Better public transport would solve a lot of those problems. For such a dense area the current offering is a joke.
I live in San Mateo and work in the south bay. By car it takes me 35-40min (with no traffic) but with public transport it would be over 2h. After six there isn't even any option available to go back home. No surprise that so many people choose a car to commute.
Public transit works best for young healthy people. If you have kids or move a little slowly due to health or old age, public transit is a straight up no-go. And certain jobs necessitate a car. You won't convince a salesman to carry a projector, screen, and a box of pamphlets on the bus and train.
And this says nothing of "comfort", which along with Time, is a rare commodity for working people. I'm not sitting on a rough seat crammed next to 5 other people for 2 hours. I'll take my car, with its 8-way adjustable seat, climate control and cup holders, thank-you-very-much. I'd rather sit and wait in traffic in my car than stand outside in the rain or snow waiting for a bus.
And on top of that, transit for me would be about $400/month. A car lease, insurance, and gas per month would be about $600. I will happily pay $200 more per month for the massively increased mobility and comfort that a car provides. The value proposition for public transit really sucks.
This is always so weird to me. These problems have already been pretty much solved in other countries, but the US always thinks it's a special snowflake. Public transport works pretty well for non-young healthy people in other countries.
This pattern is sadly typical of our political discourse. "I know that {socialized health care, gun bans, public transit, labor rights, paid pregnancy leave} work great in every other first-world country, but it Can't Work Here, because Reasons".
Amsterdam and other cities in the Netherlands are the some of the best examples of this. People look at the massive portion that bicycles take up in their split of transportation modes and think that it could never happen in their country or city for all sorts of reasons because Amsterdam is special and the Dutch are unique and special.
However if you can easily find pictures of Amsterdam in the 1970s where the streets look just as crammed with cars as any other city of that time. What happened is that people decided this wasn't working at all and they simply made a choice and they made a change to their spending priorities. Anyone can do this. All that is needed is the political will to make it a priority.
Regarding commuting via bicycle: it's not necessarily a problem with traffic, as more with weather. Also it's wrong to compare a single city, Amsterdam, with a bunch of American cities because of drastically different weather patterns in those cities.
Amsterdam has average temps (in F) from the mid 30's to the mid 60's[0]. That's prime bike weather. That's pretty much in line with San Francisco, which is a good city for biking. Even Manhattan and Brooklyn have reasonably overall pleasant weather for biking.
But compare SF to somewhere like Washington, DC, or Austin, TX. For 3-4 months of the year, DC feels like a swamp. Same with Austin. It's much more preferable to use public transit or drive than bike in that weather.
While the weather may be comparable, San Francisco is a very hilly city. I imagine that Amsterdam is relatively flat. In spite of its problematic, yet aesthetically pleasing topology, there is a strong culture of biking in SF.
Sure, the US climate is diverse, and it makes sense to use the appropriate transportation method for that climate. That doesn't negate the fact that "just keep using cars" is a bad idea.
This is a good point. Political will is vital.
However, I submit that in America, the design of the built environment as a system is profoundly broken. Basically we need to build our stuff closer together. Like feet apart instead of miles.
Credit where credit is due, I stole most of my ideas about this from [0]. It's a non-prestigious contrarian blog that's easy to mock, but he seems to be correct on the merits about cities.
The US and Canada are geographically huge. Take the problems the other countries solved and multiply it by 10. The climate here is also different. When was the last time a hurricane or tornado hit Europe? Or an ice storm? Or major snow storm? What about a heat wave over 100F?
Public transit is not resilient to these things. Our streetcars shut down in Toronto during heavy snowfall because they'll derail if the tracks aren't clear. Ice gets into the concrete supporting the tracks and they need to constantly be repaired because of that.
Asphalt roads are cheap and easy to maintain. Hell, you don't even need asphalt, cars are perfectly capable of driving on dirt or gravel. You can drive a car on shitty, broken asphalt, but you can't drive a train on broken tracks. There is a resiliency to road and cars that public transit just doesn't have.
When was the last time a hurricane or tornado hit Europe?
When's the last time you took the car to work rather than the bus because a hurricane hit your area? Last time you looked out the window, saw a tornado and said, "Looks like I'm driving to work today, honey, and not taking the bus."?
Ice storm? You better be a cardiologist needing to get to the hospital to do life-saving surgery if you're driving in that. Because the world doesn't need you in the office writing yet-another-javascript-framework that badly.
Heat wave? Okay, ya got me there. Take the air-conditioned car instead of the bicycle.
So your saying nobody every tries to go from one end of Europe to the other? OK. Sure. /sarcasm
They also have weather patterns that generally match ours. Sure, not tornadoes afaik, but that's not a huge chunk of damage to the US either. Public transit is resistant to those things. They have snow, ice, and other cold-weather issues over there as well and somehow seem to get along just fine.
And car's resiliency comes at an unsustainable cost. Not only is it environmentally unsustainable, it's not even population-density sustainable. Sure, there are big empty areas of land where it wouldn't make sense to put public transportation, just like in Europe. But that doesn't mean we should ignore the areas where it does make sense to implement it, just like in Europe.
None of these problems are really unique to the US.
But we're talking about Silicon Valley - which is smaller than most European cities. And cities there handle snowstorms and heat waves just fine (or just as well as American cities). For that matter - when was the last time a hurricane or a snowstorm hit the Bay area?
It's easy to marginalize other people's problems when you don't have them.
Even in an urban area with transit, most US cities have forced desegregation which means kids are scattered all over and economies built around cars. I could take public transit to work (30-40 minutes vs 10 in a car), but have to travel to the other side of the city to get to my kids school (15m by car, 60 by transit). Oh and even in an urban area, the nearest supermarket is a 20 minute walk.
My relatives in Europe walk 5 blocks to school, have decent local shopping options, etc.
Using a car in the US isn't that expensive, but offers a dramatic level of flexibility and freedom. I'm not limited to working in my city's central business district or forced to miss most of my kids school events.
I'm very aware that the US is structured that way, but it doesn't really change anything. We built this mess, and we're going to have to build ourselves out again someday. Sure, it sucks that we structured our cities incorrectly, but plugging our ears and hoping the problem goes away isn't going to fix it.
If anything it actually enables the disabled and older crowd to become more mobile in those other countries. A car is a burden, and I think we can all understand how terribly efficient of a solution they are.
If you have kids or move a little slowly due to health or old age, public transit is a straight up no-go.
All of the slow-moving elderly I see on the buses around Seattle would like to have a word with you.
I'll take my car, with its 8-way adjustable seat, climate control and cup holders, thank-you-very-much.
I tried it for a few weeks when I got tired of riding the bus. Jaguar S-Type, leather, walnut on the dash, about as nice as one's going to get.
I'd rather sit and wait in traffic in my car than stand outside in the rain or snow waiting for a bus.
To each their own. After two weeks of sitting on the 520 bridge staring at the bumper in front of me, I said "fuck this" and went back to the bus. You already said time was a "rare commodity" for working people, yet you'll sit in traffic while I sit on the bus making a bug fix or reading a book?
And on top of that, transit for me would be about $400/month.
Yoiks. $100 for me to ride the bus, versus $200-$300/month just for parking in downtown Seattle. That doesn't include gas or the $50K Jaguar. Again, though, for me it had nothing to do with money spent.
But we all have our limits. Currently I ride the motorcycle to work (a different destination from above), which allows HOV lane usage, which whittles my commute down to 30 minutes and I park in front of the building. And my ride to work is a motorcycle, which is a plus in my book. Versus 90 minutes on the bus, a transfer, and the bus doesn't drop me anywhere near the building.
The point is to provide options - sure, if your job requires a car/truck you're obviously not going to use public transit. If you're in poor physical health, you probably can't take standard public transit - though accessibility options often exist. If you travel with kids often you might be less inclined to take transit (though plenty of people with kids do anyways).
But if you're one of the hundreds of thousands of other people in a major metro who don't fall into those categories, you'd probably appreciate the option to not have to obtain a personal vehicle or use it exclusively for your commute, errands, a night on the town, etc.... and the best part is that for all the remaining people who do drive, every person who takes transit is one less person contributing to traffic congestion!
Transit options benefit everyone. Your comment reads like you don't support transit options because they don't suit your particular tastes - I suggest you instead consider advocating for transit to make life better for both yourself and your community, regardless of whether you personally use transit or not.
Options are great. However, many on HN take the stance that we should push people to public transit by eliminating parking and closing (some) streets to vehicle traffic because density leads to bus routes and bicycles are intimidated by cars. That's not an option so much as a mandatory shift.
