me if you can

The SFMTA began employing fare inspectors in 1999 as a pilot program with 18 inspectors who patrolled only railway vehicles. The pilot has since become a permanent, growing program with 13 new inspectors hired last year to bring the total to 55 — 33 men and 22 women.

Increased manpower and even more positions opening up as early as December have boosted the number and frequency of inspections in each of San Francisco’s 10 police districts. Up to 20 inspectors get deployed daily to a random district or districts within close proximity to each other.

“I call it spreading the love around because we don’t want to make it so that one group thinks we’re concentrating on them,” Nichol said.

Inspectors are catching fare evaders throughout The City and offenders aren’t race-, gender-, age- or income-specific. They’ve cited homeless individuals to men in fancy suits who keep a charged Clipper cards but don’t tag them.

“Sometimes you hear people go, ‘Do I look like a fare evader?’ And I say, ‘I don’t know, what does a fare evader look like?'” Nichol said.

Fare evasion results in an estimated $19 million of lost revenue annually for the SFMTA, and without the $6.5 million fare inspector program, that amount of money lost would be “much worse,” according to SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose.

Kathy Broussard, acting manager of the Proof of Payment Unit, which includes fare inspectors, said it is worth the cost since fare evaders get $109 tickets while paying passengers see that Muni’s policy, echoed by the on-board announcement, “Please pay your fair share,” is being enforced.

“It’s a win-win,” she said.

In her 7½ years as a fare inspector prior to managing the unit, Broussard said she once wrote 45 tickets in a day, and a fare inspector has issued as many as 65 in an eight-hour shift. At the end of their shifts on that recent weekday, Smith, Nichol and Lui had issued 16 tickets between them.

“Nothing is frowned upon. We don’t have a quota,” Broussard said. “What we have is a performance standard. We came out with an amount that a fare inspector would be able to produce within an eight-hour period and it’s very low — five. That’s less than one citation per hour.”

Currently, fare inspectors cover 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., but that doesn’t mean fare evaders are safe during their off hours. The Police Department has a surge team assigned to buses in different districts, on the lookout for crime as well as fare evasion.

Despite its challenges, the job — which under the new tentative labor agreement will pay $31.43 per hour by October and $35.54 by 2017 — draws thousands of applicants to the agency and is “highly competitive,” Broussard said.

A fare balance

Fare evaders can run, but can’t always hide.

On that recent weekday morning, after removing the man lying down on the Montgomery station platform, Lui, Smith and Nichol positioned themselves inside the fare gates to check customers getting off the trains. There, they recognized the man they saw earlier escape out the unpatrolled J-Church train.

“It’s funny how that works out,” Nichol said as Smith approached the man. Learning he was a visitor, Smith gave him a break and let him buy a ticket.

On the F-Market and Wharves line, which, like other above-ground vehicles, inspectors try to hold for less than a minute, Smith encountered San Francisco resident Reina Martinez, 42, who told Smith she had accidentally taken the wrong Clipper card while rushing out in the morning. She showed him paper résumés she had with her to apply for jobs. Smith said she could explain her case to a hearing officer and wrote her a ticket.

“This can’t be,” Martinez said in Spanish. “I think he should have been a little more flexible.”

On the same streetcar, San Francisco resident Mona Shath, 42, smiled as Smith scanned her Clipper card.

“It happens very often and I guess it slows things down but you have to pay,” she said. “I do hate to see people who can’t afford it suffer.”

Inspectors sometimes make exceptions for patrons who didn’t pay but whose Clipper cards show a history of paid fares, and for tourists who can show an itinerary.

But sometimes, issuing a citation is necessary, said Smith, who has seen offenders develop a new respect for the work that the unit does.

“When people are upset, they’re not upset at me the person, they’re upset at me the uniform, so I don’t take it personally,” Smith said. “That gets me through my day.”

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The local industry has been reeling for years as venture capital-backed ride services like Uber and Lyft have proliferated and taxi companies’ calls to The City to level the playing field have done little to help.

On Wednesday, cab drivers voted to initiate the San Francisco Taxi Workers Alliance, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) — marking the first time cabdrivers will be unionized in The City in more than four decades.

“If we don’t form a union, we’re toast,” said Beth Powder, 35, a union organizer and driver and dispatcher for DeSoto Cab Co.

Cabdrivers discussed unionizing for a couple of months, but in a “standing-room-only” meeting at the Verdi Club on Wednesday night, they voted unanimously to move forward with making it official, said Barry Korengold, president of the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association.

About 150 taxi drivers signed up for the union and pledged to bring more drivers with them, Powder said.

A number of meetings and conference calls have been held with the AFL-CIO and the National Taxi Workers Alliance, the umbrella affiliate that includes alliances in New York; Philadelphia; Austin, Texas; and Montgomery County, Md.

The San Francisco Taxi Workers Alliance will be the fifth member — and the first independent — contractor union in California. Also coming onboard the national organization are drivers in Chicago, Houston and Prince George’s County, Md.

