There’s been a lot of lament about the tech industry and what it does or doesn’t do for a city. I can tell people rest assured, the modern tech company is a huge benefit to cities. Here’s one of the biggest reasons why. They hire people that get active in their tech community, they get active in their local community, and the become active users of transit and cycling at a higher rate than almost any other occupation today. In addition to this the tech industry generally hires people at much higher than median wages, providing a much larger tax base that benefits the rest of society in both higher and lower income brackets.

All in all, have a strong tech industry employment base helps a city and its residents in a lot of ways. But what about gentrification you ask? Well remember just because there is correlation that doesn’t mean there is causation, and gentrification is not a cause of the tech industry growing. I’ll have more on this in the future. But real quick I wanted to outline a few companies here in Portland that are leaders in the area when it comes to being great community members. When I say this, I mean in transit use, cycling use, community involvement and city involvement. All of these companies have many people working for them that get active and help out in all sorts of ways.

Elemental Technologies

Trimet did a blog entry a while back titled “Meeting with transit riders at Portland-based startup Elemental Technologies” which has even more information. But here’s a few highlights for the cycling and transit advocates out there.

• Out of the 91 person team, over 50% use transit and many others cycle into work.
• The team asked about bus stop spacing, like many of us transit nerds and transit users, we’d like to see them spaced out a bit to cut down on travel time.
• The Elemental team also asked if the stops will ever be removed downtown to get trip time between Lloyd Center and Goose Hollow down to a more reasonable 10-15 minutes instead of the current 20 minutes. Neil batted this one around and pointed to the fact it would cost a lot to do so. I’m guessing it would actually cost somewhere to the tune of a million or a couple of million to rewire the lights and fix this excessive trip time that currently exists.

New Relic

New Relic got a lot of coverage on their excellent in office, front door bike parking and their dedication to biking as a company. Coverage included “New Relic’s palatial in-office bike parking is Portland’s answer to the Google bus“, “Bikes Are Good for Business: Advocacy on Two Wheels“, and others. Here’s some choice quotes.

• “Asked how many of New Relic’s 180 local employees drive to work, executive assistant and office manager Mary Cameron began ticking off names on her fingers with the help of two colleagues. “Jim drives,” she said. “I think Patrick drives.” They made it to six before getting stuck. “Less than 10,” Cameron concluded.“
• It’s safe to say between transit and cycling, the drivers are in rarity.

Jama Software

Jama Software is another local company here in Portland that has a large percentage of cyclists commuting to and from the offices. This is a home grown (I almost went to work for them when they were just 4 employees!) Portland startup. They now employee well over a hundred people. You can read more about their bicycle amenities and advocacy on the BTA article “Optimizing Efficiency Through Bikes and Software” and the Cool Spaces real estate article “Cool Spaces: Jama Software bangs gong to celebrate new business“.

Note: This is one of many posts I’m going to make on this topic. In the future I’ll connect more of the advocacy and amenities that everybody (not just employees of said tech industry companies) gets to enjoy that comes from these and other Portland tech industry companies.