I'd be fine making that shift if the public transit deployed today were actually good enough to be a like-for-like replacement of car ownership. It isn't unless you live in very expensive conveniently located neighborhoods.
Society should STOP accommodate individual lifestyle choices that are not in society's best interest.
You say:
> should push people to public transit by eliminating parking and closing (some) streets to vehicle traffic because density leads to bus routes and bicycles are intimidated by cars. That's not an option so much as a mandatory shift
I say society should stop giving away publicly owned real estate to the narrow segment of people who want to make driving their lifestyle choice.
I would prefer that the parking lots be replaced with something more economically valuable. For example,
What is the economic value of so much real estate devoted to machine storage? --- < $0 ( because it takes away from the economic value of surrounding businesses )
If someone wants to drive then they can pay for the privilege.
In the meantime, the rest of society should spend the money saved to make the automobile a museum curiosity.
We have cars and roads because they massively increase the land area within n minutes of a destination relative to demand, which is the only way most of us are able to live in a decent home and not spend our whole lives commuting.
You'll notice that affordability is emphatically not a feature of high-rise, parking-starved, conveniently located urban neighborhoods.
The economic value of parking is in the thousands of dollars per person per month not spent on rent to be within walking distance, and the free time not sacrificed to low-speed transportation.
The people who drive to those stores from ~20 miles around would not necessarily have any money left to spend once they are forced to find homes within 2 or 3, or no will to visit them once transit times from affordable neighborhoods increase from ~15 minutes by freeway to ~90 by bicycle.
Despite the environmental benefits, living within walking distance of downtown offices and amenities is the most ostentatious and fiscally wasteful choice modern humans seem to be proud of making.
What we need to STOP doing is humoring the notion that spending big on urban rent is somehow more virtuous than an equivalently priced vacation or designer handbag, and especially that public policy ought to increase the pressure to spend ever-increasing proportions of income on land value.
You want to kill cars, find a suitable replacement. Paying more for less housing, living with roommates, or multiplying commute times are not acceptable approaches. Bedroom communities around actually good (fast, frequent, reliable, comfortable) commuter rail systems are a lot more compelling. Getting the rent differential between city center and suburb down below the threshold of TCO on a basic car would help too.
> If you’re able to walk instead of drive to the store for a gallon of milk, you and your neighborhood home values may benefit from the exercise. A 2009 study sponsored by CEOs for Cities, a national consortium of civic and business leaders, found that homes in neighborhoods with good walkability are more valuable than similar homes in neighborhoods where residents have to drive to get to amenities.
> Walkability adds anywhere from $4,000 to $34,000 to home values, according to the study. The bigger, more urban the city (think San Francisco or Chicago), the bigger the boost in home prices walkability adds. Neighborhoods in cities with less dense populations like Tucson, Ariz., or Fresno, Calif., have the smallest boost in home prices from being walkable.
> The availability of public transportation also played a role. The higher home values tended to show up in walkable neighborhoods near good public transportation where people could live without an automobile.
> The higher home values tended to show up in walkable neighborhoods near good public transportation where people could live without an automobile.
You're making my argument for me. Housing costs a great deal more in walkable and transit-friendly areas. Equivalently, car-friendliness lowers housing costs.
I could drive a new BMW for less than it would take to upgrade from East Bay suburbia to an equivalent apartment within walking distance of my downtown SF office (~$2500/mo up to $4500/mo). But both of those choices would be equally and severely irresponsible from a personal finance perspective.
We should be running as far away as possible from policy intended to push people to spend even more on housing.
The car lets me live where housing is cheap(er), while still getting to work and accomplishing day-to-day tasks reasonably quickly. You propose to take that option away and force me to spend that extra $2000/mo, downgrade to a worse apartment, or spend more of my already-scarce free time commuting.
"Average" car costs are weighted upwards by new SUVs and luxury cars. It does not hurt very much to drive a boring reliable Japanese compact as a personal daily driver, everything beyond that is choice.
The economic value of surrounding businesses is increased because customers, employees, and suppliers are all able to be there. They have a place to park.
Two examples: The last time I was in San Francisco, I wanted to stop and eat. I drove around in ever-widening circles seeking a place to park, then gave up and drove away. That business lost out. On another day, across the bay in Freemont I think, I stopped at a place that had free parking right outside the door. They got my business.
You are surprised to learn that your particular experience is not the norm.
In fact studies have shown devoting vast expanses of land to parking is economically bad. See : Stroup "The high cost of Free parking" and the http://www.strongtowns.org/ .
Also refer to the New York City data about removing parking in order to create a more bike/ped friendly neighborhood.
Most patrons to a business live local to that business. Your example of being willing to drive all the way from San Francisco to Fremont demonstrates this point well. You are not the normal example.
Wrt the business that did not get your business.... they may not have even noticed because they had more than enough local patrons.
That was "On another day", probably about 10 days later.
On the day in San Francisco, I finally found a place to park in some super-rich residential area miles away from where I had started. At that point I parked, but only to rest and assess the situation. I think I then said "screw this" and went back to my hotel in South San Francisco. I probably ate cold food at the hotel, purchased from a supermarket.
On a different day in San Francisco, just a few years ago, I thought I'd try the public transportation. Silly me, that doesn't work either! I ended up walking from the bottom of the California line up to Russian Hill. Afterward, I tried to take a tram/streetcar thing. This being July 4, a day when public transportation is particularly sensible, they shut it down near the crowds who might want it. Of course! WTF SFO. I walked all the way back, then down into the subway station. I get on the train that runs south along the east side, I think the J train. This goes up to street level. It's dark and my cell phone battery is dying. Unlike the T in Boston since at least 1993, this train fails to have: a voice-over for the stops, an overhead text display for the stops, or big lighted signs at the stops. Boston had/has all that, but San Francisco has none of it even 2 decades later. Also, the train doesn't actually stop unless there is a person waiting, so you can't count stops to know where you are. It's GPS or screw you. I get off, walk too far to the "connecting" bus stop, and wait for the last bus. Oh, the sign didn't make it clear that you aren't supposed to wait at the bus shelter. The bus goes by on the other side of the street. So then walk several more miles, cut through Glenn Canyon in the dark, and finally back to the car parked at Turquoise Way.
Obviously, the car doesn't work, but neither does the public transportation. It seems I'm expected to hike up and down all those hills like it's 1849. My knees are too old for that, and my kids are too young for that.
> Public transit works best for young healthy people. If you have kids or move a little slowly due to health or old age, public transit is a straight up no-go.
Is this a joke? Car travel works for healthy people who are ~20–60 years old with a stable income.
For everyone else – children, teenagers, elderly people, the disabled, the poor, etc. – cars are terrible. The lack of other transportation options is perhaps the biggest reason that living in car-centric suburbs is hell for teenagers; they end up entirely dependent.
Go take a bus in a city and you’ll see a huge variety of people riding.
I don't blame you but this is a classic attitude from someone who has never experienced good transit, so assumes transit always sucks (and weirdly, then concludes we should not try to improve transit). This is like saying hamburgers are bad when you've only ever eaten them at McDonald's (and then mocking your friend who's trying to show you how to make a delicious hamburger from scratch by grinding up good cuts of meat).
> You won't convince a salesman to carry a projector, screen, and a box of pamphlets on the bus and train.
This would not be strange in Manhattan. You couldn't convince the salesman to waste his Time, which is a rare commodity for working people as you say, driving a car which would be slower than taking the subway.
> I'd rather sit and wait in traffic in my car than stand outside in the rain or snow waiting for a bus.
Subways avoid this problem. They're also expensive, but there's easier solutions -- bus and outdoor train shelters (which obviously protect from rain/snow) are sometimes heated in the northeast for this reason too.
Also, dealing with rain/snow is pretty easy and pleasant if you just dress right. The prevalance of cars in this country means many people never learn to dress right because they can get away with never spending more than 60 seconds outside, the brief space between the car and the building door.
> And on top of that, transit for me would be about $400/month.
Here it's $100 a month.
> I'm not sitting on a rough seat crammed next to 5 other people for 2 hours.
A lot of people find dealing with repetitive constant stop and go traffic but having a comfy seat to be a crappy tradeoff compared to having less space but freeing your mind to read, doze, whatever. There are crowded an uncrowded systems and lines.
Go try some good transit, then tell me what you think.
