7 ms·
I live in San Diego and just waited 30 minutes in bumper to bumper traffic to drive 7 miles. Until better traffic infrastructure is installed, more people sound
by hart_russell 7y ago
I live in San Diego and just waited 30 minutes in bumper to bumper traffic to drive 7 miles. Until better traffic infrastructure is installed, more people sounds like a nightmare.
- jongalloway2 7y agoThat's the entire point of this zoning change - moving the higher density housing near to public transportation, with integrated restaurants and stores so they're walkable. The current five zone types (explained in the article) separate commercial and residential, requiring people to drive to businesses and work. (also a San Diegan)
- hart_russell 7y agoHow often do you use public transportation in San Diego? I'm guessing you don't, because you'd know that it's nearly impossible to exist in San Diego and only use public transport. More people will invariably mean more cars. I know this might come as a shock, but this policy might not translate to the real world as intended.
- koverda 7y agoAlternatively, more people living by public transit makes it easier to invest more in and develop better public transit.
- dickeytk 7y agoit's not about whether or not people _own_ a car, it's that they won't have to _use_ it every time they go out to do something
- ivalm 7y agoAlready in some places in Hillcrest you can walk to restraunts/shops. In UTC you can get around on busses (well, because UCSD spurred more public transport density). Right now San Diego feels like an overgrown suburbia. If we transform into a real urban city I welcome it. The increased housing density will also presumably decrease housing prices, further making a more equitable city.
- cardiffspaceman 7y agoAll those 'light rail/trolley/MTS' tracks going in around UCSD back and forth across I-5 definitely create one MTS platform in UCSD itself and other ones close by. At least one platform in the center of Genesee between the two major malls. Not up and running yet. UTC/UCSD is one of the major asparagus patches of skyscrapers in San Diego.
- klenwell 7y agoI remember 20 years ago when I was a UCSD student hearing a discussion on the local NPR station about extending the trolley to UCSD. I believe university leadership opposed it at that time. I recall one of the counterarguments was that it would bring more crime to campus. (I believe the term "rapists" was used by the person on-air representing that position. I don't recall if that person was a spokesperson for the university.) In any event, classic Nimbyism. Memory still pisses me off. Glad to see at least the University has come around, even if I imagine most La Jolla residents haven't. For reference, if I'm not mistaken, it was a La Jolla resident who invented that cheap clicker device that you can click to instantly report plane noise complaint to FTA. Cool little project but, well, yeah.
- blackflame7000 7y agoIt's the residents in La Jolla that don't want transients riding the line to their area. They want to keep them restricted to downtown
- Eiriksmal 7y agohttps://twitter.com/testflyjets https://twitter.com/testflyjets Close. Chris McCann lives in Point Loma, directly under the SAN flight path. :) Edit: Oh, nope. You're right, he is in La Jolla.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoThe clicker guy / plane noise guy was in real La Jolla, this is just going to affect UCSD area zip code La Jolla, and the rest of UTC. There was a spike in UTC area visible homelessness last summer, making the area Starbuckses uninhabitable, and the transit line will certainly make quality of life even worse.
- ilaksh 7y agoI think some people actually don't understand what southern California is like. Sure, there are some walkable neighborhoods, but most people don't live in one of them. And even if you do, almost everyone needs to commute out of it or leave regularly for activities or socialization. And if you need to do that, 95% of the time the trolley is not anywhere near it, and a bus could take an extra hour and a half and is occupied almost exclusively by poor people and children in most areas. It's like this because everything is sprawled out over a very large area. San Diego is like a 500 square mile area and stuff can happen all over it. And there are freeways everywhere rather than trains (which could not cover the area) because the whole thing is designed for cars. I actually lived in San Diego without a car for years. But I was one of very very few people who go without a vehicle and are not homeless. And the only reason I could do that was because I only took 100% remote jobs and literally had zero social life. I mean it is great that they are taking some kind of action on housing. It's still going to cost $1400 for an apartment in the ghetto though. Which is why I moved to TJ and live on the beach for half of that.
