Shuttle diplomacy: Why Mountain View wants Google, Intuit to ride the same bus

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Nathan Donato-Weinstein: Real Estate Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal; Email | Twitter

Corporate shuttle services have mushroomed in the past several years as tech giants such as Apple Inc. and Google Inc. ferry workers from San Francisco (and other locales) to campuses in Silicon Valley.

But such services have remained largely separate from each other — and certainly cut off from your average non-tech-worker citizen.
Now several tech companies and developers are working together to plan a more efficient and open system, at least within the epicenter of the shuttle world: Mountain View.

San Francisco-based developer TMG Partners announced this week it would team with Google Inc., Intuit Corp., and fellow developer Sares Regis Group of Northern California to form a new transportation management agency in Mountain View. The nonprofit organization will devise, fund and operate a shared-shuttle service that will operate within the city and be available to members of the public and workers at other companies.

TMG, which is building a new 385,000-square-foot campus for Samsung R&D Institute America at 665 Clyde Ave., was required to set up the agency as a city condition for approval of the project. But TMG wasn't sure whether other corporate neighbors — many of whom compete for ultra-valuable tech talent — would join the effort. They did.

"It's not just our company, but regional heavy-hitters who want to collaborate," Denise Pinkston, a partner with TMG, told me today. "Companies understand we need to start working together differently than we have before."

Going forward, companies that want to grow in the city might not have a choice.

"We're starting to make it a condition of approval for a lot of these redevelopment plans," said Margaret Abe Koga, a city councilwoman.