Age, gender, disability, and political outlook all affect your perception of safety. This in turn determines if "freeing your mind to read, doze, whatever" is possible, or if instead you keep a very firm grip on your belongings while eyeing every other passenger with suspicion. Lots of people simply don't feel safe in crowds or without a door they can lock.
I can imagine this is true for tourists but I'd be interested to hear actual commuters say something like this. The definite pattern here is that so many have never experienced good public transportation. I drive to work for my commute and I don't feel safe at all dealing with the drivers who will do anything to shave off seconds from their commute.
There are currently 6 crimes per every 100,000 miles on Muni (http://sfgov.org/scorecards/crimes-muni). If you commute 5 miles per day, that's 12,500 miles in a decade. I work near Civic Center, a dangerous area, so I assume it's probably 3x more dangerous than average so the equivalent of 37,000 miles. So each decade I ride transit, I'd be victim of over 2 police reported crimes.
Fair point. Counterpoint: If you commute by private car, how often can you expect to get into a wreck?
I know plenty of people who are terrified of driving in the same way some posters here are terrified of urban crime. It all comes down to what environments you're used to. If you're used to driving down a freeway, you'll routinize and minimize the risk of being in a collision. If you're used to city life, you'll routinize and minimize the risk of being mugged.
Also, once again, transit does not have to mean high crime. You're describing crappy transit systems. So let's improve those.
Nevertheless, we're still for some reason comparing to a terrible transit system, the SF Muni. As usual, if you compare car driving to a terrible transit system, you conclude transit sucks.
NYC's transit system used to have terrible crime rates decades ago, but is much safer than the SF Muni poster describes. Many transit systems outside of the US are even better.
For such people, transportation can't be good if it is public.
Never mind the fact that it is transportation. Being unprotected in a city is threatening. Walking counts. Sitting in a park counts.
Note that city and non-city have different political behavior. The people are different. Many people will simply never feel safe in a city environment. Private cars mitigate that somewhat.
I take my 2 year old daughter to preschool every day on mass transit in SF. And everyday I see a handful of parents in my bus doing the same. Some even have two kids.
Why do you say mass transit is a non starter for kids?
She loves it and I love the time with her and not worrying about parking, accidents, etc.
> Public transit works best for young healthy people. If you have kids or move a little slowly due to health or old age, public transit is a straight up no-go.
Do you seriously think every old person in e.g. New York City owns a car to get around? Have you ever been to New York City?
Cars also work better for healthy people than unhealthy people. My grandmother lost her license a while ago as her vision and reaction times (and, perhaps, judgment) faded. She might have benefited from access to strong public transport. As it is, her beautiful home in a lovely spot became something of a trap as it was too far from any amenities to be walkable.
ever been to europe? we've solved this in most big places, public transport is faster way to travel in any city centre, cheaper too (for daily commuters). sure, by principle it can't solve issue for people like you describe, but for 80-90% it does.
this would make roads much less clogged so those who really need (and pay for it) should go on their own. it's very real added value that helps environment, increases happiness, cuts times and so on. what (local) government should do is to motivate people/orgs with some monetary subsidies.
I think the point is that improving public transit would actually make the commute shorter. If public transit takes around the same amount of time as driving I'm sure lots more people would use it.
I'm coming from Boston where we have a solid subway system and I massively prefer using that over driving.
I mean sure, I would prefer to be in the back of my private car, but given the choice between the stress of driving, and the stress of reading somewhere crowded? I will pay extra to get the time reading, and I will deal with the crowds for a discount.
The monetary equation won't balance, if you are neutral on driving vs reading preferences, until we start requiring reasonable liability insurance minimums, and until I can get housing and my employer can get office space without paying for parking.
The true costs of driving in silicon valley are dominated by parking and by the unfunded liability inherent to the activity.
> Public transit works best for young healthy people.
So what if this is the case? Moving 20% of the moving population in 2% of the vehicle-volume almost quadruples the capacity for everyone else.
I don't buy your assertion in the large (most regions with effective pubic transport seem to move a roughly representative population of users -- including wealthy people). My point is that it could be true in the Bay Area (which is more spread out than your typical big city) but still not refute the need for mass transport.
I like taking the train and biking. i can do work on the train. As for rain, we need it. temperatures never get cold enough to be uncomfortable outside. most employers will pay for your public transit costs.
No two ways about it. In many parts of the bay area taking public transit is a non-starter because attempting it means hours-long commutes, whereas driving is almost bearable in comparison.
But even in San Francisco, unless you're going inbound/outbound the crosstown commutes are horrible. Try getting from Ingleside to Richmond, or Richmond to Dog Patch in a reasonable time frame --impossible. They are all less than 7 miles as the crow flies, but try getting to and fro with public transit that takes less than an hour for what amounts to roughly 5miles...
The transit system in SF is based on the assumption people are going to and from "downtown" and does not accommodate other commute streams.
I don't like these sort of comparisons, because the density (and a lot of other things) depends a lot on where you place the boundaries of the city, and that's very arbitrary.
For instance your figure for Paris is only the actual city of Paris, which doesn't include its own suburbs: it's really just the center. The subway extends a fair bit beyond the actual city boundaries. As an example "La Défense", the business district of Paris, isn't even inside Paris.
So of course it's very dense. The equivalent for NYC would be Manhattan without the 4 boroughs. Maybe even a subset of Manhattan.
And yet the density of "Paris" gets trotted out in pretty every one of these discussions to show that you don't need skyscrapers.
The density of the Paris Urban area--which is about 1/6 the size of the Paris Metro area but about 20x the area of the "City"--is about 10,000/sq. mi. (10m people in about 1,000 sq. mi.
The point is that a density comparable to Paris or Manhattan does not turn a place into a hellhole. A lot of people love living in central Paris, or Manhattan, and pay a lot of money for the privilege.
The main problem in the above is the "city" of San Jose. it's low rise and tract housing all the way. It's an agglomerated suburb which calls itself a city. It could easily handle 4 million, if they built the transit infrastructure for it and allowed mid-rises --but no.
I guess I understated my case re St Jose. But you can find the low rise component in many areas tucked in the middle of tract housing, detached, etc.
They exist and they tend to be eyesores hidden behind trees. The tell-tale sign is the parking found underneath the living level exemplified with non-structural walls. So yes, it's even worse than I stated. Land is grossly underutilized for a city the size of sanctus iosephus. We can blame proper suburbs like MTV, Sunnyvale, &c, but S. Joe takes the cake. It's a city, at least on paper, and should act like one.
A big problem San Jose has is that they stuck their airport in the middle of the city. Height limits are imposed along the air traffic patterns.
(Not that the other parts of San Jose are any better.)
As an historical note, the key planner/city manager from San Jose came from the Los Angeles area - Hamann ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._Hamann ). For twenty years (1950-1969), he did his best to make San Jose a sprawling city that sucked up as much of Santa Clara county as he could make happen.
San Jose at 4 million would have no water pressure. In the bay area, only San Francisco has significant water rights. The rest of the area has to stay low-density.
These numbers would be even more exaggerated if San Francisco's city boundaries were drawn similarly to NYC's. A reasonable comparison would be if SF city included every region on the BART (so, all of Oakland and Berkeley and Fremont) and also San Mateo. Or if NYC was just Manhattan (which has a density of 72,033 ppl/sq mi).
If San Francisco’s city boundaries included most of the Bay Area, regional transit and development planning would be much better integrated, and density would surely rise.
Your point on density is a good one. And one could argue (and I have tried to at times) that cities could benefit by sending transit to their "density points" preferentially. That would maximize the value for commuters. When I see plans for a station or train stop with fewer than 10,000 people within a mile of it, I wonder if that will be useful or not.
Great idea but way too late in this case. And, at least in this area, urban planning is a moving target since there is no single authority that can move all of the pieces.
For example, a city can zone land to be high density residential but that doesn't necessarily mean that people who live there will sell their low density houses so that they can be redeveloped.
A high density area can "want" a public transit station, but the transit authority may not have the funds, or the motivation to give them a station. And there is no means for a city government for "force" them to.
Instead, we're left with the "master plan" system which is a living document that the city government maintains which expresses a "vision" of what the city would like (their plans) and the city council signs up to help make it real when there is something within their powers to do to help it.[1]
A previous example of how hard that can be is the "Coyote Valley" area in South San Jose that was going to be "anchored" in part by large campuses of big employers (Cisco was the headline client). But the dot com crash hit and Cisco never moved in.
A current example is the new Apple "spaceship" campus in Cupertino which is to far away from the train station and
in a set of roads that don't easily feed or drain to the 280 interstate.