- sd_dev 7y agoI think people understand very well that SoCal is designed for cars. That's why SoCal needs to change pretty dramatically, and this is part of that effort.
- mcbuilder 7y agoI was a little sad when car2go pulled out of SD, it solved my last mile problem when I didn't have a car in San Diego. I agree you can live in some places in SD and survive without a car, however you cannot really get to more than half of the places you want to get to. Most of the tech companies are up north, so working in tech you really need a car unless you are at one of the few shops downtown / Mission Valley.
- sd_dev 7y agoI moved to San Diego from the East Coast and used public transportation (trolley and bus) for over a year before I even got around to purchasing a car. It is absolutely possible, you just need to change the city's culture around cars, which your comment makes obvious. High-density housing is part of changing that culture. It increases demand for better public transit options and gets people comfortable and familiar with what living in an Actual Big City is like. Frankly, San Diego has terrible civic planning and I suspect it comes from a combination of apathetic/uninformed citizenry and corruption w/r/t the real estate industry. But the problem is certainly not "too many people." There are many cities much larger than San Diego that have figured this problem out much better.
- ilaksh 7y agoSure there should be more high density and public transportation. But it's not going to make it like the east coast. I grew up in San Diego and lived in New York as well as Ft. Worth and I think you don't know what you are talking about.
- sd_dev 7y agoSan Diego is much more like Ft. Worth than NYC, I'll grant you that. But the reason why San Diego is the way it is, is due to 40-50 years of uncontrolled and unplanned housing construction combined with uncontrolled and unplanned road building. The city (let alone the county) has nearly _doubled_ in population in this time, and while civil planners around the world have known for decades that road building increases rather than solves congestion, San Diego's response to congestion has consistently been to build new roads and widen existing ones. Why? Because that's what greases palms in San Diego. It's a toxic mix of developers, contractors, and their bought politicians running the show. The situation will continue to grow more intolerable until that changes. People in SD are beginning to wake up to this, and to understand that civic pride requires civic participation, but it's an uphill battle with attitudes such as yours.
- davidw 7y ago"Unplanned" is actually - to some degree - closer to what got us older, denser cities on the east coast and Europe. Places like San Diego absolutely had "plans": build a shitload of big, wide roads, zone mostly for single family units, and separate uses so that it's virtually impossible to live without a car.
- wyldfire 7y ago> this policy might not translate to the real world as intended. Certainly there's no guarantees but it's not as if there is a lack of good examples of success of mixed-use zoning. NYC is a common example in the US but there's similar ones all over the world. > More people will invariably mean more cars. If you worked ~ten blocks away from where you lived, would you get in a car to get there (knowing that it would take about the same overall duration or longer via car)? Seems especially nice that you could count on favorable weather most of the time.
- blackflame7000 7y agoNobody in San Diego wants the city to be like NYC. Also how many people do you really think are going to get a high enough paying job in San Diego within 10 blocks of their residence? That's an absolute fantasy and planning based on an ideal world is why the trolley has an avg of 2000 riders per day instead of the projected 12,000.
- my_username_is_ 7y agoNYC isn't the only model for density. Small houses on small lots can and does create lots of housing in places that don't typically come to mind when you think of dense (as this blog points out, Provincetown MA is one example: http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20141104.php#.XUHrGOhKiUl http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20141104.php#.XUHrGO...)
- mixmastamyk 7y agoA walkable city is not built by burying one's head in the sand, rather by building it.
- beefalo 7y agoI think they should make traffic worse. Make it so bad that people stop driving. Hell, make it so bad that people move closer to work.
- epicureanideal 7y agoWhat about two income families where each person works at a different employer?
- Bombthecat 7y agoJust take a look at Lagos. People don't care..
- robohoe 7y agoUntil housing prices near the city centers come down I don't see that happening. Plus people want peace and quiet which city centers don't offer (at least in the United States).
- ergothus 7y ago> Make it so bad that people stop driving. ...that only works if there are viable alternatives (see "public transit" portion of proposal" > make it so bad that people move closer to work. Do you really believe it's that easy to move? and then never switch your job? The proposal is trying to fix the problems you are complaining about, I'm not sure what value your alternatives would bring.
