SPUR Special Event: Shuttling San Francisco to the Valley

Fundamental shifts are underway in the relationship between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Historically, workers have lived in residential suburbs while commuting to work in San Francisco. For Silicon Valley, however, the situation is reversed: many of the largest technology companies are based in suburbs and relatively far from mass transit. Thus, an alternate transportation network of private buses threads daily through San Francisco where a majority of their workforce lives, completing a daily cycle of picking up workers at a series of unmarked bus stops, and then carries them via the commuter lanes of the 101 and 280 freeways to and from their tech campuses.

What does this flow tell us about Silicon Valley, and the urban environment it feeds? Is San Francisco becoming the new bedroom community for today’s Silicon Valley worker? What are the effects of this alternate transportation network, and can public mass transit remain flexible enough to fulfill changing transportation and commuting needs?

Join us as a panel of artists, activists and transportation professionals discuss the future of transportation in Silicon Valley. This panel grew out of the project The City From the Valley, a research project by Stamen Design that visualizes the growing phenomenon of private buses transporting workers between San Francisco and Silicon Valley that is currently on view as part of the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial’s hub exhibition, Seeking Silicon Valley.

Free to the public. Register online.