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By locating in a suburban area, they are forcing almost all employees to drive (or take commuter shuttles). But if they moved to an urban area, many employees

By locating in a suburban area, they are forcing almost all employees to drive (or take commuter shuttles). But if they moved to an urban area, many employees could find housing nearby, and many more could find good transit options. As it is, they're located is a mostly low density suburban area 5 miles from the nearest commuter rail station.

sliverstorm 10y ago
The area is far more bike-able than SF, in my opinion. Less vehicular manslaughter too.
closeparen 10y ago
>many employees could find housing nearby If they were willing to absorb a 50-100% increase in housing costs or downgrade their living spaces (giving up things like "going for walks at night without getting stabbed"), maybe. Living close to an urban office is an extreme luxury good that'll give any mainstream luxury car a run for its money. >good transit options The Bay Area has some of the best transit options in the country, and they are to stand with one arm over your head and one arm on your backpack, pressed up against hundreds of strangers, and just try to keep your balance and avoid eye contact while the bus or train lurches around for 30+ minutes. After walking or riding your bike for ~20. I like driving, so maybe I'm just having trouble empathizing with people who feel forced to do it, but is a ~10 minute drive to a suburban office park really as miserable to you as the ~50 minute BART commute from Berkeley to SF? If I had a suburban employer with a giant free parking lot (i.e. letting me live anywhere) moving to a downtown office in a hot real estate market without at least a 2x salary increase, I'd quit in a heartbeat.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  "The Bay Area has some of the best transit options in the country, " [citation needed]. It really doesn't. In fact, it notoriously has pretty much the most underdeveloped public transit options of any major city in the US. (and while folks disagree on #1, i don't think anyone would disagree it's in the top 5 worst) In DC, i could easily get to work pretty much anywhere in the city in roughly the same time or less i could by driving. In NY, ditto. In the bay area, it would probably be 2x the drive time, and a serious pain in the ass (and that's saying a lot, given how bad the drive times are) ]
  - closeparen 10y ago
    These two. I agree the Bay Area has some of the loudest advocates for better transit, but it doesn't appear that it actually gets better than this except in Manhattan (and Europe). [0] https://smartasset.com/mortgage/best-cities-for-public-transportation https://smartasset.com/mortgage/best-cities-for-public-trans... [1] https://www.redfin.com/blog/2015/12/transit-score-2016.html https://www.redfin.com/blog/2015/12/transit-score-2016.html
    - sparky_ 10y ago
      Indeed. I am an Austrian expat in San Jose; the public transit in the Bay is at best a sad joke compared to Vienna.
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      I'm not sure i agree with either methodology (The one in #1 is just, IMHO, strange), but i'll agree that you have proved somebody believes it :)
- notfromhere 10y ago
  Bay Area transit is awful, and pales in comparison to places like NYC or Chicago
- Symbiote 10y ago
  > "going for walks at night without getting stabbed" America would be better for everyone if a few more people with influence lived in these places. They'd demand the situation improve. (The same for the public transport -- in cities where rich people use it, the service is better.)
  - kylec 10y ago
