People bitch and moan about the quality of public transport in San Francisco more than anywhere else I've been, despite the fact that SF's public transport is actually pretty good. The BARTs are fast and the MUNIs are frequent. Yes, there's the occasional delay or breakdown, but in Sydney there are some parts of the city that you'll just never be able to get to on public transport alone. Some routes only run one bus an hour and if that doesn't show up you're fucked. That seems to be pretty common around the world, so props to SF for running efficient services.

There is a real problem with public transport, though, but it's a bit more subtle than "bloody techy rich people don't want to come in contact with the ooky poor people." There's a game I like to play on BART and MUNI called "Name That Bodily Fluid." Often there will be one empty seat on a crowded train, and although you can't see what's on that seat, at every stop people will board the train, make a bee-line for the empty seat, and then recoil in horror. Spoiler alert: it's usually vomit. Getting wi-fi and lattes thrown in is, like kleinbl00 said, a bit of a yuppie touch, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to pay more for a service that gets cleaned more often. If private industry can do better than the public services, then have at it!

The other thing that often gets swept up in the "bloody tech-heads" sentiment is the wild economic inequality in San Francisco. I don't think it's the tech industry's fault that there are so many homeless people, but the presence of so much wealth makes the poverty stand out more. The article's concern that private buses will leave public transport as a hovel for poor people isn't a problem with the buses, it's a problem with poor people. You could say the same about restaurants or any other paid service -- "But if you can pay more for a nice meal, then won't Denny's become a last resort for the poor?" And yeah, it kind of is, but again the problem isn't with the restaurants, it's the economic inequality.