FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

San Francisco's New Luxury Bus Startup Is Already Pissing People Off

I commuted on Leap, the new $6 Uber for buses.

Leap's bus looks like a fancy coffee shop on wheels, including around 30 cushioned seats, on-board wi-fi, and a fancy check-in counter built from reclaimed wood. There's also a bar along the right side of the bus with USB ports where you can charge your phone and order a bottle of Stumptown's cold brew coffee.

If you want to know why there's a market in San Francisco for such an opulent ride, just wait at the pick up spot.

Advertisement

I saw more than a dozen people wait by Leap's sign on Lombard and Pierce when I got there early this morning, and was surprised that the service had become this popular by its second day.

As it turns out, almost all of these people were waiting for various and much hated private shuttles that take them to tech company campuses around the Bay Area. There was an Electronic Arts bus, a Genentech bus, and several Google buses.

I saw at least six of these company busses come and go before Leap's blue bus rolled up. If you work at a company that pays you well enough that you don't have to overthink the $6 fare, but isn't fancy enough to shuttle you around in a private bus, Leap's for you.

It currently drives a single route from San Francisco's Marina neighborhood to downtown. It runs from 7 AM to 10 AM, with four pick up spots in the Marina and four drop-off spots around the financial district and SOMA, where many of the city's startup offices are located. In the evening, the route runs the opposite way.

To get on, all I had to do was download Leap's app, enter my credit card information, and indicate that I wanted a ride. When the bus showed up, I could either flash a QR code to an iPad, or just turn on bluetooth to check in automatically.

I could also use the app to have Richard, my bus's onboard concierge/waiter, fetch me a coffee. I fear for Richard's safety. Leap uses repurposed municipal buses that don't have any railings to hold on to. Richard says he has his sea legs under him, but I can't help but imagine that if the bus made an emergency stop it would knock him off his feet and send sharp Macbook Airs and heavy coconut water cartons all over the place.

Advertisement

Leap is going to piss some people off. One of the pick-up spots in the Marina was in front of a bodega, and when we made the stop, the man who worked there seemed irritated. He pointed at Leap's sign and asked Richard to step out for a chat. I didn't hear the exchange but I wrote down the bodega's name and called him later to ask what the issue was.

"Whoever came up with this idea is ridiculous."

"The issue? It's a neighborhood area, the buses shouldn't even be here causing traffic," the man who asked to be identified only as Dean told me. "I took pictures of all the traffic they caused. They cannot put a sign next to my store! You have to have a permit for all that kind of stuff. Nobody asked me. Last night I closed, nothing. This morning I came, there was a [Leap] sign."

Dean said that buses go through San Francisco's wider streets—Lombard, Union, Van Ness—not by his store, where they have to maneuver awkwardly to make a left. He said that he called the City and County of San Francisco to complain but that he hasn't heard back yet.

"There was a big truck parked right here, and the bus passed by and everybody was stuck for two, three minutes. It's ridiculous," he said. "Whoever came up with this idea is ridiculous."

As the California Public Utilities Commission told Ars Technica, Leap doesn't have the permit it needs to legally operate in San Francisco, but it didn't say it will do anything about it either.

San Franciscans are already primed to get angry at a service like Leap. The private tech company shuttles aren't only a sign of growing income inequality in the city, San Francisco protesters against the shuttles claim they slow down public transit and cause safety concerns. Only last year did San Francisco decide that companies like Google will have to pay to pick up their workers at city bus stops.

I understand why people who can afford Leap don't want to take city buses. I've seen some shit on San Francisco's public transportation—as in, literally I've seen a man on the 22 poop himself so thoroughly it spilled over the top of his pants. I've seen vomit slide around the floor of the 24, and I once saw a man on the 38 jump hands-first at a woman's breasts.

The buses are slow. They make frequent stops to accommodate the disabled and elderly in San Francisco's hilly terrain, and buses regularly disconnect from the cables that power them, forcing the driver to stop, step out, and reattach them. Depending on where you're trying to go, getting across San Francisco's seven-by-seven miles can take an hour and a half even when everything is running correctly.

Like Uber, Instacart, and other apps that were born in the Bay Area, Leap allows you to skip the friction associated with city living for a premium price. It is, without a doubt, a much more pleasant commute. For $6, you can isolate yourself from the disabled, elderly, people who don't speak English, and basically anyone who doesn't make a lot of money. If you don't look out the window, you can pretend you don't live in San Francisco at all.