Among the benefits of being unionized, Powder said, is reversing the public — and, to a degree, real — perception that the taxi industry is disjointed.

“Cabdrivers are very independent people, and that’s one of the beauties of this industry — that you have a diverse group of people who bring all these different elements to the table,” Powder said. “Unfortunately, what it translates to for everybody else is that we can’t get together and find consensus. But we’ve done just that.”

Becoming unionized would also give taxi drivers access to legal resources. Taxi drivers are independent contractors with cab companies, who provide workers’ compensation but not health insurance. Powder said getting health insurance from cab companies is not a priority at the moment considering other battles they face.

“That doesn’t mean that in the future that’s never going to be a conversation,” she said. “But right now, we’re in the same battle together. The cab companies want us to be able to have a place to work and for us to form a union means we can work side by side with the cab companies.”

Some taxi drivers have organized in smaller groups — the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association, the United Taxicab Workers and Association of Burmese Cab Drivers — but they often pushed their own initiatives and weren’t able to garner mass support. And they felt their pleas to City Hall to do something about unregulated app ride services like Uber and Lyft were not heard.

Those enterprises, called transportation network companies by regulator the California Public Utilities Commission, have eaten up a large chunk of the taxi market in just a few years.

“We’re in crisis mode because the legislators and city officials have ignored us,” Powder said in reference to the ride-services issue. “We see in cities across the country, people stepping up and taking action at a municipal level. They’re clamping down on illegal ride services. And the city of San Francisco for some reason can’t get anybody to budge.”

Bhairavi Desai, president of the National Taxi Workers Alliance and executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said the San Francisco union will become official once it has 500 paid member drivers.

San Francisco drivers’ vote Wednesday signifies their readiness to defeat attacks on labor, Desai said.

“San Francisco used to have progressive working conditions, in that every driver could earn a medallion and it was a very progressive

model,” Desai said. “But in the last 10 years, San Francisco has been faced with very bitter attacks, with [rideshares] being the latest of the attacks.”

In New York, the largest market for taxis, Uber and Lyft have been limited to black-car operations and cannot operate as transportation network companies as they do in San Francisco, Desai added.

Taxi drivers unionized as early as 1904, evidenced by a “hackman” union that staged a four-month-long strike, according to Charles Rathbone, 65, owner of the website www.taxi-library.org. By 1909, the Chauffeurs’ Union had successfully organized drivers and they earned the highest wages in the country.

“In 1967 a [Chauffeurs’] union official described local taxi contracts as the best in the nation, with drivers earning $13 a day plus tips or 50% of the fares, whichever was greater, plus health care and pension,” Rathbone wrote in the article “Taxis and San Francisco Labor History” on his website.

The taxi industry, through its long history, has proven itself to be very adaptable to change, added Rathbone, who is also assistant manager at Luxor Cab.

“I think the industry is going to continue to be just fine,” he said. “Union or no union, Uber or no Uber.”

San Francisco taxis were unionized dating back to pre-World War II, but they tore away in the late 1970s, according to Mark Gruberg, 72, a taxi driver for 30 years who is currently with Green Cab.

“There’s a new breath of life in unionism,” he said. “And we in San Francisco are going to be part and parcel of that.”

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency indicated it will continue to negotiate and work with the taxi industry regardless of the union move.

“San Francisco taxi drivers will always have a seat at the table with us, whether individually or collectively,” agency spokeswoman Kristen Holland said. “We will listen to their concerns regardless of their affiliation.”

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Only small rocks – occasionally a large slab of concrete – periodically tumbling down a crumbled wall 47 feet below ground level as “Big Alma,” the second of two tunnel-boring machines excavating San Francisco’s first new subway in nearly a half-century, slowly peered its cutterhead out Wednesday.

A few dozen neon-vested, hardhat-fitted workers on the project — from the contractor’s foremen to the resident engineer representing The City to the Central Subway head tunnel design engineer Matt Fowler — stood hypnotized by the spinning cutterhead, nudging forward at 10 to 25 millimeters a minute.

From the mid-afternoon when the top of Big Alma’s approximately 20 foot-diameter head appeared at the retrieval shaft in North Beach at the old Pagoda Theater site, workers on the project recorded video and snapped pictures on smartphones. Even through a pause of a few hours between shift changes and the erection of a new tunnel ring, they waited, chatting among each other about the project, at times simply observing and smiling.

“It’s like giving birth,” said John Fungi, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Central Subway program director, with a chuckle.

No city dignitaries were on hand for the milestone, but they will be for today’s official recognition of the achievement.

Also braving the wait Wednesday, Fowler — who at 11 years is one of the longest-serving workers on the project — joked, “I didn’t think it was going to go into the night, or I would have brought fireworks.”

The first glimpse of Big Alma came around 3:30 p.m. and the machine remained barely visible for a couple hours. The forward push halted while a new tunnel ring had to be erected.

