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…