Call it a corporate shuttle bus, without the corporation.

On Tuesday, a San Francisco company that runs luxury shuttles for the likes of Google and Yahoo will start a new, weekday bus service connecting Marin County, San Francisco and San Jose.

The buses will be the same kind of tricked-out rides that Bauer’s Intelligent Transportation uses for its corporate clients, with padded leather seats, television screens, free Wi-Fi and power plugs for laptops. But they will be open to anyone who wants to pay the fare – $8.20 one way on most routes.

“We’re trying to get people out of their Mercedes or Lexus, people who wouldn’t ride public transit,” said company Chief Executive Officer Gary Bauer.

Each route will have just a handful of stops. To deal with the spread-out urban geography of the South Bay, the stops are located near prominent companies or transit hubs. The Sunnyvale stop, for example, is at North Mathilda and Fifth avenues, near Juniper Networks, Lockheed Martin and a light rail station for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/02/MNOQ166F3C.DTL