Operations restarted shortly before 9 p.m. and went on until just after 10 p.m., leaving the top third of the cutterhead visible, marking the end of a decade-long push to extend the T-Third Street line from near AT&T Park 1.7 miles north into Chinatown.

Project manager Ben Campbell, 36, with the contractor Barnard Impregilo Healy, celebrated by popping a Champagne cork into the retrieval shaft.

“It was a big weight off everybody’s shoulders,” he said. “It’s nice to be done.”

The project involved carving two tunnels along 4th Street and north under Stockton Street, a southbound one by Big Alma that took about 8 ½ months and an already completed northbound one by tunnel boring machine “Mom Chung” that started in June 2013 and took 11 months.

“We got here faster than we thought and pretty much without incident,” said SFMTA Transportation Director Ed Reiskin.

Of the Central Subway’s nearly $1.6 billion overall cost, the tunnel-boring project was part of a $234 million contract given to Barnard Impregilo Healy.

The breakthroughs of Big Alma and Mom Chung represent the end of excavation, a milestone in the project that started as a concept in 1996 in Chinatown. Originally, one tunnel would have gone under 3rd Street and the other under 4th Street, but officials settled on a 4th Street to Stockton Street alignment. While much of the Chinatown community advocated for the subway, dissenters including the group Save Muni criticized the costs and need for it altogether.

Central Subway, with stations at Union Square and Chinatown that have yet to be built, is slated to open to the public in 2019. Talks of extending the subway for a North Beach station and all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf are being studied. Meanwhile, the tunnel boring machines will be torn apart and extracted piece by piece with cranes and sold back to their manufacturer, which may refurbish them for future projects.

“We shouldn’t stop here; we should go to Fisherman’s Wharf,” Funghi said. “Why stop a good thing?”

On first impression of Big Alma’s breakthrough Wednesday using a laser device, survey manager Klaus Herbert, 48, could tell that tunnel boring alignment came within an inch of the design. Any deviation on the tunnel had to be less than four inches.

“They’ve set a new standard was set for tunnel boring,” Fowler said.

It was the work of a team of a dozen miners per shift.

The day before Big Alma reached the surface, The San Francisco Examiner toured the underground operation as the mining was happening. Workers maneuver different components of the 350-foot machine to its constant hum, in a more than 80-degree humid environment.

In the cab, tunnel boring machine operator Bob Driskell, 54, shifted his eyes between more than half a dozen computer screens, pressed buttons and turned nobs guiding the machine and monitoring the earth pressure balance, which he said, “is our lifeline” because it keeps structures and buildings above ground intact.

His goal, for his 12½ hour shift, was to keep a good soil condition with maximum mining speed and minimum torque.

“There’s an art to getting everything just right,” Driskell said. “We call it the sweet spot.”

As he moved the machine forward, grouters, including Joe Montoya, pushed buttons controlling jacks that put grout, a mixture of cement and water, to fill the space between the tunnel ring segments and the ground.

Foreman Jeff Carpenter, 52, was in charge of walking back and forth and making sure everything stayed running. On Tuesday, Big Alma was excavating through a tight curve, causing the equipment some problems.

“Everything wants to jump off the rail,” Carpenter said. “The conveyer belt tries to turn over upside down. We’ve got our hands full.”

Tunnel boring machine mechanic Kory Sepulveda, 36, used big wrenches, come-alongs and porta-power to make adjustments along the way.

“I love doing what I do,” he said. “You know if anything was to go wrong, you know they got your back.”

“Mom Chung,” which bore through on June 2, took longer initially and got sped up to 10 to 12 four- to five-feet tunnel rings per day, which it did with Driskell’s guidance.

“We had our learning curve on the first machine and the second machine went well,” said Assistant Superintendant Andy Granger.

While Big Alma’s breakthrough was gradual, Mom Chung’s was not even visible to crews who watched. The retrieval shaft was flooded with muddy water to protect it from any unanticipated material incidents.

Shift engineer Glenn Strid, 27, who worked on Mom Chung until its final weeks, reflected on the first breakthrough as he watched the second.

“Mom Chung had already broke through the shaft but it was very anticlimactic, so we said turn the foam on and sure enough, bubbles come out,” he said. “This was way cooler for sure.”

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The tall, hard-to-miss, curly-haired blonde took over as deputy director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Taxis and Accessible Services Division in December 2008, a time when the industry was in dire need of reform.

A lawyer by trade, Hayashi, 51, maneuvered the transition from the now-defunct Taxicab Commission to the cab industry’s regulation under the SFMTA, and she took the lead in implementing a transferable medallion system that taxi drivers desired. She informed colleagues of her imminent retirement for the better part of a year and leaves as The City’s taxis are in a tight race for riders with Uber, Lyft, Sidecar and similar mobile-app-based services.

