Google’s Most Luring Perk – Buses

[The comfort - Googled]

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.

Google is famous for its exciting perks (you are missing something if you do not know about those) which it offers to its employers around the world. It’s university style of environment in its campuses gave it the top place in 100 best companies to work with in 2007. Even Microsoft was no where near Google in that list.

Now to add to the list Google has launched its own transport system, which it operates through Bauer’s Limousine, a private transportation company in San Francisco. An interesting article in NY Times shows how in Silicon Valley, a region known for some of the worst traffic in the nation, Google, the Internet search engine giant and online advertising behemoth, has turned itself into Google, the mass transit operator. Its aim is to make commuting painless for its pampered workers — and keep attracting new recruits in a notoriously competitive market for top engineering talent.

The awesome worth reading characteristics of Google’s buses:

• 32 shuttle buses equipped with comfortable leather seats and wireless Internet access.
• Bicycles are allowed on exterior racks.
• Dogs on forward seats, or on their owners’ laps if the buses run full.
• Riders can sign up to receive alerts on their computers and cellphones when buses run late.
• They also get to burnish their green credentials, not just for ditching their cars, but because all Google shuttles run on biodiesel.
• At Google headquarters, a small team of transportation specialists monitors regional traffic patterns, maps out the residences of new hires and plots new routes — sometimes as many as 10 in a three-month period — to keep up with ever surging demand.
• And ofcourse, just like other cool Google perks, this is also FREE!

For all their popularity, the shuttles have yet to earn Google the title of most commuter-friendly employer. The top spot in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Best Workplaces for Commuters went to Intel, which allows telecommuting, offers transit subsidies to employees and helps pay for shuttles that bring workers from transit stops, among other benefits. Google tied Oracle for third; Microsoft came in second.

But one should remember the above attractive step is the idea of the company whose founders’ corporate jet is a Boeing 767.

Tags: google news