- isostatic 7y ago40 years ago a typical family was 1 main wage earner and a stay at home mum, or at least a mum with a flexible employment Now you have two people (a+b) in a career. They start off living 10 miles from their office (A + B), and meet each other at a mutual friend (f) that's 10 miles in the opposite direction A -- a -- f -- b -- B They then move in equidistant, 20 miles A -- -- afb -- -- B Then office A moves 10 miles the wrong way A -- -- -- afb -- -- B How do ab move closer to work?
- zjaffee 7y agoStudies show that more housing means more traffic, unless there's a plan to demolish housing in the suburbs alongside building up the urban core nothing will improve.
- dibujaron 7y agoNot building more housing is not an option, they're going to be built somewhere. The question is, will the new housing units be built waaaaay farther out in new sprawling suburbs, or will they be built next to a city train station and have no parking spots? Only one of those two options generates more road traffic.
- bluGill 7y agoEven if there are parking spots for everybody, if even a few of those new people actually use the train (as opposed to use it once to say they are green but never again) there are less cars on the road. We don't need to get everybody to get rid of all cars. We need to make sure that everybody has a reasonable opportunity to not use the car.
- getup8 7y agoAgreed. The public transportation is pretty weak and the highway infrastructure can't handle the current population as it is. San Diego is a pretty linear city with almost everything going N/S and it doesn't lend well to optimization.
- enraged_camel 7y agoTraffic is NIMBYs' favorite objection to density. However, the fact of the matter is that often times, you need the increased tax revenue from higher density developments in order to be able to justify and afford expansions and improvements to the transportation networks. This includes not just roads and highways, but also _gasp_ public transport. The only thing low density zoning codes due is force sprawl.
- hart_russell 7y agoSo increase traffic now, to MAYBE build more public transit later? Sounds wonderful
- ivalm 7y agoIncrease density now so people can live closer to their workplaces and thus decrease traffic NOW.
- pseudosavant 7y agoSan Diegan here. Why is it that companies only want to be in UTC, downtown, or maybe Carlsbad? Part of the problem is that we don't distribute where people work like we do where they live. Enticing more businesses to operate outside of these 3 locations could do wonders. Even for facilitating public transit. SD's public transportation issue is that SD is just so spread out and public transportation is typically slower than cars due to stops, waiting, etc. Oceanside to downtown (~38 miles) takes ~75 minutes, or just over 30 mph. The only places where public trans works well is when people don't have to travel that far.
- tathougies 7y agoNonsense. People in london regularly commute to the city via train from similar distances.
- sd_dev 7y ago>The only places where public trans works well is when people don't have to travel that far. This simply is not true. A lot of people in SD think this is true, but it is not. There is nothing structurally unique about SD that makes it a nightmare for transportation. It's just that SD as a city lacks the will and the leadership to make the necessary changes happen. Civic planning is on autopilot from the 1960s: build condos everywhere, and widen roads whenever possible. This is a recipe for continued nightmares.
- francisofascii 7y agoIncreasing housing density should also include more commercial locations, so you don't need to drive as far. For example, in a denser area, grocery stores are geographically closer.
- riffic 7y agoyou don't wait in traffic, you are traffic.
- sp332 7y agoIf people lived closer to where they work, there would be less traffic.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago7 miles? Why didn’t you go by bike?
- WhompingWindows 7y agoMore people living the way you do sounds like a nightmare. Maybe it's time for all those bumper to bumper cars to re-consider their housing location, congestion, and the impacts of their commuting lifestyle, before they prevent others from living in high-density units that are helpful in preventing sprawl and un-necessary congestion. Take a bus, bike, or ride-share, and be part of the solution.
- JTbane 7y agoMaybe run some bus lines or put up a light rail? More roads is not the answer
- gwbas1c 7y agoPopulation is going up. People need a place to live. All of the downvotes to the parent are justified.
- CalRobert 7y agoDon't worry. I was carfree and moved out of south park because of SD's crap infra. Whoever moved on almost certainly drives.