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I also believe another option, where we can throw massive amounts of money at the problem, is to completely fix our transportation system. If you have been to

I also believe another option, where we can throw massive amounts of money at the problem, is to completely fix our transportation system. If you have been to any major city in Asia, they have WAYYY more people and are able to commute from much further distances because the public transportation is clean, safe, fast, reliable. We have tons of land under utilized in the bay area, especially in the east bay, if we were to allow those people to reach their offices under 1 hour, then I think a lot of issues are going to be solved. I also believe we should build more taller buildings, but that's happening already. I grew up in Cupertino and everywhere you go there are apartment buildings going up right now. Likewise with Mountain View where my parents work.

alexhutcheson 7y ago
You need much more density around the train stations than currently exists for it to be sustainable to operate those trains on a frequent schedule. So yes, you're correct that better transportation is needed, but greater density is needed to make that transportation system possible.
- shados 7y ago
  The order of: announce train station, wait a bit, start building project and change zoning (with that "wait a bit" gap being critical) makes things work a lot better. Property value skyrockets for a while, and people who arent happy with it can sell and go live somewhere else with the money if they don't like it. The worse situations is when a zoning change happens and goes into effects quickly and construction projects start without people having had time to get the hell out. Selling near those projects is hard (no one wants to deal with it), and the people who live there are stuck. I bought a place near a construction project that was almost done, and right around the time it ended, the city issued special permits for other big projects across the street that no one really expected, and now we're a bit stuck (People in our building cant find buyers without losing large amounts of money, and until they do, have to deal with the unexpected construction).
  - jonas21 7y ago
    That doesn't work so well either. You have to commit to spend a lot of money to build the transit line, and then when you try to make the zoning changes, NIMBYs will still find a way of blocking them. Where I live, the transit agency has been building a $2B light rail extension with the understanding that areas around the stations would be rezoned for high density. But so far, it looks like the city will cave in to pressure from homeowners for lower-density zoning, leaving a very expensive transit investment with far fewer people riding it than anticipated.
  - omegaworks 7y ago
    >Property value skyrockets for a while, and people who arent happy with it can sell and go live somewhere else with the money if they don't like it. This attitude is exactly why people are uncomfortable with processes like this. It ignores existing inequities of property ownership that have impacted wealth distribution. If where you decide to build the station is like most of the bay, the people living in these homes aren't the owners. Especially if they're presently black or latino-majority neighborhoods, American housing policy over the last 50 years has purposefully kept these communities from gaining ownership equity by explicitly redlining them or locking them out of the credit market. They won't profit from selling the property, they will simply be displaced.
    - shados 7y ago
      When talking about NIMBYs who block these initiatives, what everyone tells me is that they're rich affluent white majorities, so my post was very much about how to handle those. No one ever talks about ethnic to minorities pushing back and being NIMBYs. But yes, if you're trying to dump a subway station in the middle an area as you describe, your point is totally correct. My thought is why I wouldn't want a skyscrapper popping in my backyard: because I can't easily get the hell out once the news drop.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  ... and the area we're talking about is both building better transportation and agreed to prioritize building dense at train stations. It's certainly the case that more can be done for both of these.