    The same for the public transport -- in cities where rich people use it, the service is better I wonder which is the cause and which is the effect here. Maybe some cities were proactive in improving their safety and public infrastructure, and as a consequence have attracted rich people to live there. That's really the only way it will work, anyway - getting anything done in the civic sphere takes a lot of time and effort, and it's not worth it for most people and companies. If cities wish to attract them, they need to proactively improve themselves.
- kylec 10y ago
  If I had a suburban employer with a giant free parking lot (i.e. letting me live anywhere) moving to a downtown office in a hot real estate market without at least a 2x salary increase, I'd quit in a heartbeat. Same here. People talk about how difficult it is to live in the city and work in the suburbs, claiming that if the company just moved to the city then everyone would be happy. But it's perhaps even more difficult to live in the suburbs and work in the city, and many people, including myself, would rather find a different job in the suburbs than have to put up with a commute like that.
  - Johnny555 10y ago
    Few people think that moving an office from a suburb to a city will make everyone happy, clearly those that live in the suburb next to the office will not be happy that they have a longer commute. But unless the company is small enough that a significant portion of its employees live in that suburb, moving to the city has the potential to ease the commutes of many more employees since the city in general has more housing density, and better transit connections. I worked at a company that moved from one suburb 40 miles away across the bay to another. Within a year they lost about 30% of their employees that didn't want to make the commute or move. Since I lived in the city, the only different in my commute was taking a different train system... and the new location was a bit more bike friendly from the train to the office, so made my commute better. So while you may not want to give up your 10 minute suburban commute, the employee living 2 suburbs over that fights traffic ever day for his 30 minute commute to the company may be happy to take the train his suburb to the city to the new location. Public planning and transit is not about making your commute better for your job at one particular employer, but about making the commute better on aggregate for everyone. The Bay Area is not a good example of good transit oriented planning, or Google would have been allowed to build housing near its campus, Apple wouldn't have been allowed to build a 13,000 employee office even farther from BART+Caltrain than its current office, and the 49ers wouldn't have been a 70,000 person stadium without regard to existing transit connections. Since communities largely do their own city planning, they optimize for their own growth and tax base, ignoring issues of traffic.
ryandrake 10y ago
Newsflash: Most people in America drive. This whole "automobile lifestyle is evil and most people wouldn't drive if they had the choice" narrative is getting kind of stale.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  Most people in America don't have effective transit - not even in the SF Bay Area. But building more homes and offices in suburban neighborhoods is not going to make that any better. There's not much space left in the Bay Area for bigger roads, yet the population continues to grow.
- crispyambulance 10y ago
  The post-baby-boomer generations really are getting sick of driving and don't care for the same things as their grandparents did. The problem is we didn't get to a car-centric culture overnight, and it won't change overnight either. Entire swaths of the country are still set-up for travel in which every trip begins and ends in a parking space. All the most forwarding thinking places are now rapidly embracing "complete streets" and walkability in their urban planning. It will take time but the lessons have been learned and things are changing. Give it a few decades.

