8 ms·

The bus is a symptom of the problem: people don't want new people joining their group. This isn't specific to San Francisco or even housing. Get rid of the buse

The bus is a symptom of the problem: people don't want new people joining their group. This isn't specific to San Francisco or even housing. Get rid of the buses (which by their nature cut down on pollution and traffic congestion) and people would find some other topical to complain about. You see this all the time in New York. After living here a few years, I'm pretty sure the only way to deal with this is to ignore it. People are going to complain loudly about new people moving into their neighborhood. They can't stop inevitable (people are going to continue to move to urban centers) any more than I can. The article hits it - it's easier to complain about the buses and tech gentrification than it is to fix the actual problems - high rents brought upon by the same anti-new-development, nimby attitudes trying to keep the tech buses out.

pjlegato 11y ago
The other issue this is a symptom of is the terrible public transportation in San Francisco, where it takes an hour to go 4 or 5 miles and three hours to go from the west part of San Francisco to Silicon Valley, plus being packed in like sardines for the entire standing-room-only trip. The cushy tech buses thus incite further outrage from those who are forced to take public transport to work every day.
- keithpeter 11y ago
  Is there any plan to improve the public transport? In a large city in the Midlands UK we have new 'platinum' express buses with larger seats, wifi and rather swish branding. Same price as standard if you have a travel pass but more if you pay for an individual journey. Getting closer to the train service slowly. Metro coming on line soon as well.
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    Regionally? Not really. The only thing coming is electrification of Caltrain, which has been under design for close to 20 years at this point and all they have to show for it is an environmental impact report. They haven't even put out the project for bidding yet. Even with electric Caltrain getting from San Francisco to places like Facebook, Apple, and Google will be a pain. Their major campuses are not well-sited for transit service. It's 3.5 miles from Palo Alto Caltrain to Facebook, and not a very nice walk at all.
    - sjg007 11y ago
      There will be self driving cars by then.
  - pjlegato 11y ago
    There's always lots of talk from the politicians about plans to improve it, but so far few concrete results. Within the city, the only thing that's actually under construction is a very expensive new subway to ferry tourists from the city center to Chinatown and back. There is also a segment of a high speed train intended to run from San Francisco through Silicon Valley and to Los Angeles, but much of that has been tied up in court by the many Silicon Valley municipal governments, who imagine that it will ruin the (non-existent for 60 years) quaint small town semi-rural character of the area.
  - bradleyjg 11y ago
    A major problem is that there's no political unit of the correct size: San Francisco is too small and California is too big.
    - pjlegato 11y ago
      Exactly. The local economy long ago outgrew the municipal structures. The state should do what New York City did a century ago and merge all of the tiny local governments into a single unified entity. San Francisco is a big city that hasn't yet realized it's not a small city anymore.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
      Hmmm. Well, we managed to do it in the Minneapolis metro area. I live on a farm (obviously in a rural area) and I work in downtown Minneapolis about 40 miles and two counties away. I take an express bus to work every day after driving about 15 miles to a Park & Ride (free parking). Since it can use the HOV lanes or drive on the shoulder when necessary, the bus consistently gets me there in less than half the time of driving and I don't need to pay for downtown parking or deal with the stress of bumper to bumper traffic. The actual bus ride costs a little less than I would have to spend on gas to drive there. Minneapolis has made some streets in downtown bus-only in one direction so there is little intermingling of bus & automobile traffic. I have to say it works very well.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > A major problem is that there's no political unit of the correct size: San Francisco is too small and California is too big. If only there was a political unit -- say, maybe, a "district" -- of larger geographical scope than San Francisco, but smaller than California, focused on providing rapid transit for the San Francisco Bay Area...
      - pjlegato 11y ago
        The BART system you refer to was gutted. It met with heavy resistance from the local governments in the Marin and Peninsula suburbs who feared it would "alter the character" of their quaint semi-rural villages (which haven't been that for a very long time.) They got away with it and effectively blocked most of the planned system from ever being completed. Original plan: http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transit-bay-area.html http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transi...
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Is there any plan to improve the public transport? Yes, including, among others, the Silicon Valley BART Extension (which will provide a BART/Caltrain/Amtrak connection), and the Transbay Transit Center development (which ultimately is planned to provide a BART/Caltrain/Cal High Speed Rail/Many Bus systems connection in downtown SF.
    - pjlegato 11y ago
      Yes, they are now, in 2015, talking about completing part of the southern loop of the system that was planned in 1956: http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transit-bay-area.html http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transi...
- runamok 11y ago
  Slower than that. I used to regularly walk from IIRC chestnut and Mason to CalTrain through Chinatown at around 6pm and regularly beat the 30.
ionforce 11y ago
Basically bikeshedding real life.
gozo 11y ago
Or people could actually have a point when they think there are other parts of the bay area that are more suited for large scale development. What's ridiculous is to have buses running from the most developed area in the region through wast areas of sprawling suburbia and back again day after day. Then make simplistic statement how if you just build more SF will over night become like NY or Paris that had a 100 years to build their infrastructure. I don't know of any city outside China that manage to handle this level of growth by building in established areas, it just doesn't happen.
- mc32 11y ago
  Lots of high growth cities accomplish this, look at singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, India, etc. Not just China, but, no, we want to preserve character while at the same time remain affordable, two opposing forces. And truth be told, change should be the only constant. I understand we have a bit of envy vis a vis Europe, given their thousand plus year histories of cities, but I prefer the more pragmatic eastern philosophical take and action. When you need housing and transit, you promote it and build it.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
mc32 11y ago
The not so funny thing is that when results from studies commissioned by a supe don't meet their expectations, the supes commission new studies hoping the new study gets the hint and brings results in line with their presumptions. Looking at you supe campos.

