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Bay Area just needs an underground centralized subway and interconnected light rail. It's so simple and so ridiculous how power NIMBYs just always shut any pro

Bay Area just needs an underground centralized subway and interconnected light rail. It's so simple and so ridiculous how power NIMBYs just always shut any progress down. Would be such a boon to the quality of living here, it's absurd we can't make this happen.

shereadsthenews 7y ago
Most of the Bay Area doesn’t have the built environment to support that. As I always say: transportation cannot solve land-use problems.
- SllX 7y ago
  Take 3 quarters of a hundred billion and you can probably substantially reshape land use in even the Bay Area. Take the other quarter and you can probably substantially reshape BART.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    It’s going to take $5-10 billion just to move SF’s Caltrain station over by like five inches. You’re being wildly optimistic about what you can do with $100 billion.
    - SllX 7y ago
      You can easily blow the entire wad on downtown San Francisco, but you don’t have to.
      - rayiner 7y ago
        But you have to have enough coverage to make the system usable. Building one subway line through Palo Alto doesn’t do you much good because people will still have to drive to get to the stations (and because jobs in the area are so spread out, drive on the other end to get to jobs). In Manhattan, there are 4-5 lines across a strip 2.5 miles wide. Half a mile is about the most people will walk to the subway at each end. You could cover the core of most of the South Bay cities with 5-6 lines. That’s 240 miles of track for the South Bay. At a billion dollars per mile for the subway, that’s a quarter trillion. That gets you the physical infrastructure to make transit feasible. On top of that you need to topple the local governments so you can massively upzone the strip around the subway lines.
        wbl 7y ago
        Other countries have far lower costs. Improvement is possible.
        kelnos 7y ago
        Possible, but I wouldn't want to bet a budget on it happening in time.
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twblalock 7y ago
There are only a few places in the Bay Area as dense as the European and Japanese cities that have mass transit. I've been to a number of cities in Europe and Japan with the population density of the Bay Area. They don't have subways. They have a couple of train stations that link them to major cities. Most people who live in these places drive cars, ride bicycles, or take the bus. The kind of public transit you want is only sustainable in very dense cities. Outside of downtown San Francisco and Oakland, the Bay Area is a suburb. The amount of money it would take to subsidize a reasonable subway system would bankrupt the state.
- maccam94 7y ago
  But the density is being suppressed by zoning limits on building heights, parking requirements, mandated road improvements to handle additional traffic, and a building permit process that is heavily influenced by NIMBYs. Pass SB50 and watch the upper peninsula become viable for subways.

shereadsthenews 7y ago

Most of the Bay Area doesn’t have the built environment to support that. As I always say: transportation cannot solve land-use problems.

SllX 7y ago
Take 3 quarters of a hundred billion and you can probably substantially reshape land use in even the Bay Area. Take the other quarter and you can probably substantially reshape BART.
- rayiner 7y ago
  It’s going to take $5-10 billion just to move SF’s Caltrain station over by like five inches. You’re being wildly optimistic about what you can do with $100 billion.
  - SllX 7y ago
    You can easily blow the entire wad on downtown San Francisco, but you don’t have to.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      But you have to have enough coverage to make the system usable. Building one subway line through Palo Alto doesn’t do you much good because people will still have to drive to get to the stations (and because jobs in the area are so spread out, drive on the other end to get to jobs). In Manhattan, there are 4-5 lines across a strip 2.5 miles wide. Half a mile is about the most people will walk to the subway at each end. You could cover the core of most of the South Bay cities with 5-6 lines. That’s 240 miles of track for the South Bay. At a billion dollars per mile for the subway, that’s a quarter trillion. That gets you the physical infrastructure to make transit feasible. On top of that you need to topple the local governments so you can massively upzone the strip around the subway lines.
      - wbl 7y ago
        Other countries have far lower costs. Improvement is possible.
        kelnos 7y ago
        Possible, but I wouldn't want to bet a budget on it happening in time.

deleted 7y ago

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twblalock 7y ago

There are only a few places in the Bay Area as dense as the European and Japanese cities that have mass transit. I've been to a number of cities in Europe and Japan with the population density of the Bay Area. They don't have subways. They have a couple of train stations that link them to major cities. Most people who live in these places drive cars, ride bicycles, or take the bus. The kind of public transit you want is only sustainable in very dense cities. Outside of downtown San Francisco and Oakland, the Bay Area is a suburb. The amount of money it would take to subsidize a reasonable subway system would bankrupt the state.

maccam94 7y ago
But the density is being suppressed by zoning limits on building heights, parking requirements, mandated road improvements to handle additional traffic, and a building permit process that is heavily influenced by NIMBYs. Pass SB50 and watch the upper peninsula become viable for subways.