“I’m ready to hand off this continuing process to somebody else — in a responsible way that’s not going to diminish what I’ve done or slow down the progress,” Hayashi said. “I’m just ready. Really, a large part of the decision is about timing with my years of service to The City and my age.”

“It’s not,” she added, “because Travis has kicked my ass.”

That’s Travis Kalanick, founder and CEO of competitor Uber.

Hayashi said she is “extremely proud” of the changes she fronted, which include a taxi enforcement team after the Police Department backed away from the role, and that it seems the industry in the past five years has moved “100 light-years forward.” Then, enter Uber, Lyft, Sidecar and others formally known as transportation network companies.

“Here I am, trying to steer the Titanic and someone hits me over the head with a baseball bat, is pretty much what the TNC issue is like,” Hayashi said. “We were about to clear, and all of a sudden here comes billions of dollars of venture capital for people who are willing to break every law in the book.”

At that stage, she said, she didn’t have the backing of government officials and it was a state agency, the California Public Utilities Commission, that got regulatory oversight of the TNCs.

Hayashi managed a very difficult job well, one that often had dozens of angry cabdrivers screaming at SFMTA meetings, Transportation Director Ed Reiskin said.

“The one thing I would hear from people from all parts of the spectrum of the taxi industry,” he said, “is, ‘I don’t agree with what she did, but she was fair and listened to us and I respect her for that.'”

SFMTA board member Malcolm Heinicke said, “She gave it her best as a public servant and she deserves a lot of credit for that.”

But DeSoto Cab Co. president Hansu Kim, who agreed that Hayashi shepherded the industry through some of its most trying times, said that with Uber, Lyft and the like, he would be surprised if the cab industry survives another 18 months in The City.

“The bottom line is, the taxi industry is in big trouble and it’s not her fault,” he said. “But she’s leaving at a time when it’s critical to have strong leadership.”

Before becoming the head of taxis, Hayashi spent 18 years as a deputy city attorney with the city attorney, and was a leader in the rewriting of The City’s procurement laws. She reached her current position in part through experience on the city attorney’s transportation team.

“She was gifted at listening to all the stakeholders and finding a compromise,” said Deputy City Attorney Mariam Morley, her former colleague.

The SFMTA is continuing with a recruitment process that started six months ago and had hoped for more transition time for Hayashi’s successor, Reiskin said.

“She’ll leave some very big shoes to fill,” he said.

After she leaves the taxi world, Hayashi, who has long loved Afro-Cuban art and music, will tour the East Coast for books she has translated on the culture.

Her retirement party July 7 will double as a cabdriver appreciation celebration, an annual event that ceased to exist along with the Taxicab Commission. She has booked a Brazilian band with a member who drives for DeSoto Cab Co. and a piano player who drives for Royal Taxi.

“I’ve had a line item all these years to do a taxi driver appreciation party but it was either something we haven’t been able to focus staff time on, or considered a waste of time,” Hayashi said, choking back tears. “But before I go, I’m determined to make sure we have the party they deserve.”

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They know each other well enough to line up following a system that lacks public signage, but rarely engage in conversation. Here they wait to catch a ride to work, but this isn’t a casual carpool line. This is an invitation-only club.

Some wear earbuds and almost all are engrossed in their smartphones until their free ride arrives, rarely more than a couple of minutes late — a two-story white bus with tinted windows, plush seats and Wi-Fi.

Patiently, the residents wait to get on, and with the flash of their company badges are welcomed aboard. Then the luxury “GBUS TO MTV” shuttle shuts its doors and heads straight for Google’s headquarters in Mountain View. The scenario repeats itself in half-hour intervals at the stop and at dozens of similar Muni stops citywide.

These commuter shuttles whisk workers to the land of tech gold in the South Bay, and many employees prefer them to driving alone or taking Caltrain, but anti-displacement groups have seized on the buses as a symbol of The City’s growing economic disparity, a harbinger of skyrocketing rents, gentrifying neighborhoods and an eviction “crisis.”

On one recent morning, a Google-bound bus left The City with the words “just gentrified — not evil” written in dust on its rear. Another morning, a bus had hearts drawn in the dust on its windows.

The Muni bus stop at 24th and Valencia streets was the site of an April 1 protest in which protesters with the group Eviction-Free San Francisco blocked a Google bus and handed out fake “Gmuni” passes, suggesting that any local should be able to board the luxury shuttle. The hoax highlighted the protesters’ outrage that the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is pursuing a pilot program allowing commuter shuttles to use 200 public bus stops for $1 per stop per day, while the Muni system remains underfunded and unreliable.

A 2012 analysis by research firm ICF International for the Metropolitian Transportation Commission, which informed the SFMTA’s commuter shuttle pilot program, estimated that shuttles eliminate 43.3 million vehicle miles traved and 8,600 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year in Bay Area counties. An estimated 35,000 boardings occured per day, based on information complied by the SFMTA that year.