pjlegato 11y ago

The other issue this is a symptom of is the terrible public transportation in San Francisco, where it takes an hour to go 4 or 5 miles and three hours to go from the west part of San Francisco to Silicon Valley, plus being packed in like sardines for the entire standing-room-only trip. The cushy tech buses thus incite further outrage from those who are forced to take public transport to work every day.

keithpeter 11y ago
Is there any plan to improve the public transport? In a large city in the Midlands UK we have new 'platinum' express buses with larger seats, wifi and rather swish branding. Same price as standard if you have a travel pass but more if you pay for an individual journey. Getting closer to the train service slowly. Metro coming on line soon as well.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  Regionally? Not really. The only thing coming is electrification of Caltrain, which has been under design for close to 20 years at this point and all they have to show for it is an environmental impact report. They haven't even put out the project for bidding yet. Even with electric Caltrain getting from San Francisco to places like Facebook, Apple, and Google will be a pain. Their major campuses are not well-sited for transit service. It's 3.5 miles from Palo Alto Caltrain to Facebook, and not a very nice walk at all.
  - sjg007 11y ago
    There will be self driving cars by then.
- pjlegato 11y ago
  There's always lots of talk from the politicians about plans to improve it, but so far few concrete results. Within the city, the only thing that's actually under construction is a very expensive new subway to ferry tourists from the city center to Chinatown and back. There is also a segment of a high speed train intended to run from San Francisco through Silicon Valley and to Los Angeles, but much of that has been tied up in court by the many Silicon Valley municipal governments, who imagine that it will ruin the (non-existent for 60 years) quaint small town semi-rural character of the area.
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  A major problem is that there's no political unit of the correct size: San Francisco is too small and California is too big.
  - pjlegato 11y ago
    Exactly. The local economy long ago outgrew the municipal structures. The state should do what New York City did a century ago and merge all of the tiny local governments into a single unified entity. San Francisco is a big city that hasn't yet realized it's not a small city anymore.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
    Hmmm. Well, we managed to do it in the Minneapolis metro area. I live on a farm (obviously in a rural area) and I work in downtown Minneapolis about 40 miles and two counties away. I take an express bus to work every day after driving about 15 miles to a Park & Ride (free parking). Since it can use the HOV lanes or drive on the shoulder when necessary, the bus consistently gets me there in less than half the time of driving and I don't need to pay for downtown parking or deal with the stress of bumper to bumper traffic. The actual bus ride costs a little less than I would have to spend on gas to drive there. Minneapolis has made some streets in downtown bus-only in one direction so there is little intermingling of bus & automobile traffic. I have to say it works very well.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > A major problem is that there's no political unit of the correct size: San Francisco is too small and California is too big. If only there was a political unit -- say, maybe, a "district" -- of larger geographical scope than San Francisco, but smaller than California, focused on providing rapid transit for the San Francisco Bay Area...
    - pjlegato 11y ago
      The BART system you refer to was gutted. It met with heavy resistance from the local governments in the Marin and Peninsula suburbs who feared it would "alter the character" of their quaint semi-rural villages (which haven't been that for a very long time.) They got away with it and effectively blocked most of the planned system from ever being completed. Original plan: http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transit-bay-area.html http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transi...
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Is there any plan to improve the public transport? Yes, including, among others, the Silicon Valley BART Extension (which will provide a BART/Caltrain/Amtrak connection), and the Transbay Transit Center development (which ultimately is planned to provide a BART/Caltrain/Cal High Speed Rail/Many Bus systems connection in downtown SF.
  - pjlegato 11y ago
    Yes, they are now, in 2015, talking about completing part of the southern loop of the system that was planned in 1956: http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transit-bay-area.html http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transi...
runamok 11y ago
Slower than that. I used to regularly walk from IIRC chestnut and Mason to CalTrain through Chinatown at around 6pm and regularly beat the 30.

ionforce 11y ago

Basically bikeshedding real life.

gozo 11y ago

Or people could actually have a point when they think there are other parts of the bay area that are more suited for large scale development. What's ridiculous is to have buses running from the most developed area in the region through wast areas of sprawling suburbia and back again day after day. Then make simplistic statement how if you just build more SF will over night become like NY or Paris that had a 100 years to build their infrastructure. I don't know of any city outside China that manage to handle this level of growth by building in established areas, it just doesn't happen.

mc32 11y ago
Lots of high growth cities accomplish this, look at singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, India, etc. Not just China, but, no, we want to preserve character while at the same time remain affordable, two opposing forces. And truth be told, change should be the only constant. I understand we have a bit of envy vis a vis Europe, given their thousand plus year histories of cities, but I prefer the more pragmatic eastern philosophical take and action. When you need housing and transit, you promote it and build it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

mc32 11y ago

The not so funny thing is that when results from studies commissioned by a supe don't meet their expectations, the supes commission new studies hoping the new study gets the hint and brings results in line with their presumptions. Looking at you supe campos.