If anyone wants to point to a place where the latest tech boom has benefited the environment, the best place to look in my opinion is public transit. Catching a bus or train, which once held a significant learning curve is now a couple taps on a smartphone or a text message away.
I remember going back to San Francisco with a couple friends and they were just as able to navigate muni as I was, even though they had never lived there.
Been living in San Francisco for a few weeks now and it still takes me a minute to figure out which direction I need to take in the Metro. Why they chose such unintuitive names such as Inbound and Outbound baffles me.
The Metro system outgrew what it was circa 1980 and hasn't really caught up with itself. Everything used to end at Embarcadero and there were no loops or crossovers, so station platforms were simply labelled "Downtown" or "Outbound." Then the lines started going beyond Embarcadero starting in 1998 with the extension to Caltrain. Then we got the T Third Street extension in 2007. At that point the old convention stopped making sense, and I completely agree with the confusion.
I remember going back to San Francisco with a couple friends and they were just as able to navigate muni as I was, even though they had never lived there.