Facebook and the City of Menlo Park - Chapter 1

Transport Conundrum

The negotiation intricacies between a council and a business such as Facebook coming to set up in your area are vast as you can well imagine. Facebook is a 21^st century company, it’s huge, it’s different, it’s a mobile culture and its 9400 employees, approx. 6600 cars are soon arriving on the doorstep of the City of Menlo Park.

Commuting is just one facet but needs to be planned in detail

They predict 6600 new cars will arrive into the surrounding suburb of Bells Park but Facebook campus will only hold 3200 parking spaces.  Menlo Park has to think about the new numbers of vehicles, bikes and pedestrains and Facebook need to think about getting their workers to and from the campus with only half the number of parking spaces available.

Bring in Transport TBN program – Facebook’s goal is to get ½ the employees to take public transport. They will have 30 buses going back and forth from different city routes.  The buses will start at 5.30am and the last one leaves Facebook at 10.30pm.  They have a $10m budget for this. They will have incentive programs, still to be thought through but something like this – employees will get public transport points and by the end of week you get an Ipad or by the end of the year you get …?? something else.  The work day starts when you get on the bus. No accountability checks, it’s the 21^st century. There will be rolling work stations on the bus and all buses of course will have WFii.  They will constantly be finding new routes as they find out where their staff live.  Friday’s bus home – yep, party bus – no if’s or but’s about that one.

 

Local streets of course will be greatly impacted due to the huge number of workers with cars and bikes.  Facebook are going to develop a trip cap, a trip base at intersections and a high tech trip cap at every campus entry and exit point tracking the number of trips a car is taking with a trigger highlighting when the cap has been violated.  There will be a schedule of fees for violating the cap. 

Facebook are working with the City to improve the bike lanes.

Its quite amazing to hear about the logistics of relocating Facebook. Stay tuned to hear a little about the city and company negotiations, the culture, the campus amenities (amazing), affordable housing impacts and how the community feels.