Tech buses were once ubiquitous on S.F. streets. Here's how frequency has changed

At 8 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, roughly a dozen people in their 20s waited underneath the orange awnings of the Urgent Care on Lombard and Scott streets in the Marina, backpacks on, earbuds in and heads down as they scrolled through their phones.

A couple of minutes later, a silver double-decker bus rolled up to the white curb and the people wordlessly filed on, scanning their work badges as they passed the driver who would whisk them down to tech offices in Silicon Valley.

Commuter shuttles, known locally as "tech buses" or "Google buses," have long been an attractive option for young Silicon Valley workers seeking the excitement of city life over sleepy Peninsula and South Bay suburbs. In the 2010s, they were often a symbol of tech-driven gentrification in neighborhoods like the Mission District. But the shuttles, which are permitted to stop only in certain zones and drive only on certain streets, are far less numerous than they once were, data from SFMTA shows.

Commuter shuttles so far this year had 40% less pickups and dropoffs on average each month than they did in 2019, according to the data, indicating that, as with public transit, fewer people are using the private service to get to their far-flung jobs on a regular basis.

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The shift is another sign of how San Francisco has transformed in the era of remote work. Long before the pandemic reshaped the Bay Area, the tech buses drew ire and protests from some residents of the Mission, for whom they became a detested symbol of tech-driven gentrification. The peaceful, quiet pickup scene on Wednesday morning in the Marina was a far cry from that time.

The buses began increasing in numbers in the 2010s, marketed as an alternative to trips workers would otherwise make in a car alone, adding to gridlock traffic at rush hour. In 2015, an SFMTA survey found that 50% of shuttle riders would drive alone to work without the shuttles, while about 30% said they'd take public transit. For most, moving to the Peninsula was out of the question: 14% would get a job closer to their home in the city, and just 5% would move closer to their jobs in Silicon Valley.

Exactly how many riders are using the buses now is unclear. The privately operated shuttles do not have to provide exact ridership data, but instead only have to report "stop events." For example, after roughly a dozen people boarded the silver bus in the Marina, another stopped soon after. It held its doors open for a minute or two, but no one got on. Though the second had no riders get on at that stop, both would be counted as stop events in the data.

Data about how many stops are made at each permitted location - either stops shared with Muni or designated with white curbs - is less complete. SFMTA did not provide data by stop for 2026 or for the entirety of 2025, but 2024's data paints a fuller picture.

That year, Lombard and Scott streets had the highest total number of pickups and drop-offs, followed by Geary Boulevard and Park Presidio Boulevard.

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Still, the monthly stop events have leveled off, the data shows, settling into the same new normal that public transportation is grappling with as the reliability of five-days-a-week commuters has evaporated.

Public transportation ridership, meanwhile, has continued to stagger very slowly toward pre-pandemic ridership levels, though it has yet to reach it.

In March this year, all four of the Bay Area's largest transit systems were at or near post-pandemic ridership highs. Muni, Caltrain and AC Transit have each seen roughly three quarters as many riders so far this year as they did in 2019. BART, meanwhile, still lags at about 50%.

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In a statement, SFMTA emphasized that both the commuter shuttles and Muni are part of an overall effort to manage and reduce traffic congestion by taking cars off the road.

"When we look at the region, Muni, BART and Caltrain are all seeing post-pandemic ridership gains," the agency said in a statement. "We know how much Muni matters to the entire Bay Area and our goal is to make ‘last mile' connections to regional transit easier and safer by transit, walking, biking and rolling."

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This story was originally published May 23, 2026 at 10:40 AM.