  - alexhutcheson 7y ago
    Yes, 100% agreed. I'm just saying it's kind of pointless to invest a lot in more train systems without already having an agreement to densify those areas, because there just wouldn't be enough riders to justify frequent service at current levels of density.
    - greglindahl 7y ago
      Uh, ok. The Bay Area has an excessive number of riders on Caltrain already, without more building. We need the building for the planned upgrades.
- deathanatos 7y ago
  > be sustainable to operate those trains on a frequent schedule CalTrain during rush hour is operating many trains at 120+% capacity. As a ride, that number feels way too low given how many people are often without a seat. I type this on a ride where I didn't get a seat for the front half of the ride. Riderships what growing by 5k daily riders YoY, though I think it's finally topped out due to train capacity. Bikers get bumped on a regular basis due to space, and riders on rare occasion. My understanding is that CalTrain is also running essentially as many trains as they can during rush hours. (They have to allow a certain following distance between trains, and that's the constraining factor. Electrification will have locomotives that have better acceleration, and thus stopping distances, and thus will allow packing more trains — and thus capacity onto the tracks. I worry however that this will be too little too late.)
  - alexhutcheson 7y ago
    Yeah, the key phrase here is “during rush hour”. For CalTrain, it’s hard to justify buying more rolling stock and employing more staff if that additional capacity is going to sit mostly unused for 90% of the day. It’s analogous to paying for extra racks of servers to handle peak QPS that you only really need to handle on weekday mornings. This blog post has a more analytical take on what makes peak service so expensive: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/22/base-train-service-is-cheap-peak-train-service-is-expensive/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/22/base-train-ser... If the areas around the stations were denser and had a more diverse mix of destinations (offices, retail, schools, etc.) then there would be be enough all day demand to justify running trains all day on a frequent schedule, potentially even on 5-10 minute frequencies like the RER and S Bahn systems, which would also alleviate congestion at the peak.
    - deathanatos 7y ago
      If that post is accurate… holy moly those cars are expensive. It doesn't even seem to make sense in rush hour according to those numbers? He nicely has the exact per-car figure for the newer Caltrain cars ($5.7M / car…); he puts a $2.5M car at ~$162k/yr in depreciation, and $100k/yr in maintenance. If we double the depreciation to account for CalTrain's apparently expensive purchase, that's $325k + $100k / yr per car, or $2.55M/yr for a six-car train. (But: I don't get these depreciation numbers? This figure adds up to ~$13M over the life of the train assuming the 40 yr life in the article, which seems appropriate given that the gallery equipment is nearly 50 IIRC; why would depreciation be more than 100% of the vehicle cost, or is this a "it depreciates faster in earlier years but becomes more cost effective later"? This could greatly make most of the numbers I'm getting here make no sense.) The passengers, meanwhile, assuming they pay the same price as I do for a Zone 3 pass (and Zone 3 is fairly popular, though some people will travel further to SJ which will cost more…) we get ~$1.6M/yr assuming 100% capacity (570 passengers, n.b. this is less than the current 722 per 6-car gallery, and IDK what Bombadiers have; also I kinda doubt that 100% load will happen in rush, that is, it'll still be >100%) and that they don't raise prices (I also doubt this.) Still, that's a huge funding gap, but should the passengers pay 100% of the required fees, or is some of it expected to come from taxpayers? (There's still a gap of ~$0.9M/yr … per train)
mentos 7y ago
I travel to work at light speed already..

