The vast network of corporate shuttle buses that are clogging our streets and occasionally getting in the way of Muni buses is now a topic of discussion for New Yorkers. A New York Mag scribe has just gone and done a few ride-alongs with Facebook and Google employees to get a feel for this mysterious system and finds, for the most part, everyone keeps their heads down and does their work for their corporate overlords.

But, he finds, there is the occasional Friday night booze cruise when someone lets loose and brings along some Champagne, or inter-coworker PDA. People are mostly on their laptops, however, and there's an unspoken rule about no talking once on the highway, and no hogging precious bandwidth with needless video watching.

“I was once yelled at for streaming Obama's acceptance speech at the DNC,” a Googler reported. “It was using too much bandwidth.”

Also, NY Mag touches on the issue of tension with the City and Muni, and the general distaste for them that's growing over the fact that the buses have a direct relationship to rising rents and gentrification in certain neighborhoods, like the Divisadero corridor.

But here's something we didn't know: Google employees can "rent" the buses, which the company owns, on the weekends to "shuttle friends to a party, say, or host an outing to Napa Valley." Great. Just what Napa needs: busloads of drunk coders and engineers.

[NY Mag]

Previously: Behold the Secret Corporate Shuttle-Stop Map of S.F.
SF Supervisor Proposes Strict Regulations For Corporate Shuttles