“I imagine [the numbers] may have grown,” SFMTA project manager Carli Paine said.

But such studies have not swayed anti-displacement activists who filed an environmental appeal against the pilot program allowing shuttles to use Muni stops for a fee. The Board of Supervisors rejected their appeal hours after the April 1 Google bus blockage, and some of the appellants — including Service Employees International Union Local 1021 — filed a lawsuit May 1 to stop the program.

The SFMTA still aims to launch the program July 1 and will start taking applications from shuttle providers in June, Paine said.

“Clearly, the companies have made a decision that [shuttles are] a wise investment of their resources,” said MTC spokesman John Goodwin. “And I think that’s all for the good.”

For many people, the shuttles have become the manifestation of all that’s right or all that’s wrong about the new San Francisco. But for those thousands of tech workers who climb aboard every morning, they are something else, too, something a little less heavy and fraught — a way to get to work.

In light of this, The San Francisco Examiner compared the morning commute time of the Google bus to taking public transit or driving. A reporter and photographer trailed the bus in the carpool lane one morning to Google’s gate, and on other days made the same trip driving without the carpool lane and timed the trip taking Muni, Caltrain and the “last-mile” shuttle.

Taking a Google bus instead of driving alone from the corner of 24th and Valencia streets to the tech giant’s headquarters 34 miles south saved a mere seven minutes, and public transportation including Caltrain took just 12 extra minutes.

The time gap between modes of transportation is notable, but not substantial. The civic argument for commuter shuttles is that they take single-occupant vehicles off the road and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

On its website, Google says about 5,000 Google workers take shuttles to work on any given day, and that the program hit 1.8 million rides in 2012.

“In addition to an ultracomfortable ride, real-time location information, and wifi, our shuttles have the cleanest diesel engines ever built,” the website boasts. “In fact, Google is the first and largest company with a corporate coach fleet to exceed the EPA’s 2010 bus emission standards. They run on 5% biodiesel and are fitted with filtration systems that eliminate many harmful emissions, including nitrogen oxide.”

Google would not speak with The Examiner, and multiple calls to We Drive U Inc., the shuttle that provides the rides for Google staff, were not returned.

Google employees waiting for the shuttles also declined to comment.

Brendon Harrington, the tech company’s transportation operations manager, told UC Berkeley graduate student researchers Danielle Dai and David Weinzimmer last year that shuttles are usually limited to three pick-up stops per route and up to five drop-off points on campus. Those that run express routes have just one pick-up and drop-off, the study stated, which contributes to time savings.

A faster travel time is one of the main attractions of shuttles, Dai said, adding, “People might consider shuttles as being in opposition of traffic, but we want to suggest that they’re complementary.”

Egon Terplan, regional planning director for San Francisco-based think tank SPUR, said the corporate shuttles are a key component of the region’s traffic ecosystem. The highway system connecting San Francisco to the Peninsula would break down from congestion if it weren’t for Caltrain, and also if everyone working at companies in the South Bay chose to drive solo, he said.

Instead of seeing the shuttles as a symbol of disparity, some say they are indicative of people’s desire for alternatives to driving alone.

“We as a region are better off by having a variety of ways to get around,” Terplan said. “The shuttle fits into the equation of providing another alternative and it moves people more efficiently.”

SCHLEPPING TO SILICON VALLEY WITHOUT A HIGH-TECH BADGE

Citing “security reasons,” Google does not allow non-Googlers on its shuttles, but The San Francisco Examiner trailed one shuttle from the 24th and Valencia streets Muni stop as it headed east on 24th Street, turned right on Van Ness Avenue, left on Cesar Chavez Avenue, took the on-ramp onto U.S. Highway 101, exited at Rengstorff Avenue and made its way to the campus.

The bus left promptly at 7:52 a.m. and made its first stop at Google at 8:56 a.m. Sixty-four minutes.

On another weekday, The Examiner duplicated the journey, leaving at the exact time, but without the privilege of carpool lanes, and arrived at 9:03 a.m. Seventy-one minutes.

The same trip on public transit starts with the 48-Quintara/24th Street bus scheduled to depart at 7:50 a.m. According to Google maps, the bus should arrive at 8:17 a.m. at 22nd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, where a Caltrain baby bullet trip departs two minutes later on a 39-minute ride to the Mountain View station. A “last-mile” Google shuttle picks employees up at the station for a roughly eight-minute ride that should stop at the campus by 9:06 a.m. Seventy-six minutes.

Traffic and other variables may vary, but comparing these trips, the commute was seven minutes shorter by shuttle than driving alone, and 12 minutes shorter than taking public transportation.

Departure time makes a difference as traffic dies down after the morning rush. The commute on Highway 101 was even shorter departing 24th and Valencia streets at 8:30 a.m. A carpool lane begins about two-thirds of the way through the trip at Whipple Avenue off-ramp in Redwood City and requires two or more people per vehicle from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. only, so it is open to all vehicles by then. Fifty-five minutes.