[1] And part of that is the problem in Sunnyvale, the plan says one thing, and when councilmembers have voted to help implement it, it has irritated citizens who didn't realize that was what the plan said.
As someone who commutes [usually] on 280S from Mountain View to San Jose -- adding about 5 miles to my optimal commute -- because 101S-->87S is even worse, I'm dreading the opening of the new Apple campus.
Note though that most of the new Apple Campus was the rather large HP Wolfe Road campus. I don't know how the population of the campus changes between the two companies (and it's obviously near zero at the moment) but it's not like there was nothing there before.
For sure it's not as dense as NY. But even 3,000 ppl/sq mi is more than enough to provide a bus/rail which drives every 7-15 minutes during rush hour.
It would help a lot if the Caltrain would be improved with more rides and less street crossings. Then there should be more buses bringing people to the Caltrain.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This has been proven in several instances to be more cost effective than the "system" (such as it is) San Francisco and much of the US has in place.
e.g. Utah tried this and it seems to work on many levels:
Isn't a big part of the problem that it's not really all that dense? Most of it is a sort of endless suburbia, not the kind of packed city where mass transit really shines. I'm sure that public transit could be improved anyway (it certainly seems quite poor to me, from a distance), but I'm not sure "such a dense area" applies.
Yes, we should just do that. Although I think it's very expensive. We would need 5x the funds that Measure B provides, I'm guessing, and even then transportation would still lag job growth.
And a lot of places are "built out", so there isn't really room to expand roads, or it is very expensive.
And we homeowners love it. That's a large part of what makes neighborhoods "kid friendly", along with lack of through traffic, good neighborhood schools, and convenient local services.
I am from Europe, and my idea of a kid-friendly neighborhood has proper sidewalks. Here is an example: https://goo.gl/maps/Ng3BUjBcPq12
The American model seems to have such narrow and badly paved sidewalks that no one uses them, so then you need wider streets to cater for the combined use by pedestrians, cyclists and cars.
I grew up in suburban Dallas, and there were sidewalks everywhere. The only neighborhoods I saw without sidewalks were older neighborhoods that always creeped me out when I was little... I always got the impression that they were dilapidated.
And for completeness, a sidewalk-less street in a nearby neighborhood: https://goo.gl/maps/TnQ8bogKttL2 -- that whole area just looks old, and the neighborhood gave me the creeps when I was a kid
There is a disconnect in ownership between roads and sidewalks that makes it all very political: "Sidewalks in front of homes can be a source of puzzlement over just who or what owns them. Generally, each state sets its own laws about ownership of property, including sidewalks in front of homes and buildings. Certain states say that sidewalks are owned by the cities, towns or other municipalities having jurisdiction. In California, for example, sidewalks in front of homes and businesses are owned by their municipalities, but their upkeep is to be handled by those homes and businesses."
Someday, you'll be whisked through the Bay area and the Valley on maglevs traveling between 70-200 mph.
Unfortunately, that future is running a little late.
How long does it take an "old steel-wheeled" train to get to 200 mph? How long does it take it to stop?
Why don't you look at a train schedule in the US and tell me how many trains go 200 mph. Hint: zero! Most trains average less than 50 mph.
As for a bus, you aren't going to drive it at 70 through the streets of LA or Manhattan. In fact, it's probably going to be tough getting it to 60 in this traffic:
Electric, steel-wheeled trains are already limited by passenger comfort in acceleration and deceleration. Making a trainset that accelerates and decelerates more quickly is a non-problem that nobody wants to solve.
Beats me. There are reasons to build low-speed maglevs on sites where wheeled trains don't work well. For example a maglev can climb steeper grades, and you can run them right through dense urban areas where noise might be an issue.
They should rip up the train tracks and just do dedicated bus lines on the same routes. The delay between trains (esp Caltrain in late evening) is laughable.
Heck, most of the freeway HOV lanes are full of corporate bus routes during rush hour anyway...
That would provide an amazing throughput in terms of number of people. Rather, I find they are full of electric vehicles with a sticker but only one occupant
From where to where exactly? The CalTrain goes through the South Bay and San Mateo. The VTA pretty much connects all of the Valley with bus and light rail, and there is always the ECR that goes along El Camino...the only way I can think of there being an issue with commuting to the South Bay via public transit is working in a more remote area of the Valley.
That said, public transit is indeed slow, but it's mostly available in the area if you absolutely must take it. It covers a lot more than I think you're giving it credit for based on your choice of workplace and specific area of living though.
Yeah, you aren't kidding on childcare. I recently got the last spot for at a daycare that literally won't even finish being constructed for 6 months (and at the time we did it, it was 9 months).
Yeah, I know people who have literally planned their pregnancies around expected childcare availability. As in, they make sure they can have a spot lined up quickly before they even start trying to get pregnant.
When I visited the Seattle area, locals were complaining about all the Bay Area people moving up there and driving the rent up. I wonder how big a problem that might become for places that are appealing to Bay Area residents like Seattle, Austin, Denver, etc.
Locals in Dallas are similarly complaining. We've had a lot of companies move here in the last few years, and housing prices have skyrocketed as a result. So far, rents haven't gone up quite as much as purchase prices, but they're going up too, and it's only a matter of time before rent catches up.
We used to be one of the cheapest cities in the country, and while we're still cheap compared to California, the gap has noticeably narrowed.
(edit: I've also heard of Californians moving here who make an offer for well above the asking price, just to make sure they get it, which contributes to the skyrocketing prices)
> I've also heard of Californians moving here who make an offer for well above the asking price, just to make sure they get it, which contributes to the skyrocketing prices
Maybe that's all Californians know. It's normal out here. I put in an offer on a home that received 45 other written offers, 1/4 of them all-cash and above asking price. If you're financing, you need to go much higher than 25% above asking. It's insanity. Then we go move to different parts of the country and forget that you don't need that aggressive approach everywhere.
locals were complaining about all the Bay Area people moving up there and driving the rent up
My family moved from CA to the Seattle area in the '90s and people complained about the same damn things.
The other day I was talking to my Dad about this, after I sent him an article saying that the average price of a house in Seattle (or maybe King County) hit about $600,000, but in SF / SV it was $1.2 million. He observed that Seattle-area prices were also half of Bay Area prices twenty years ago, and that it's pretty funny that the ratio has remained about the same.
It's already a problem. It's not uncommon for home sales in Austin to be all-cash, and 10% over the asking price. It's not all Californians though - a coworker reports Chinese investors buying 3 homes in his neighborhood.
Combine the inflow of new residents with the existing stressed road system and city & county council inaction on mass transit, and traffic is ugly. It can take me 35-40 minutes to go 8.5 miles some days.
Pretty sure it's already happening in Denver. I've got a few co-workers who moved from the Bay Area recently. Primarily because of housing and more child care options / schools.
It'll be a large problem. The issue is that the concept of ownership is changing in the "millennial" generation. There isn't a drive to own a car, a house or other large purchases so the concept of paying $200-500/more a month for leasing an apartment isn't as cumbersome as it was for the past generation.
So as the technology folks from other cities move into these newly labeled "tech hubs" they'll drive the rent up because the costs seem so much lower than they actually are. It's a hard concept for some reason to grasp that they can pay $1500/month for a 1 bedroom in other tech cities that's $2800/month in SV/SF. However, what they don't realize is that it used to be $1100/month but landlords take advantage of the fact that $400/more/month is not an issue for someone coming from SF/SV
It's not about drive, it's about what can be afforded. In 1972, at the age of 27, my dad bought a house for around ~$20,000 in a nice neighborhood outside of Boston - $115,097.32 today. Try finding a house for less than 120k anywhere that isn't in the middle of the country, miles from anything or in a run-down neighborhood (not that those are necessarily bad things, just inconvenient). I know a fair amount of people whose student loans are more than that. The people I know in my generation who buy houses now (as in, just getting a mortgage) are, in my anecdotal experience,
- Several are just plain rich, one of them was the son of a very wealthy man and then worked for a startup that actually took off
- One went into the armed forces for six years and saved up enough money to buy a house in our hometown (because where he wanted to live was too expensive)
- Couples who have high earning jobs but are drowning in student loan debt (a dentist and a doctor, in my case)
The rest of my friends are renting. I know maybe...seven people under the age of 35 who are paying mortgages.
I'm sure most millennials would buy a house or own a car if they could. But the reality is that straight up many cannot. It's not necessarily a matter of "drive".
