Google buses Good

I've been seeing a lot of bad press for the google buses that ferry people out of San Francisco into the Mountain View Google campus. While I think using the public bus stops might be a problem for other reasons. I think the buses are good overall. Check this comment from Slashdot:

"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."

I don't think this is right. While, of course, setting the high-tech campus in the middle of the city is good for the city, busing allows the people to live in the city where they maintain the ecosystem of a city going. I mean really the problem is suburbia and how it guts cities' ecosystem. If the campus is far and you take a bus from the city that's not a problem. I'm thinking part of the issue in SF is that people use public transportation to get from the suburbs to the city and then the bus out and that would defeat the purpose. But if the bus is only for city residents, what's the harm? Way better than they driving or worse, moving to the suburbs and fomenting sprawl.

#Edit: 2015, July. I've just been told the busses aren't open to the public just for google employees. Now that just sucks. Open them to everyone. Jeez. If you're using a public bus stop, the bus should be public. Maybe they should charge and employees ride free but come on, if people want to ride the bus to go to Google, let them!