And the trip is even shorter leaving at 9 a.m. Forty-eight minutes.

A travel time comparison conducted by UC Berkeley graduate students Danielle Dai and David Weinzimmer last summer used a different methodology but yielded similar results.

Their study, Riding First Class: Impacts of Silicon Valley Shuttles on Commute & Residential Location Choice, calculated shuttle travel times at the noncongested driving time escalated by 40 percent, plus seven minutes of walking to access the shuttle stop and five minutes for loading and unloading. A trip from a stop at 24th and Guerrero streets, a block away from the starting point of The Examiner’s trip comparison, to the Google headquarters took the same amount of time — 64 minutes.

The UC Berkeley study calculated transit travel time as seven minutes of walking to access the shuttle stop plus the travel time for arrival at the destination Caltrain or BART station by 9 a.m. on a Monday morning, plus a three-minute transfer and drive time for a last-mile shuttle to the corporate campus. It amounted to 90 minutes to arrive at Google, 1.4 times longer than the shuttle time.

For Apple, Facebook, Genentech and Google, the largest tech employer, transit plus a last-mile shuttle took on average about 1.3 times as long as shuttles alone, according to the study. While it did not include solo driving time in the comparison, Weinzimmer said it would be “very similar” to shuttle times because there aren’t many carpool lanes heading down to the Peninsula.

CALTRAIN ISN’T WORRIED ABOUT LOSING BUSINESS

For more than a decade, Caltrain’s Go Pass program has allowed companies to purchase annual unlimited-ride passes for its eligible employees. And some companies have long arranged for “last-mile” shuttles to ferry workers from the train stops to their corporate campuses.

“The Google bus is going to wait because the bus has a place for us,” a suited woman wearing a fake Google Glass device announced into a microphone, as six fellow protesters dressed in red, blue, yellow and white acrobat-like jumpsuits blocked the vehicle.

The woman, who called herself Judith Hart and president of Gmuni, explained she was launching a pilot program allowing San Franciscans to ride Google buses for free, given an imminent hike in Muni fares. But police helped the shuttle shut the door on non-Google employees.
“It was unsuccessful; it turned into a protest,” Hart said. “I called my higher-ups and they said they put [Gmuni] on hold until the environmental impact hearing happens today.”

The blockade at 9 a.m. lasted about 15 minutes and was planned to bring attention to a 2 p.m. hearing today in which the Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on an environmental report appeal for a pilot program allowing commuter shuttles to use Muni stops. Under the program, a select 200 stops will be available for commuter shuttles for $1 per stop per day starting in July.

Eviction-Free San Francisco protester Deepa Varma, wearing a blue Gmuni shirt, acknowledged the Gmuni program and passes were a hoax. “It’s April Fools’ Day,” said Varma, a 33-year-old tenant attorney.

“We’d like to see tech contribute to public transportation and not just pay for private shuttles for their employees. Muni, Caltrain, BART – they’re all underfunded,” added Amanda Ream, another protester.

The blockade was peaceful, with the most confrontation happening when Bernal Heights resident Robert Irminger, 54, tried to force his way on the Google bus. He complained to a police sergeant that the bus driver grabbed and pushed him off the shuttle.

“I was trying to get on because I had this card that said ‘free pass,'” Irminger said. “I was just walking by and it was primarily to draw attention to the hearing.”

Eviction-Free San Francisco has staged several tech bus blockades since December in the Mission district and mid-Market Street area, none quite as staged as Tuesday’s “performance.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/protesters-stage-google-bus-performance-hours-before-pilot-program-could-move-forward/Content?oid=2751639

The driver at fault had little to no assets, so all Stevens can receive is $15,000 — the state minimum liability to cover bodily injury or death. That figure became state law four decades ago and remains the minimum today.

Stevens’ lawyer, Anthony Label, who took the case pro bono, said situations in which a victim is hit by a driver with no assets to sue for are “very common.” The victims simply end up with the state minimum.

In the 1970s, $15,000 went a lot further than it does today. With inflation, that figure should now be called “fender-bender responsibility,” Label said.

He, like others, said an increase is needed.

“We just have to be careful because when we take stands like that, we get some really powerful forces to come attack us and oppose us on it — insurance companies, among others,” Label said.

RESISTING CHANGE

Enacted in 1974 when the average new car cost $4,440, California Vehicle Code 16056 dictated that drivers need to have insurance with $15,000 to cover bodily injury or death to one person in a motor vehicle accident, $30,000 to cover two or more people and $5,000 to cover property damage.

California is one of only seven states in the U.S. — the others are Arizona, Delaware, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — with limits that low, according to the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. Only Florida has lower minimums, at $10,000, $20,000 and $10,000, respectively. Alaska and Maine have the highest at $50,000, $100,000 and $25,000.

Stevens, 31, said many people she has talked to about the $15,000 — which she has yet to receive — did not know the amount would be so little.