sliverstorm 10y ago

The area is far more bike-able than SF, in my opinion. Less vehicular manslaughter too.

closeparen 10y ago

>many employees could find housing nearby If they were willing to absorb a 50-100% increase in housing costs or downgrade their living spaces (giving up things like "going for walks at night without getting stabbed"), maybe. Living close to an urban office is an extreme luxury good that'll give any mainstream luxury car a run for its money. >good transit options The Bay Area has some of the best transit options in the country, and they are to stand with one arm over your head and one arm on your backpack, pressed up against hundreds of strangers, and just try to keep your balance and avoid eye contact while the bus or train lurches around for 30+ minutes. After walking or riding your bike for ~20. I like driving, so maybe I'm just having trouble empathizing with people who feel forced to do it, but is a ~10 minute drive to a suburban office park really as miserable to you as the ~50 minute BART commute from Berkeley to SF? If I had a suburban employer with a giant free parking lot (i.e. letting me live anywhere) moving to a downtown office in a hot real estate market without at least a 2x salary increase, I'd quit in a heartbeat.

DannyBee 10y ago
"The Bay Area has some of the best transit options in the country, " [citation needed]. It really doesn't. In fact, it notoriously has pretty much the most underdeveloped public transit options of any major city in the US. (and while folks disagree on #1, i don't think anyone would disagree it's in the top 5 worst) In DC, i could easily get to work pretty much anywhere in the city in roughly the same time or less i could by driving. In NY, ditto. In the bay area, it would probably be 2x the drive time, and a serious pain in the ass (and that's saying a lot, given how bad the drive times are) ]
- closeparen 10y ago
  These two. I agree the Bay Area has some of the loudest advocates for better transit, but it doesn't appear that it actually gets better than this except in Manhattan (and Europe). [0] https://smartasset.com/mortgage/best-cities-for-public-transportation https://smartasset.com/mortgage/best-cities-for-public-trans... [1] https://www.redfin.com/blog/2015/12/transit-score-2016.html https://www.redfin.com/blog/2015/12/transit-score-2016.html
  - sparky_ 10y ago
    Indeed. I am an Austrian expat in San Jose; the public transit in the Bay is at best a sad joke compared to Vienna.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    I'm not sure i agree with either methodology (The one in #1 is just, IMHO, strange), but i'll agree that you have proved somebody believes it :)
notfromhere 10y ago
Bay Area transit is awful, and pales in comparison to places like NYC or Chicago
Symbiote 10y ago
> "going for walks at night without getting stabbed" America would be better for everyone if a few more people with influence lived in these places. They'd demand the situation improve. (The same for the public transport -- in cities where rich people use it, the service is better.)
- kylec 10y ago
  The same for the public transport -- in cities where rich people use it, the service is better I wonder which is the cause and which is the effect here. Maybe some cities were proactive in improving their safety and public infrastructure, and as a consequence have attracted rich people to live there. That's really the only way it will work, anyway - getting anything done in the civic sphere takes a lot of time and effort, and it's not worth it for most people and companies. If cities wish to attract them, they need to proactively improve themselves.
kylec 10y ago
If I had a suburban employer with a giant free parking lot (i.e. letting me live anywhere) moving to a downtown office in a hot real estate market without at least a 2x salary increase, I'd quit in a heartbeat. Same here. People talk about how difficult it is to live in the city and work in the suburbs, claiming that if the company just moved to the city then everyone would be happy. But it's perhaps even more difficult to live in the suburbs and work in the city, and many people, including myself, would rather find a different job in the suburbs than have to put up with a commute like that.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  Few people think that moving an office from a suburb to a city will make everyone happy, clearly those that live in the suburb next to the office will not be happy that they have a longer commute. But unless the company is small enough that a significant portion of its employees live in that suburb, moving to the city has the potential to ease the commutes of many more employees since the city in general has more housing density, and better transit connections. I worked at a company that moved from one suburb 40 miles away across the bay to another. Within a year they lost about 30% of their employees that didn't want to make the commute or move. Since I lived in the city, the only different in my commute was taking a different train system... and the new location was a bit more bike friendly from the train to the office, so made my commute better. So while you may not want to give up your 10 minute suburban commute, the employee living 2 suburbs over that fights traffic ever day for his 30 minute commute to the company may be happy to take the train his suburb to the city to the new location. Public planning and transit is not about making your commute better for your job at one particular employer, but about making the commute better on aggregate for everyone. The Bay Area is not a good example of good transit oriented planning, or Google would have been allowed to build housing near its campus, Apple wouldn't have been allowed to build a 13,000 employee office even farther from BART+Caltrain than its current office, and the 49ers wouldn't have been a 70,000 person stadium without regard to existing transit connections. Since communities largely do their own city planning, they optimize for their own growth and tax base, ignoring issues of traffic.

ryandrake 10y ago

Newsflash: Most people in America drive. This whole "automobile lifestyle is evil and most people wouldn't drive if they had the choice" narrative is getting kind of stale.

Johnny555 10y ago
Most people in America don't have effective transit - not even in the SF Bay Area. But building more homes and offices in suburban neighborhoods is not going to make that any better. There's not much space left in the Bay Area for bigger roads, yet the population continues to grow.
crispyambulance 10y ago
The post-baby-boomer generations really are getting sick of driving and don't care for the same things as their grandparents did. The problem is we didn't get to a car-centric culture overnight, and it won't change overnight either. Entire swaths of the country are still set-up for travel in which every trip begins and ends in a parking space. All the most forwarding thinking places are now rapidly embracing "complete streets" and walkability in their urban planning. It will take time but the lessons have been learned and things are changing. Give it a few decades.