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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 ba
by Schweigi 10y ago
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.
- mc32 10y agoNo 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.
- orian 10y agoBut if you look, only some parts of SFO are dense, the rest is a joke. Paris: 55,673 ppl/sq mi New York City: 27,016.3 ppl/sq mi San Francisco: 17,179.2 ppl/sq mi Zurich: 12,000 ppl/sq mi Vienna: 11,205 ppl/sq mi San Bruno: 7,505.0 ppl/sq mi Mountain View: 6,034.8 ppl/sq mi San Jose: 5,256.2 ppl/sq mi Cupertino 5,179.1 ppl/sq mi Menlo Park: 3,271.3 ppl/sq mi
- ChuckMcM 10y agoYour 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.
- orian 10y agoPreferably both things should go together. You plan the neighbourhood and the same time start planing the transport. There is a lot of books on what makes city good place to live this days on. I found it fascinating (as SWE).
- ChuckMcM 10y agoGreat 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.
- Schweigi 10y agoFor 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.
- mc32 10y agoThe 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.
- muzz 10y agoYet it provides housing for other Silicon Valley cities via net flux outward. Essentially, it *is" a big suburb
- jacobolus 10y agoAlmost none of San José is low-rise apartments. It’s almost all detached units and low-density industrial zones. If San José replaced all its single family houses with 3–5 story apartment buildings, the density would increase 5x.
- mc32 10y agoI 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.
- pm24601 10y agoA 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 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.
- user5994461 10y agoDunno about the rest but what is called "Paris" is only a 2 mile radius in the center of the greater city.
- Nav_Panel 10y agoThese 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).
- jacobolus 10y agoIf 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.
- Retric 10y agoDensity counts where people live not where they work which leads to misleading numbers.
- oldmanjay 10y agoDid you decide to compare cities with suburbs just to erase any vestige of intellectual honesty?
- Xixi 10y agoI 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.
- ghaff 10y agoAnd 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.
- sampo 10y agoThe 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.
- Tempest1981 10y agoYes, 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.
- orian 10y agoBut the point is, in lot places - San Jose - the roads are huge, I mean, the small road between houses is of a size of many european 4 lane roads ;-)
- eitally 10y agoAnd 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.
- sampo 10y agoI am from Europe, and my idea of a kid-friendly neighborhood has proper sidewalks. Here is an example: https://goo.gl/maps/Ng3BUjBcPq12 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.
- amyjess 10y agoTBH, GP's neighborhood isn't universal in the US. 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. Here's an example from a neighborhood right near where I grew up: https://goo.gl/maps/qGSvbk4HdAM2 https://goo.gl/maps/qGSvbk4HdAM2 And even the six-lane arterials have sidewalks here: https://goo.gl/maps/DUR8mdVQysu https://goo.gl/maps/DUR8mdVQysu and https://goo.gl/maps/hZ4dL3yj8F32 https://goo.gl/maps/hZ4dL3yj8F32 And for completeness, a sidewalk-less street in a nearby neighborhood: https://goo.gl/maps/TnQ8bogKttL2 https://goo.gl/maps/TnQ8bogKttL2 -- that whole area just looks old, and the neighborhood gave me the creeps when I was a kid
- mikeash 10y agoIsn'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.
- Bahamut 10y agoFrom 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.
- pm24601 10y agoVTA has the routes that look good but in practice don't coordinate in weird ways, For example try to get from parts of Sunnyvale to Google.
- jbob2000 10y agoPublic 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.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jkern 10y agoI 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.
- hfourm 10y agoIt sounds a lot of what you are complaining about could be solved by "better public transportation", as the OP was commenting about.
- aboodman 10y agoI 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.
- sethhochberg 10y ago
- beambot 10y agoThey 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...
- melling 10y agoSomeday, 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. The good news is that China is working on it: http://www.china.org.cn/business/2016-11/01/content_39610565.htm http://www.china.org.cn/business/2016-11/01/content_39610565...
- honkhonkpants 10y agoWhy do I need a maglev to go 70? A bus can go 70. Any old steel-wheeled train can hit 200.
- melling 10y agoHow 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: http://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/sjm-confestion-1004-03.jpg?w=928 http://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/sjm-co... A maglev carries 200-300 people? Your average bus holds 50?
- honkhonkpants 10y agoElectric, 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.
- melling 10y agoOk. Why is China building low-speed maglevs in Beijing and not using buses and high-speed rail? They have over 10,000 miles of hsr?
- 10y ago
- cbhl 10y agoOne of the big challenges in increasing spending for public transit is homelessness. For example, this 2013 article describes how the VTA 22 El Camino route becomes completely full of homeless people during the overnight hours: http://www.mercurynews.com/2013/10/31/homeless-turn-overnight-bus-route-into-hotel-22/ http://www.mercurynews.com/2013/10/31/homeless-turn-overnigh...
- bdcravens 10y agoIf the concern is commuter traffic, then lines that only run during commuter hours makes this concern moot.
- closeparen 10y agoHaving decent commuter hour service but no mobility for evenings and weekends is a common public transit system failure mode. It hurts a lot more when you come for people's parking spaces if they still need cars for everything except commuting.
- honkhonkpants 10y agoThe simple solution is to give the homeless homes.
- scelerat 10y agoNot 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: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/home-free http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/home-free
- eloisant 10y agoEven without creating new lines, simply increasing the frequency of the Caltrain would make a big difference.
- sampo 10y ago
- closeparen 10y agoYes, if that public transit has seats so you can at least sit and read, and preferably network so you can work. Standing room on public transit is much worse than driving, IMO.
- kordless 10y agoBART is the joke. It's dirty, deafening and run inefficiently. The cars were built in the 70s.