“Everyone is shocked that it’s that low because everyone knows that $15,000 doesn’t cover much,” she said. “I think it’s a crime of its own — especially for how much our medical world costs.”

Furthermore, since 1999, California has set limits even lower for low-income drivers — $10,000 for bodily injury to an individual, $20,000 for two or more injured people and $3,000 for property damage.

John Feder, president of Consumer Attorneys of California, an organization of about 3,100 attorneys promoting increased safety for Californians, said the policy behind mandatory insurance is “perfectly sound” in that people who get hurt should be made whole after the accident. But, he added, the state minimum coverage “is way too low and it makes that goal impossible.”

“The law should be updated to reflect the economic reality of 2014,” he said.

Feder said his organization has been meeting with groups that represent low-income drivers and insurance companies, which have traditionally opposed an increase in the minimums, to hopefully move toward raising the limits next year, if not this year.

Michael Gunning, vice president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, said his group could not state a position on the matter, but voiced the concerns of those against an increase.

“The challenges that we’ve talked about are the cost and the impact on low-income drivers and a down economy,” he said. “I just don’t know if that could be done in this Legislature.”

Other groups have been more adamantly against an increase.

In February 2013, the Association of California Insurance Companies said raising the state’s financial responsibility limit from $15,000 for an individual to $30,000 would mean paying more for coverage, and that would “negatively impact” roughly one-third of insured drivers.

As of 2011, the estimated population of uninsured motorists in California was 15 percent — higher than the 13.8 percent nationwide average, according to the Insurance Research Council.

The average bodily injury in California is $12,788, just below the limit. The Association of California Insurance Companies concluded that “[a]ny proposal to raise the [financial responsibility] limits should be defeated — keeping costs down should be the most significant consideration.”

Mark Sektnan, president of the Association of California Insurance Companies, added, “You have to ask yourself, ‘What is the trade-off to make it more expensive? Do more people decide not to get auto insurance and increase the risk of uninsured motorists?’”

No legislation to change the minimum financial responsibility has been introduced in Sacramento in the past few years, according to California Department of Insurance spokesman Patrick Storm.

A LOCAL FOCUS

On the local level, following a year with the most pedestrian fatalities since 2007, pedestrian and bicycle advocacy groups have focused on pushing the Vision Zero plan to eliminate pedestrian fatalities within 10 years. While some city agencies have adopted the plan, it remains a vision that needs funding to become a reality.

After learning about Stevens’ situation with the $15,000, Walk San Francisco Executive Director Nicole Schneider reached out to California Walks. The statewide pedestrian safety organization is pushing to expand the definition of a victims’ compensation fund to include pedestrian victims injured while crossing the roadway when they have the right of way.

State Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Oakland, sent California Walks’ proposal to the Legislative Counsel to translate it into a bill, but it has run into a roadblock: The fund was initially set up for victims of crime.

State vehicle code categorizes injuring someone while failing to yield as an infraction, so California Walks is exploring replacing that with reckless driving since that’s a misdemeanor, said Deputy Director Tony Dang. The deadline to find a sponsor and introduce the bill is Feb. 21.

“It’s a huge disappointment because it’s extremely visceral — when a driver is not yielding we think it should be a crime,” Dang said. “Most incidents that relate to pedestrians and bicyclists are not crimes, they’re infractions, so I think that has a huge bearing on how law enforcement then chooses to enforce laws to protect vulnerable road users.”

The Police Department announced at a Jan. 16 hearing on pedestrian fatalities that it would begin issuing citations to parties at fault in an accident that results in an injury after not doing so for years. The policy applies retroactively for a year, so the driver who hit Stevens received a ticket for failure to yield to a pedestrian at a crosswalk, said Cmdr. Mikail Ali, who works with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

“We’re going through approximately 4,000 collision reports so we’re not done at this point, and more importantly it’s about moving forward,” Ali said. “We’re hoping that with this additional enforcement that we’re going to see people’s behavior change.”

THE AFTERMATH FOR STEVENS

For Stevens, life changed Sept. 26 as she was walking to work and a driver hit her at Bush and Taylor streets, a block away from her studio apartment. She lost her sense of taste and smell, and permanently has a piece of chipped bone in the back of her brain.

In order to keep her apartment, she’s recently had to return to work at the hair salon despite chronic back pain. And she uses some money earned for massage parlors “because I just can’t function without it.”

Stevens was not insured at the time of the collision and relies on Healthy San Francisco for her care.

In between physical therapy and counseling sessions, Stevens has committed to working with Walk SF and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition on initiatives and has become a face for pedestrian-vehicle victims through a short documentary her friends created. Injury prevention continues to be the groups’ focus, and increasing the state liability minimum may remain on the back burner unless an organized effort is initiated.

“Right now I can’t organize something on my own,” Stevens said. “Because I can’t even organize my own life.”

