10 ms·
San Francisco has more than twice the area of Manhattan, with half the population. The San Francisco Bay Area CSA has about the same population as Switzerland,
by ucaetano 9y ago
San Francisco has more than twice the area of Manhattan, with half the population.
The San Francisco Bay Area CSA has about the same population as Switzerland, with 2/3 of the area of Switzerland.
Both have similar GDPs.
If someone wanted to live in Germany, and commute to work in Zurich, with Swiss salaries and German cost-of-living, their commute would be about 1h15min.
The housing and infrastructure problems in the SFBA are purely political, and self-inflicted.
- lex_luthor 9y agoTrue. But a non-political solution to affordable housing could be coming soon in the form of rapid transit via Hyperloop. Hyperloop could put deflationary pressure on housing prices. If Hyperloop actually materializes, and their route transit times are anywhere near what they say they will be, then real estate prices should decline in the bay area, or at the worst level out. I doubt people will continue to pay crazy prices in SF when you can commute from almost anywhere on the west coast to SF within an hour on Hyperloop. http://hyperloop-one.com/routes/ http://hyperloop-one.com/routes/
- Dylan16807 9y agoIsn't hyperloop pretty low-capacity? I'm doubtful of any major effects on housing.
- ucaetano 9y agoNo Hyperloop required, just off-the-shelf, standard rail technology that has been available for the past 30-40 years.
- hypersoar 9y agoHyperloops are a promising whizz-bang idea, but it's not like we haven't developed technology for mass transit. Subways, light rail, and dedicated bus ways all work rather well. The California high-speed rail is obscenely expensive mostly for political reasons, not logistical ones. Furthermore, a Hyperloop might get you from city to city, but then local transit is needed for those last couple miles.
- nerdshoe 9y agoThe Elon Musk Reality Distortion Field is proving to be as effective as the one surrounding Steve Jobs (praise be unto him.)
- yahna 9y agoI wonder how much he spends on PR and other upkeep.
- toast0 9y agoHyperloop routing will be deeply political, same as any other transit system. The stations have to go somewhere, the tunnels have to go somewhere, etc.
- stillhere 9y agoThey'll just raise prices in the exurbs.
- 0xffff2 9y agoSoon? When has a major infrastructure project that hasn't even broken ground ever realistically promised to deliver for any reasonable value of soon? And Hyperloop is far from even being proven feasible, much less breaking ground.
- hatsunearu 9y agoHilarious comment. Hyperloop is literally a bomb.
- thephyber 9y agoOnly in the same way a "car is literally a bomb".
- lisper 9y ago> The housing and infrastructure problems in the SFBA are purely political, and self-inflicted. That's true, but the implication that these decisions are inarguably stupid ("self-inflicted") is unfair. It's a conscious and IMHO defensible choice by the people who already live here: we would prefer to deal with the problems caused by insufficient housing than by the problems caused by overly dense population.
- beambot 9y ago> we would prefer [...] Pretty sure you're not speaking for me and most of my SFBA friends...
- bkmartin 9y agoIt is elected officials that make these decisions, and until people with your point of view start running for office and getting elected things won't change. As of right now it looks like the majority, however slim, of the voters in SFBA are not choosing to change. At least not as quickly as the problem seems to be progressing.
- btilly 9y agoThe problem is that the people impacted by the problem wind up with long commutes, and therefore do not live in the places whose policies would have to change. If you could choose to vote where you work instead of where you live, this problem would go away very quickly.
- dmode 9y agoNIMBY is actually a very vocal minority. A lot of them are retired folks who have a lot of time to engage in City and County politics. I do a little bit and write to City, State, and County officials. But between a long commute and a kid and a dog, I just don't have time to dedicate on this. And that's the problem with local politics.
- alphonsegaston 9y agoPolitics in the US are controlled by the rich, so the idea that "the people" are choosing to deal with the consequences of this housing crisis is absurd. What's happening is that the wealthy are externalizing all the suffering caused by their voracious rent-seeking onto those beneath them, including middle class developers who think their interests align with them (they don't).
- JustAnotherPat 9y agoIt's basically impossible to get a job in Zurich though. In San Fransisco, a coding bootcamp grad can get 140K out the door. This is how capitalism works. We take the bad with the good. Politics reflect the will of the people and the people in San Fransisco on both sides of the aisle want to make as much money as they can, any way they can.
- hooph00p 9y agoThese are some broad generalizations.
- JohnDotAwesome 9y ago> In San Fransisco, a coding bootcamp grad can get 140K out the door I really hope that's not true
- jmckib 9y agoIt is, though I'd say the average is closer to 100-120k. Not sure why that's a bad thing though.
- cabaalis 9y agoNot really a bad thing, just maybe disappointing. I've been a professional coder for 10 years, and now am at an "executive"-level at a small startup, and I make the high end of that. In my area, that is a very strong upper-middle-class salary, though 180 would be better. It's sad at first to see that someone who is simply in a different area geographically is afforded so much for so little effort. However when you factor in the cost of living there, it feels (slightly) better. I say slightly, because every time I've visited SF the actual costs of things has not been significantly different. I haven't had to pay rent or mortgage there, though. Edit: And I don't live somewhere off in the woods, either. The county I live in is in the top 10 wealthiest counties in the country. There is something wrong in SF that is not just cost of living.
- wbl 9y ago
- mmanfrin 9y agoSan Francisco is surrounded by cities which are not San Francisco. Manhattan is part of New York City, and is surrounded by more of New York City. If someone lived 80 miles away from Zurich, in a German town such as Sankt Märgen, Google is telling me that it would take 2h 51m [1]. This tells me that if the woman in the Article made that same distance commute in German/Switzerland with, say, 30 minutes of slack, she would have to leave her house at 3:40am to arrive at work at 7am. Let me now quote the article: When the second alarm goes off at 3:45 — a reminder to leave for the train in 15 minutes — her morning shifts from leisure to precision. Hm. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Sankt+M%C3%A4rgen,+Germany/Zurich,+Switzerland/@47.6985484,7.5563845,9z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x4790e44cc8dd5f07:0xc1b15fb65ab8a185!2m2!1d8.0929832!2d48.0078317!1m5!1m1!1s0x47900b9749bea219:0xe66e8df1e71fdc03!2m2!1d8.541694!2d47.3768866!5i2 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Sankt+M%C3%A4rgen,+Germany/Z...
- rjsw 9y agoYou seem to have picked the town that is furthest away from an Autobahn in Southern Germany. There are plenty of small towns along the Rhine or near the Bodensee that are commutable to Zurich. People commute to Geneva from France too.
- cyri 9y agoBeen doing that for a couple of years. Works well. No need to switch the train between Waldshut/Koblenz and Zurich. Allows me 2h of coding each day during the train ride.
- polotics 9y agoRheinfelden - Zürich: 70km, 59 minutes train ride
- PeterisP 9y agoI feel that it's misleading to say that the problems are self-inflicted. People who work in SFBA or rent there are suffering from the housing and infrastructure problems that are (to certain extent) caused by residents and homeowners in SFBA - these are two different populations with only a partial overlap, so the problems aren't self-inflicted, they're inflicted by one group onto the other.
- ebiester 9y agoFor many, like the person in the article, they were the same population until recently.
- acerock 9y agoYou can easily live in Germany (or France) and work in Basel with a <1 hr commute.