> The issue is that the concept of ownership is changing in the "millennial" generation. There isn't a drive to own a car, a house or other large purchases so the concept of paying $200-500/more a month for leasing an apartment isn't as cumbersome as it was for the past generation.
Speaking as a so-called "millennial", when it comes to home ownership, this is completely wrong and downright insulting.
I would love to own a place instead of paying rent. Except, guess what? The smallest down payment possible for a flat anywhere close to where I live is roughly equal to my annual gross salary. And that'd be for the smallest, hole-in-the-wall flat that would likely be a money pit of necessary repairs.
Yes, I could move to a less-expensive state, but that'd require a massive upheaval in my life, not to mention the fact that a different job in that area would pay a much lower salary after COLA.
Oh, and also, if you're working in tech? You're in for a surprise when you try to get a mortgage. If you're in your 20s and working a six-figure salary, in a competitive real estate market like SF and NYC, you'll be expected to pay an even larger downpayment due to the "volatility" of your employment and annual earnings. (ie, you're employed at-will with a short employment history in an industry known for rapid change, so they want more of their money up front).
>There isn't a drive to own a car, a house or other large purchases
It's not that millennials don't want to own these things, it's that they see them as out of reach. It's an uncomfortable economic reality that gets abstracted into "kids these days just want different things" like they're hoarding stockpiles of money and refusing to spend it unless the thing-makers read their minds.
Nah, I don't want to own because I like having a landlord to do maintenance. I rent a townhouse, and I love it. It's got all the benefits of having my own house and all the benefits of renting an apartment.
Air con dies? Open a service request, get it fixed for free. Microwave stops working? Open a service request, get it fixed for free. Water pressure in the shower drops to nothing? Open a service request, get it fixed for free.
Also, I don't have to do any groundskeeping. I don't have to mow a lawn or trim plants. If there's a hailstorm, I don't have to lift a finger or pay one red cent to replace the roof.
Oh, and since our summers can be terrible, I get access to a swimming pool at no extra charge (technically, it's not free, but my rent is certainly cheaper than the cost of a down payment on a house + monthly mortgage payments + cost of installing a swimming pool), and they even maintain the pool for me..
I believe that the truth is somewhere in between. I'm 27 and own my own home. Where I live it's actually more economical to own if you can accept living outside of the city. Many people my age refuse to make that compromise and instead pay a few hundred extra a month to rent 15 minutes closer to the city.
Unfortunately, the truth is not somewhere in between.
"The drop in homeownership is largely due to a delay in homebuying by the millennials, who have the lowest ownership rate of their age group in history. Millennials are not only burdened by student loan debt, but they have also delayed life choices like marriage and parenthood, which are the primary drivers of homeownership. "
As I said it actually costs less money to own where I live. With FHA loans very little capital is required up front. You just don't get to live within the city proper and instead have about a 15 - 20 minute commute. I've spoken to dozens of young professionals (most of whom make much more than I) about this, they'd like to own in center city but that isn't happening so they rent.
I'm a highschool dropout who has no familial support. If I can do it so can someone with a college degree and better access to opportunities as long as they are willing to make the same sacrifices.
I'm 29 and I pay the extra couple hundred each month. I don't need or want a large home. Living closer to everything and cutting commute time is worth waaaaaaay more to me than having a ton of space to store my junk.
I like owning dogs and having a yard for them to play in. I also like equity and having room for servers in the basement and my fiancé and I both having our own offices.
I really like not hearing my neighbors parties or seeing random weirdos hanging out in the hallways.
To each their own. Nothing in the city really excites me. Quite frankly I find the noise and bustle annoying.
No, it's not a spare cash problem. The modern world is full of credit.
Anyone can save a deposit given enough time, affording the monthly mortgage payments is the challenge.
There's a demographic difference, for example I'm constantly being asked by members of the prior generation why I don't own two cars and how we possibly cope. Actually I have no interested in owning any cars at all but one is necessary.
The same goes for housing - why don't you buy? Because I don't need to...
Now, we millennials do care a lot about housing but only to the extent that the previous generation has made it unaffordable.
> Anyone can save a deposit given enough time, affording the monthly mortgage payments is the challenge.
Affording monthly mortgage payments is easy. Actually having enough cash in the bank to make a down payment, and having a high enough income for a long enough period of time to convince a bank to underwrite your mortgage is the hard part.
> No, it's not a spare cash problem. The modern world is full of credit.
For people in their 30s and 40s who already have a credit history, yes. For people who turned 18 after 2008, it's dramatically harder.
After 2008, banks were terrified of providing lines of credit (such as credit cards) to people who didn't have a credit history. Since the fastest way to building a strong credit history is to have prior credit, this quickly becomes a self-perpetuating problem.
I had many friends who found it literally impossible to get a credit card as recently as 2010 or 2011, despite having high incomes, because they couldn't prove their creditworthiness.
Banks have since recovered somewhat from this fear, so it's no longer quite as difficult to get credit cards, but the same fear exists to getting a mortgage. And even before 2008, banks were always particularly hesitant to extend mortgages to young people due to the extra perceived risk.
There were a few years in London recently where (annual increase in deposit requirement) > (average annual salary); I don't think it's true that everyone can save for deposits in these kinds of conditions of house price inflation.
>The issue is that the concept of ownership is changing in the "millennial" generation. There isn't a drive to own a car, a house or other large purchases so the concept of paying $200-500/more a month for leasing an apartment isn't as cumbersome as it was for the past generation.
Bullshit. We own less stuff than our predecessors because
1) College costs quite a bit more minimum wage labor-hours than it used to.
2) Entry level work pays quite a bit less (in real terms) than it used to.
3) When we do find good jobs, they're in the urban parts of expensive metros where parking is a luxury good and starter homes cost 3-6x the homes we were raised in.
Attributing the artifacts of having less purchasing power to a character flaw instead of, you know, less purchasing power is not helpful.
On top of the 2 other comments stating that buying a place to live is out of reach, I'd add that it's impossible to keep a job in the same place for more than a few years, and a mortgage needs 30 years of payments u_u
Just because a property value increased steadily in the past 15-30 years doesn't mean it will continue to increase in the 15-30 years.
There are lots of cities where prices stopped moving and some where prices went going down compared to the past 5-10 years. Buying a place is far from risk free.
I recently visited my home town and alma mater. Both places need new industry. My home town is littered with empty office buildings and work is hard to find. My alma mater's surrounding area just lost one of its two grocery stores and has little outside of the college. Even where I currently live needs another industry as its current is literally a gamble - Las Vegas. It frustrates me to see so much potential concentrated in an age where travel and telepresence allow outsourcing abroad.
Which benefits the employers and the employees. How has this benefited San Francisco? The real estate tax base would increase regardless of the tech community due to foreign money flowing in from China (Vancouver has had the same issue without a SFBA tech base).
Miami, LA, NYC, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Chicago to a lesser extent, all have thriving economies without being tech-centric. This fallacy that SF has some special magic nowhere else has economically speaking needs to die already. Please don't bring your Bay Area problems elsewhere (becoming a wage slave to afford a million dollar single family home, overflowing poverty in one of the richest parts of the world, displacing non-tech residents through housing costs).
Living and working in the East Bay is totally possible and actually getting easier. Tri-Valley has added a shitload of housing (condos), BART terminates in it, and some great companies are hiring like mad.
Can you name a few? Tri-Valley is nice, although Pleasanton and Dublin are pretty much unaffordable already. What would be great is if they could extend BART out to Tracy or even Stockton. They're still semi-affordable, but the commute by car is brutal.
Always wonder - what's a problem buying house in SF? Awesome 3br in luxury part of SF costs ~500k, if you and some of your friends just try to find money for initial payment (say 100k) then you could just pay only 1-2k$/month.
Ok, i hyperbolated a little, but you still can buy a apartment and pay much less than renting it. Only issue is first payment, but this is no a very big problem for good software developers (they can find extra 100k in first 3 years of career).
I believe that Software Engineer can find 1m$ in 30 years.
Taking a typical track, a dev might start working at 22 and start a family around 30, leaving 8 years to save 300k (20% down payment on 1.5M), meaning they have to save $37.5k/year. Add to that a $2-3k/mo rent for those 8 years, and you basically double that. Including income tax, that's about $110k/yr just towards housing. Let's say they have $500-1k/mo of other expenses (food, gym, discretionary) and add the $5.5k annual IRA contribution, and that's ballpark $130k/year average every year. That's without a lot of the fun things you should do in your twenties and an irresponsibly low contribution to retirement.