alexhutcheson 7y ago

You need much more density around the train stations than currently exists for it to be sustainable to operate those trains on a frequent schedule. So yes, you're correct that better transportation is needed, but greater density is needed to make that transportation system possible.

shados 7y ago
The order of: announce train station, wait a bit, start building project and change zoning (with that "wait a bit" gap being critical) makes things work a lot better. Property value skyrockets for a while, and people who arent happy with it can sell and go live somewhere else with the money if they don't like it. The worse situations is when a zoning change happens and goes into effects quickly and construction projects start without people having had time to get the hell out. Selling near those projects is hard (no one wants to deal with it), and the people who live there are stuck. I bought a place near a construction project that was almost done, and right around the time it ended, the city issued special permits for other big projects across the street that no one really expected, and now we're a bit stuck (People in our building cant find buyers without losing large amounts of money, and until they do, have to deal with the unexpected construction).
- jonas21 7y ago
  That doesn't work so well either. You have to commit to spend a lot of money to build the transit line, and then when you try to make the zoning changes, NIMBYs will still find a way of blocking them. Where I live, the transit agency has been building a $2B light rail extension with the understanding that areas around the stations would be rezoned for high density. But so far, it looks like the city will cave in to pressure from homeowners for lower-density zoning, leaving a very expensive transit investment with far fewer people riding it than anticipated.
- omegaworks 7y ago
  >Property value skyrockets for a while, and people who arent happy with it can sell and go live somewhere else with the money if they don't like it. This attitude is exactly why people are uncomfortable with processes like this. It ignores existing inequities of property ownership that have impacted wealth distribution. If where you decide to build the station is like most of the bay, the people living in these homes aren't the owners. Especially if they're presently black or latino-majority neighborhoods, American housing policy over the last 50 years has purposefully kept these communities from gaining ownership equity by explicitly redlining them or locking them out of the credit market. They won't profit from selling the property, they will simply be displaced.
  - shados 7y ago
    When talking about NIMBYs who block these initiatives, what everyone tells me is that they're rich affluent white majorities, so my post was very much about how to handle those. No one ever talks about ethnic to minorities pushing back and being NIMBYs. But yes, if you're trying to dump a subway station in the middle an area as you describe, your point is totally correct. My thought is why I wouldn't want a skyscrapper popping in my backyard: because I can't easily get the hell out once the news drop.
greglindahl 7y ago
... and the area we're talking about is both building better transportation and agreed to prioritize building dense at train stations. It's certainly the case that more can be done for both of these.
- alexhutcheson 7y ago
  Yes, 100% agreed. I'm just saying it's kind of pointless to invest a lot in more train systems without already having an agreement to densify those areas, because there just wouldn't be enough riders to justify frequent service at current levels of density.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    Uh, ok. The Bay Area has an excessive number of riders on Caltrain already, without more building. We need the building for the planned upgrades.
deathanatos 7y ago
> be sustainable to operate those trains on a frequent schedule CalTrain during rush hour is operating many trains at 120+% capacity. As a ride, that number feels way too low given how many people are often without a seat. I type this on a ride where I didn't get a seat for the front half of the ride. Riderships what growing by 5k daily riders YoY, though I think it's finally topped out due to train capacity. Bikers get bumped on a regular basis due to space, and riders on rare occasion. My understanding is that CalTrain is also running essentially as many trains as they can during rush hours. (They have to allow a certain following distance between trains, and that's the constraining factor. Electrification will have locomotives that have better acceleration, and thus stopping distances, and thus will allow packing more trains — and thus capacity onto the tracks. I worry however that this will be too little too late.)
- alexhutcheson 7y ago
  Yeah, the key phrase here is “during rush hour”. For CalTrain, it’s hard to justify buying more rolling stock and employing more staff if that additional capacity is going to sit mostly unused for 90% of the day. It’s analogous to paying for extra racks of servers to handle peak QPS that you only really need to handle on weekday mornings. This blog post has a more analytical take on what makes peak service so expensive: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/22/base-train-service-is-cheap-peak-train-service-is-expensive/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/22/base-train-ser... If the areas around the stations were denser and had a more diverse mix of destinations (offices, retail, schools, etc.) then there would be be enough all day demand to justify running trains all day on a frequent schedule, potentially even on 5-10 minute frequencies like the RER and S Bahn systems, which would also alleviate congestion at the peak.
  - deathanatos 7y ago
    If that post is accurate… holy moly those cars are expensive. It doesn't even seem to make sense in rush hour according to those numbers? He nicely has the exact per-car figure for the newer Caltrain cars ($5.7M / car…); he puts a $2.5M car at ~$162k/yr in depreciation, and $100k/yr in maintenance. If we double the depreciation to account for CalTrain's apparently expensive purchase, that's $325k + $100k / yr per car, or $2.55M/yr for a six-car train. (But: I don't get these depreciation numbers? This figure adds up to ~$13M over the life of the train assuming the 40 yr life in the article, which seems appropriate given that the gallery equipment is nearly 50 IIRC; why would depreciation be more than 100% of the vehicle cost, or is this a "it depreciates faster in earlier years but becomes more cost effective later"? This could greatly make most of the numbers I'm getting here make no sense.) The passengers, meanwhile, assuming they pay the same price as I do for a Zone 3 pass (and Zone 3 is fairly popular, though some people will travel further to SJ which will cost more…) we get ~$1.6M/yr assuming 100% capacity (570 passengers, n.b. this is less than the current 722 per 6-car gallery, and IDK what Bombadiers have; also I kinda doubt that 100% load will happen in rush, that is, it'll still be >100%) and that they don't raise prices (I also doubt this.) Still, that's a huge funding gap, but should the passengers pay 100% of the required fees, or is some of it expected to come from taxpayers? (There's still a gap of ~$0.9M/yr … per train)

mentos 7y ago

I travel to work at light speed already..