San Francisco is a little different from Austin in that it's surrounded by water on three sides. There are bridges to Marin (north) and Oakland (east), but the

San Francisco is a little different from Austin in that it's surrounded by water on three sides. There are bridges to Marin (north) and Oakland (east), but they're congested. Apparently BART is also full, though it wasn't when I lived there. Compounding the problem, a good fraction of the peninsula is parks and nature preserves, and the whole area has more mountains than buildable land. SF has severe restrictions on growing outward. And jobs are not migrating to the edge; they're being created in the city. It's more like Hong Kong than Austin. The Bay Area as a whole is growing outward. The edge is currently around Discovery Bay in the east (66 miles, 2 hours) and Morgan Hill in the south (74 miles, 1:45). (I don't know about the north.) But those areas are not viable commuting distance to SF.