Oh, and with the other 80% as a loan, there's a requirement that the payments aren't over 40% of your income, so a $1.2M loan at 3.92% for 30 years means you need to make more than $170k/year. You're right that lots of good software devs make that, but this is a crazy amount above the area median. And that's the lowest end $1.5M from the $1.5-3M range for a 3br in those areas. Hyperbole is not quite the way to spin it.
As we had some posts about salaries in google there was information about stock options and they usually exceed 300k in 4 years. You can make such initial payments only by selling your google's stock.
Interesting that there is a claim of ~5% mega commuters in bay area. The 2012 census bureau study (using 2006-2010 data) had that number at about 2% [1].
On that note, you'll see that traffic/commute is worse than L.A. in many cities. I think L.A. just gets the publicity but there are a lot of people around the country suffering in silence.
Oh, from the european perspective, the SV housing / transport seems little... weird.
If you look at urban design & public transport it's amazing how well it works despite all obstacles.
Public transport doesn't make sense in low population density areas and wide road make the distances even bigger. I mean, some US cities managed to realize a car-utopia Houston with 11 lane highway or Phoenix. The question is, does it make sense?
I'm surprised that no one tried to buy a shit lot of land and create a more-cityish city. In this context SFO is city with a city life, especially some older districts.
Agreed, the area is suburban and has been growing into having a large city-level population without the necessary infrastructure. Kind of like if Google added a little php to their backend after becoming the most popular search engine.
If we ever reach an oversupply of high density housing, this line of thinking might make sense.
As it stands, apartments in high density areas are at an extreme premium over apartments in low density areas. Given little to no change in existing housing stock, the best thing we can do for affordability is expand the surface area it's reasonable to commute from, and that usually means freeways and parking.
Public transit actually can work well in low density: people in suburbs drive from a few miles around to a train station with ample parking, and then take the train into the much more transit-oriented city. We need more of this.
Because most cities--and all cities that most people would want to live in--grow organically and have history and culture. Try decreeing an area in the middle of the desert or prairie (think Denver's airport) to be a city and start building on it). Sure, you could do it. With the minor problem that you'd have neither employers or people who wanted to live there.
Because a lot of people don't want to live in a more-cityish city. Some of us prefer the suburbs.
A place like Houston or Phoenix is perfect for me. Actually, I live in suburban Dallas (and I work farther out in the suburbs), and I have no desire to move. Though it's possible I might have to move out of state next year, in which case I'm seriously looking at St. Paul, MN.
Yeah, but a "suburb" like San Jose is just annoying. It has the population of a city, but the life of a suburb (=nothing going on). So basically the worst of both.
I mean, I am like you, that I would rather live in a smallish community where it's calm and everything over a city, but if you combine that feature with "there are people everywhere" then it is not that great.
Try visit Zurich. It's very much like village-city by an America' standards. Slow life, quiet, know your neighbours etc. with all good inventions from XXI century ;-)
Yeah the Twin cities are nice. If you want to live in the burbs around here it's not that hard to get around. Mind you, I'm from Wichita where the worse commute time was around 30 minutes (metro is tiny comparatively). At worse in the Twin Cities it's maybe... 45 minutes to an hour at the worse it seems to depend which route you take. It can be much worse if you take 694 heading to St Cloud, though. I can't figure out how the anyone takes that route without losing their minds.
Sure. And you could do that. It's just that a lot of services doesn't make sense in such setup and the infrastructure cost per person is few times higher than in a dense areas. Usually this means higher taxes.
I'm used to the large amount of Asian food that's available in Dallas. I could go off on long tangents about how much I love the variety of food I can get here. Unfortunately, most suburban areas I've looked at are snow white, which really disappointed me and cause me to scratch a lot of places off my list. St. Paul on the other hand has a very large Asian population.
It helps that I have a friend who moved to Minneapolis after college (I think he specifically lives in St. Louis Park), and he's been trying to convince me that I should move there if I need to leave Texas. So I started looking at the demographics of the area, and St. Paul's 15% Asian population jumped out at me.
By the way, St. Paul isn't the only place on my short list. Another one is the San Gabriel Valley in SoCal (Monterey Park, Alhambra, etc.), but a big turn-off to that area is the high cost of living.
I live in Livermore, and my commute to the South Bay averages about 2 hours each way. It sucks, but I've gotten used to it and you just have to accept it because there's really nothing you can do about it. There are only a few major road arteries, and the public transit options are a total joke--it takes LONGER because you need to drive to the train station, then bike or take a bus from the other train station to your work.
Honestly I have no idea what the solution is. Build more lanes on the highway and more people will choose to commute, quickly using those new lanes up.
I've lived in sane places. Problem there is you've got a handful of tech employers in most of these places. If you lose your tech job in the Bay Area, you can interview at dozens of local companies a week pretty much forever until you find something. If you lose your job in SaneTown, USA, you can exhaust the entire local hiring market in a week and if you come up empty you're moving (probably to a different State).
Even public transit systems have to go suffer rush hours !
Capacity of a transit system be it public or individual will never match the load.
If the employers only ask the employees to come in 2 days a week or only when necessary, there should be a significant improvement in the situation. This could be even tried as an experiment for a while to see how it plays out.
I have been commuting in London for about 7 years now and I cry when I see how much the commute costs me and the sub-par service that I have to deal with on the services feeding into the main hub I have to get to to be able to use the tube.
The tube service itself is not so bad but I cannot afford to live inside the zones where I only have to use TFL services.
The best solution is for the companies in SV (or other major employment nerve centers) to realise that making all of your employees commute everyday into work is the root cause.
Just chiming in here with this example since I have had the chance to use the VTA for about a month and I have first hand experience of a well established transit system i.e. London.
I personally loved the VTA trams since very few people used them even in rush hour, they always travel at ground or above ground level (underground travel does get a bit depressing for me), effective air conditioning (never experienced a fart-attack although my time spent on VTA is very little), always get a seat and there's "free" Wifi.
Most local coworkers who I knew there were driving and they were driving in early and leaving early to avoid the back up on 101 or the 280 routes.
That's what I do on my commute on the public transport system even. But if everybody managed to learn that trick, then it's the same situation in the end.
I heard a executive scream "but face time!" somewhere in the distance. Results only workplaces would make this possible but I don't see that happening.
I never understood the need for face time in positions that aren't sales and the like. When I write code it's mostly at my workstation without the need for chit-chat. And meetings I do have can be done over a Skype conference call or some shared whiteboard app. If anything, there needs to be a tax on employers who force tech workers to be in an office.
When I was stuck using the buses in Minneapolis to get to my job in Shoreview that was the hardest commute I've ever done. I just couldn't get much done. I was so tired.
As someone in Boston but from California, the lack of commutes comparable to the Bay Area or Silicon Valley always makes me grateful, even if there are other downsides. For example, I split a 2 bedroom apartment in a nice, active neighborhood a few minutes walk from downtown and about a 20 minute walk from work for about $1,200.
You haven't lived (or driven) in Boston enough yet if you consider Boston having "a lack of commutes." It most definitely has them, you just are one of the very few lucky people who live there and can walk to work.
$2400 is not getting you into a 2 bedroom in any nice / "managed" building in Boston. Thats the going rate for a 1bed in the nice high-rises. So your in a small apt complex or converted house (duplex,triplex, etc.)
1. Minimum to park a car in the city every day is $250-$300 / month. Realistically $350+
2. Even living inside the "128" loop(so minimum500K house) , expect 45-90 minute commute (snow, rain).
OR you can use the train
1. Commuter Rail passes are expensive, $250-$350 a month (add some parking money to park at the commuter rail station ($1-$5 a day).
2. Hope the train runs on time and fits into your schedule (they run on the 30 minutes or on the hour)
3. Takes the same amount of time as driving (45-90 minutes easy).
Boston has many of the same problems as SF (housing, commutes), its just been that way for longer and people are used to it.
I'm plenty familiar with Boston commutes and that they can be pretty crappy, my point is mostly that things seem an order of magnitude better than in the Bay. Commutes are still bad and rents are still expensive, but my point was that examining the problems around SF makes me grateful that things aren't as bad here.
On the note of a "nice/managed building", you're right that I live in a smaller setup. Having previously lived in one of the luxury high-rises, I find my current apartment and management preferable even before considering the differences in rent.
As far as I can tell, the middle here tends to correspond more to the high end there. The only friends I know paying substantially more are living in luxury highrises, whereas on the low end I have friends paying more like $600 a month to do something like a 4 way split of a 4 bedroom apartment a couple of stops out on the T.