How auto insurance works:

California insurance requires bodily injury and property damage liability

Other states also require uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage

The total cost of pedestrian injuries in San Francisco was $75.8 million from 2004-08

Approximately 76 percent ($56.7 million) of that was paid for through Medicare, MediCal and patients themselves

Conversely, 24 percent ($17.6 million) was paid for by private insurance

The minimum amount billed directly to an uninsured victim was $5,143 and the maximum was $505,952

Sources: Property Casualty Insurers Association of America; San Francisco Injury Center for Research and Prevention

To help Stevens with her medical bills, click here to visit her fundraising site.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/injured-sf-pedestrians-medical-bill-highlights-gap-in-insurance-coverage/Content?oid=2692708

Neither he nor his wife had a clue, so Grieshaber decided to call Caltrans. After being rerouted to a half-dozen representatives, he was informed that the majority of the scraps likely would be shipped to China.

“After that, I thought, ‘Wow, it’d be great to make a house with all this material, that is self-sustaining as well as financially self-sustaining,'” he said.

But Grieshaber let the idea die up until a few months ago, when media outlets spotlighted bolt complications on the new eastern span that jeopardized the scheduled opening over Labor Day weekend — a problem mitigated by a temporary fix announced in mid-August.

Now with the new bridge scheduled to open at 5 a.m. Tuesday and demolition of the old span beginning soon after, Grieshaber has launchedBayBridgeHouse.org to pitch his Bay Bridge House to governing agencies and locals. He envisions using less than 200 feet of the 10,176-foot-long span to construct the most modern eco-house in the country with the help of cutting-edge Bay Area green technology companies.

“I heard there is the potential that pieces are being saved for a park or going to Oakland,” Grieshaber said. “Those seem to be antiquated ideas that are great, but we should be doing something different. Combining the eco-house idea and the bridge seemed like a logical step to change the way we think in the Bay Area.”

The roadway, with lane lines preserved, could serve as the bottom floor of the house, explained the 44-year-old computer engineer and entrepreneur from Brisbane. The bridge’s sides could act as walls, and pieces of concrete and asphalt could be ground up and reformed to avoid using plaster and wood.

The first floor would accommodate parking and possibly an office. The main living room would take up the second floor, and the third floor could feature a loft. A green roof with solar panels, windmills and fiber-optic lighting would occupy the fourth floor. Rainwater could be stored for use and a home-size desalination plant installed.

Grieshaber, his wife and two cats would live in the house and act as caretakers for an adjacent building that could be utilized as an eco-workspace or, ideally, a bed and breakfast.

“We want the idea to generate its own income so that it’s not a burden on any kind of taxpayers or government organization,” he said. “It would either be a nonprofit organization, if we can get away with it, or it’s going to be a B [benefit] corporation, which means you have a company charter and ethics.”

Grieshaber’s idea is innovative, but not the first of its kind.

Houses constructed with bridge pieces in Spain and the Big Dig House built from Boston’s central artery and tunnel project serve as successful examples on his website. Equipped with this research, Grieshaber recently reached out to architects, universities and agencies overseeing the Bay Bridge work.

“Unfortunately, it seems like everyone is either working on the Bay Bridge project and is in a frantic mess right now, or is at Burning Man,” he said.

The idea had not reached Bay Bridge officials, said spokesman Andrew Gordon.

“I’m sure there is some hazardous material,” he said of the pieces in their current state. “It’s one thing to drive over it; it’s another thing to live on it.”

In talks with agencies working to create Gateway Park in Oakland, it’s become clear that pieces going to a museum or for public view would need thorough cleaning.

“The bridge was repainted, but there are coats of lead paint underneath and asbestos that would have to be stripped,” said Caltrans bridge engineer Mike Whiteside, who added that the fate of the rest of the bridge parts is at the discretion of companies contracted for the demolition.

Still, Grieshaber hopes government agencies will donate bridge parts for the house and a plot of land as small as 50-by-50 feet. If those ventures fail, he said he’s still confident he can make the Bay Bridge House a reality out of pocket by buying the scraps from the demolition contractors themselves.

Grieshaber might have to go the extra mile, though.

“We wouldn’t be able to [sell pieces] at the site; it’s a liability issue,” said Rich Rigg, project manager for Silverado Contractors, one of the companies handling the demolition. “It’s already been decided the remnants will be sold to Schnitzer Steel in Oakland and Sims Metal in Richmond. We bring it straight to the recycler; he can always ask them.”

Grieshaber’s remaining challenge would be staking out a piece of land that isn’t government-owned and that fits his vision.

“No matter what, I would hope to have a view of the new bridge from the old bridge,” he said. “The Bay Bridge is on the National Register of Historic Places, and once it’s torn down it’s gone from our history — unless we keep some of it around for future generations to be a part of.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/bay-area-man-envisions-environmentally-conscious-home-built-from-old-bay-bridge-scraps/Content?oid=2563072