That's one big difference from the Bay area. I also live a bit under an hour west by either car or train. Near the commuter rail, which I often used for the short period when I worked in the city. These days I work (as I also did previously) for a company on the outer 495 loop which makes for a 25-30 minute commute.
It's hard to get out of the "expensive zone" as easily in the Bay area--partly because of geography and partly because it's not just SF and a number of inner suburbs that are sky-high (as is the Boston metro area out to Concord or so) but the whole of Silicon Valley.
Exurban-rural town. I don't know exactly what the real estate prices are these days as I've had my place for a long time but I'm guessing $300K or so would get you a decent house.
Nice to run into people with a similar situation. I recently moved to a place just west of 495 in Worcester county, so finding a job somewhere along 495 would reduce my commute a lot, but I like my current job so I deal with the long commute.
I didn't find any houses that were to my liking in the $300k range in towns with good school districts, but once you go into the $400-500k range there is good stuff. Either way, you get so much more for your money than if you bought closer to Boston.
When I bought I was working in Westboro. There was almost nothing tech-related in Boston/Cambridge at the time. The modern Kendall Square (much less Seaport area) is a relatively recent phenomenon. I know it's probably hard for many on this site to comprehend but relatively few of my classmates--even those who worked closer to Boston--had much interest in living in the city.
I imagine you're right about real estate prices. My house is sufficiently "quirky" albeit on a nice and large plot of land that what I see on Zillow probably isn't representative (and Zillow has some details wrong anyway). I'm also not sure our schools qualify as "good" although I have no personal experience.
>I know it's probably hard for many on this site to comprehend but relatively few of my classmates--even those who worked closer to Boston--had much interest in living in the city.
That's interesting. Times have definitely changed, but I'm not one for city living so "metro west" suits me just fine.
And I guess I should qualify my real estate remark by saying I was looking for houses close to the pike, which drives up the price.
I'm in northern Worcester County near Route 2--which is more rural (or at least clearly ex-urban). One of the reasons I'm there is that, even at the time I bought my house, property was more expensive near where I worked. I ended up looking progressively northwest until I found something I liked at a price I could afford. I'd say what it cost but I'm afraid it would cause some on this site to burst into tears:-) It was admittedly a fixer-upper and this was about 20 years ago.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned e-bikes. As far as I can tell, that is the answer to the bay area traffic. Since I bought one roughly 5 months ago, I've commuted almost 3000 miles. My commute is the same every day, and it is a lot faster than a bad day of traffic. The bonus is that I don't have to change into bike clothes or shower.
That's definitely a viable option for biking around a city that doesn't have favorable spring or summer weather. Can you store your bike inside instead of locking it up on the street? I imagine an e-bike would be at greater risk of theft than a regular bike. That might be an issue for folks who commute by bike but have to lock it up outside.
Yea, I lock my bike inside the office (where I charge it as well). I also keep it in the garage. Additionally, I have a GPS on it, so if it does get stolen, it's a lot easier to locate
It's hard not to see this as a life-and-death struggle between people who think public transportation is the way of the future and people who think cars are the future.
I know which way the HN crowd leans, but I feel compelled to point out that while pro-transit folks may feel comfortable being ideologically "correct", in practice this has just not worked out in the US and any argument about why sounds like someone hammering a bell upon which is inscribed "no true scotsman".
Either there's been a multi-decade cabal holding the entire country in its grip and preventing us from leaping into our beautiful public transportation future... Or Americans just do not want it, kicking and screaming about sustainability to the contrary.
> Either there's been a multi-decade cabal holding the entire country in its grip and preventing us from leaping into our beautiful public transportation future... Or Americans just do not want it, kicking and screaming about sustainability to the contrary.
Zoning, basically. It makes density illegal in enough places that transit isn't terribly practical. It also makes even walking to a corner store something that is no longer an option in many new developments. If you'd like to read all about it, this book is very thorough:
But "Zoning" (to the degree that's the central reason) was also not created by a "multi-decade cabal". It's largely the summation of the preferences of residents in different areas.
> It's largely the summation of the preferences of residents in different areas.
Yes. With the complicity of states/feds/courts etc... who have allowed neighbors to run rampant over others' property rights to a degree that I think has lead to a number of terrible consequences.
Americans generally just don't want it, which is a problem because we keep passing the buck to future generations. It's not a matter of preference, it's simply unsustainable both environmentally and density-wise.
It's hilarious to me to watch as well. I have co-workers constantly complaining about spending too much time in traffic. I spend just as much time in traffic as they do, but I don't mind because I'm on a bus. I'm usually reading a book, or working on my laptop, while they are just staring at cars in front of them. The answer is right in front of their faces, but "I need a car because of.... reasons" is too ingrained in our culture.
It would be interesting to understand where they work. Back in the dot com days there were people living in Livermore and driving into San Jose (aka "the South Bay") but now it seems more people with "long" commutes are driving into San Francisco. And one of the people who worked for me (at an office on the peninsula) was thinking about moving to San Francisco, even though they currently lived much closer because they enjoyed the more urban lifestyle offered there.
As a result of all these different forces I realized how challenging it is to not have some bad commutes. And in Sunnyvale we're in the midst of a debate started about choices the city council has made to allow more local housing to be developed. There are a lot of apartments and condos being built and some residents are complaining about traffic and change. It will be interesting to see if folks approve additional transit dollars.
I'd be curious to know if distance is a factor they accounted for. Traffic in LA is straight-up gridlock (or at least it was when I lived there). You could spend an hour going 10 miles, and that's not even during commute hours.
If you spend 90 minutes driving from SF to Mountain View, traffic definitely makes it slower/worse than it would otherwise be, but it'd still be a 45 minute drive without traffic.
People may spend more time driving in SF/SV, but that's largely a factor of how far apart desirable housing and jobs are for many people. I wouldn't be surprised if traffic on the Peninsula made commutes 2-3x longer than they'd be without it, but in LA the factor's more like 6x.
Tempting though it is to cry, "Let it burn!", we should be beyond such things, and earnestly desist from anything that might be construed as wishing harm (even indirectly) upon our honoured colleagues in the greater San Francisco Bay area.
people in the bay area loves chiding LA like this.
but you are quickly starting to understand first hand how exactly LA came to be the way it is. it was/is a mixture of extremely powerful political, economic, and social forces exerted over generations.
unfortunately SF/the bay is doing nothing to fix it -- at long last LA is building new housing, mixed-used real estate, and new light rail and other public transit very aggressively.
it will probably take the bay area another 2-3 decades to overcome the resistance, just like LA.
Every time I read these articles, I feel like I made the right decision staying in the Northeast and not chasing the startup culture of the West. Sure I make less money on paper, but my office is five minutes away, my large house is only $1200(including the $6000 in escrow taxes!), only 36.5 hours a week, no on call, totally flexible working hours, I get to travel all over the world, and I live like a king. All that free time saved from virtually zero commute, and no overtime required, adds up to A LOT of time for my personal projects, and vacations. As I get older, I'm definitely valuing that over "being in the industry".
I work from home, live in SF, travel often, and make more here than anywhere else and put more away even with insane prices. But I also sell software development services, so not really a better place to be.
Even if I didn't, I would never leave because of the weather and activities.
Not the same situation being discussed, but I'm glad you've found your way there. This is more to do with the hordes that commute daily, and grind it out. Working from home, with your own company, is a completely different story.
Good decision. I am originally from Europe and I am on a Visa here and consider going back home despite the lower pay. I mean I like tech stuff, but I do not like it that much.
Being able to walk to work, getting 4+ weeks off a year guaranteed by law (so people actually use it instead of hearing they have unlimited PTO and then getting chided for taking a week off), the thought of my kids not having crushing student debt, the ability to live a somewhat lower-carbon lifestyle, not being miserably hot every summer, and a substantially reduced likelihood of being killed every time I go for a bike ride are good reasons to be in Europe.
Not everyone has those horrible commutes. It only takes a few successful exits in the millions to afford a house in Palo Alto, or just one in the billions!
May I ask what you do that enables you to travel all over the world? I've been thinking of ways that would let me travel more without quitting my job or switching out of tech entirely so any tips would be appreciated!
A large, "boring", global company. Offices all over the world, let's me pick and choose where I want to visit for corporate IT work. Also affords me the free time to work on my own side businesses, and travel more :)
Rochester, NY. Cost of living is super cheap, lots of good food, you've got the great lakes, finger lakes, all kinds of outdoors shit, tons of festivals, and most importantly everything is only 15 minutes away on expressways. Only real issue is winter, but the change of seasons is enjoyable.
I lived in Rochester for 5 years. I remember 6 months of gray slate skies where the clouds are low to the ground in an almost claustrophobic way. Summers were humid. It not as hot as other areas. Rochester is cheap though and has good schools. It's a good place to raise a family if you can live with the weather, the provincial nature of the town, and its comparative geographical isolation. Also flights in and out used to be quite expensive too.
When I read your first post, I was hoping you were from WNY. I moved here with the intention of leaving after college, but the longer I stay here, the more I do not wish to leave.
Also...is there any chance your company is hiring Network Engineers? :)
Unfortunately not, we're a super lean team. There's about ten tech guys for the entire world of ninety offices. I think everyone comes here for school, and expects to leave. Someday, but first school gets paid off.
Just don't live anywhere near the North side of Rochester, homocides, and violence are high there. Suburbs(where most live), Park Ave, Brighton are all fine.
I think you think Rochester is somewhere near (and has similar weather to) NYC. In the 5 years I lived there, there was about a week of nasty-hot/humid weather per summer. A big improvement on NYC or Philadelphia.
Edit: For a better description of the problem with Rochester's weather, see GP's name.
I'm definitely valuing that over "being in the industry".
You ARE in the industry.
For every programmer in Silicon Valley, there are x of us not in Silicon Valley. And there's probably little correlation between whether or not you're in Silicon Valley and the coolness and value of whatever you're building.
> I love visiting but I can't imagine living there.
This sums up how I feel about NYC. I have family there, both my parents were originally from there, and I've had a good time every time I've visited, but I wouldn't want to actually live there. It's a great place for spending a weekend, but it's too noisy, crowded, and expensive to go about my day to day life there.
Still ultra-expensive. That area is highly desirable due to the factors you listed. Cheapest homes you're going to find in that area start at $1M. Check out this charming little starter home: [1]
The article makes disingenuous claims about measure B. The county plans to spend nearly all of that money on freeways, which history has shown will not relieve traffic. Their plan calls for almost nothing for public transit.
> The county plans to spend nearly all of that money on freeways, which history has shown will not relieve traffic.
Additional freeway lanes improve throughput, but don't remove congestion at peak: it will reduce the duration of congestion. If you want to handle peak traffic without congestion, you would have to build a lot more capacity than is reasonable (or significantly reduce demand).
Since demand for transit is increasing continuously (as more people move to the area), and supply of transit increases slowly and only in steps, it's no surprise that the new supply is quickly matched with demand. Lots of people would like to go places during rush hour, but the freeways are full for several hours, and Caltrain is too.
California's state and local governments are probably unable to solve these problems. The legal structure, rather than supporting a solution, seems to actually make these problems quite likely.
I suspect that, in a democracy which places an emphasis on freedom of career choice, free rights of personal movement (from pretty much anywhere to pretty much anywhere else), essentially unregulated road and highway access, the high cost of infrastructure creation and maintenance, the high cost of government workers, combined with relatively strong individual property rights -- gridlock and skyrocketing housing costs are truly unavoidable.
> “If the economy tanks, then we won’t create jobs the way we used to, but nobody wants the economy to tank,” Hancock said. “We don’t really have a fix for this problem right now..."
The LA area has people who fly in every week from someplace further east, maybe Nevada. They spend the week in shared apartments that probably contain nothing but bunk-beds and a microwave. Then they fly home for the weekend, and still come out ahead.
Some variant of that is actually not especially unusual. In my experience, there's a sizable group of people who work remotely (or at least remotely from the HQ office) but they fly in on a regular basis.
Just out of curiosity: How's the public transport situation in the same area? (I mean, Public Transport + car pooling would help reduce this issue no?)
I'd bet it's somewhere in between. I think the determining factor is nuisance. People will put up with certain long commutes and high prices for a given reward. If tech makes it so we can accommodate more people going further at the same nuisance level, we'll probably do that instead of the same number of people at a lower stress level. People will keep moving in until it gets shitty enough to overcome their desire to be here, right? If so, then the level of shittiness is constant over time and tech.
When commute becomes more bearable, more people will buy houses behind an even longer commute, so the total amount of miles commuted daily will increase.
I think self driving cars might make public transport much more viable, by increasing the effective range of stations.
An entire sprawling suburb could be served by a single station, with people taking self-driving taxi rides from their doorstep (timed to allow a short transfer) and then getting in another taxi to get to their destination. It would be almost as convenient, but people wouldn't be wasting tonnes of road space for the bulk of their journey.
A service like Uber (or possibly Google maps) could even offer integrated tickets for the whole journey.
Assuming every person replaces their car with a self-driving car, how much would roadway throughput improve as a result of smarter communal driving? The assumption is that the self-driving cars are a 1:1 replacement of human-driven cars and ride sharing does not increase or decrease.
The idea is that you'd use your commute time to do something other than drive. You could read a book, watch a TV show, play video games, etc. You could even take a nap if you wanted to.
So buying a house behind even a 2-3 hours commute will become doable. So people will start doing it. Perhaps briefly wake up after 5 hours of sleep, hop on and get the rest 2 hours of sleep in the car.
Anyone know what the % drag on SF's economy caused by the lack of housing is up to?
SF has had a shortage of housing for decades, and it just gets worse and worse. Is there any point at which the NIMBYs will be defeated and zoning policy adjusted to allow real densification? Or is power stacked so much in their favor that it will never happen?
I have an hour commute daily, and I use that time to read technical books, papers, watch videos (like Lynda.com training videos), or even code (if I can get place to sit during off peak hours).
It would help with the larger companies increased the number of buses they run, and expand the routes for broader coverage. It could be done immediately, whereas expanding BART will take years, and be focused on a small area.
When I was in the Bay Area during the '90s dot-boom, it took me 90-100 minutes to get from Fremont to Palo Alto. During the dot-bust, it was more like 40 minutes. I cannot imagine what it's like now.
I regret that I didn't use that time to learn Japanese or something.
After visiting the Palo Alto region for work I don't understand why anyone would drive anywhere. It was so extremely friendly to biking, I could get from Menlo Park to Redwood city and even across the bay to Freemont with no trouble whatsoever.
Because you can't get anywhere without a car here. At least in San Jose. And to be honest, I would not ride a bike here after seeing how people drive around here.
How do you get your stuff home from Costco? I mean there is delivery, but still.
I was able to get everywhere I needed to go, granted I was staying at an AirBnB so I didn't need to go shopping, but I rode past a safeway during my adventures and I can put plenty of stuff in saddle baskets.
About the people driving, I also found that there are tons of roads right off the main through fairs that are very very bike friendly, very little traffic and lots of bike lanes. I think you underestimate just how far you can get on a bike in a reasonable time. Like I said I commuted from Menlo park to Redwood city and to Freemont ( across the bay ) with no trouble whatsoever.
We need to encourage clustering/density/jobs in more remote areas where housing is cheaper, instead of downtown SF/SJ/Oakland. Wouldn't that help? Or just result in broader sprawl -- I'm picturing LA.
By 2010, the commute in SF was worse than LA. While caltrain & bart do help in SF, when it breaks, you got problems. Bart is pretty reliable but Caltrain seems to break or hit something/someone a few times a month.
Public transportation is not going to come to the rescue. The communities involved won't tolerate the additional taxes, nor will they cooperate in making an efficient system.
Can we pin any hopes on fully autonomous vehicles?
Just choose where you live carefully (and pay the big bucks and sacrifice space) and work close. I've never had a bad commute in SV but then I don't live in a palace.
Don't tell me what to do. I didn't say only reason I said one of the reasons. Something that separated the applicant from the pack of otherwise qualified people.
In any case unclear to me why it's a bad thing to note that someone older has a better chance of getting hired because it's easier for them to find living accommodations.
Any reputable employer (like Google) would NEVER ask an interviewee about their age or where they are living, much less bring them up in the hiring discussion.
Sure because it's difficult to figure out approximately how old someone is when you meet them by their work history and/or the way they look.
There is a housing in SV. Certain housing is set aside for 55+. That housing is less expensive and better located. Makes total sense that that would present a hiring opportunity and be an enhancement to someone's qualifications.
This is no different than getting into a top school. Anyone who gets in is qualified but someone within a special group knocks out others with the same qualifications.
I live in San Mateo and work in the south bay. By car it takes me 35-40min (with no traffic) but with public transport it would be over 2h. After six there isn't even any option available to go back home. No surprise that so many people choose a car to commute.