Silicon Valley’s “megacommute” even worse than L.A

http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/02/job-boom-intensifies-traffic-and-housing-woes/

by cx1000 • 10 years ago

110 278 10 years ago

Tempting though it is to cry, "Let it burn!", we should be beyond such things, and earnestly desist from anything that might be construed as wishing harm (even indirectly) upon our honoured colleagues in the greater San Francisco Bay area.

smeyer4• 10 years ago

As someone in Boston but from California, the lack of commutes comparable to the Bay Area or Silicon Valley always makes me grateful, even if there are other downsides. For example, I split a 2 bedroom apartment in a nice, active neighborhood a few minutes walk from downtown and about a 20 minute walk from work for about $1,200.

userchris• 10 years ago

You have a 2 bedroom in downtown Boston for $1200? Or do you mean $1200 each?

smeyer4• 10 years ago

$1200 each. But it still seems a lot better than my friends in and near the Bay Area (and please correct me if I'm wrong).

xeromal• 10 years ago

1200 is still reasonable I'd say if it's downtown.

davexunit3• 10 years ago

Boston is too expensive to own a house. I moved west and commute an hour by car to work.

ghaff8• 10 years ago

That's one big difference from the Bay area. I also live a bit under an hour west by either car or train. Near the commuter rail, which I often used for the short period when I worked in the city. These days I work (as I also did previously) for a company on the outer 495 loop which makes for a 25-30 minute commute.

It's hard to get out of the "expensive zone" as easily in the Bay area--partly because of geography and partly because it's not just SF and a number of inner suburbs that are sky-high (as is the Boston metro area out to Concord or so) but the whole of Silicon Valley.

Exurban-rural town. I don't know exactly what the real estate prices are these days as I've had my place for a long time but I'm guessing $300K or so would get you a decent house.

mox1• 10 years ago

You haven't lived (or driven) in Boston enough yet if you consider Boston having "a lack of commutes." It most definitely has them, you just are one of the very few lucky people who live there and can walk to work.

$2400 is not getting you into a 2 bedroom in any nice / "managed" building in Boston. Thats the going rate for a 1bed in the nice high-rises. So your in a small apt complex or converted house (duplex,triplex, etc.)

1. Minimum to park a car in the city every day is $250-$300 / month. Realistically $350+

2. Even living inside the "128" loop(so minimum500K house) , expect 45-90 minute commute (snow, rain).

OR you can use the train

1. Commuter Rail passes are expensive, $250-$350 a month (add some parking money to park at the commuter rail station ($1-$5 a day).

2. Hope the train runs on time and fits into your schedule (they run on the 30 minutes or on the hour)

3. Takes the same amount of time as driving (45-90 minutes easy).

Boston has many of the same problems as SF (housing, commutes), its just been that way for longer and people are used to it.

smeyer4• 10 years ago

I'm plenty familiar with Boston commutes and that they can be pretty crappy, my point is mostly that things seem an order of magnitude better than in the Bay. Commutes are still bad and rents are still expensive, but my point was that examining the problems around SF makes me grateful that things aren't as bad here.

On the note of a "nice/managed building", you're right that I live in a smaller setup. Having previously lived in one of the luxury high-rises, I find my current apartment and management preferable even before considering the differences in rent.

moultano2• 10 years ago

Literally everyone I know in the bay area who doesn't already own a house is considering leaving.

As extreme as the shortage of housing is the shortage of childcare. 150 person waitlists for 50 kid day-cares are common.

cx10002• 10 years ago

When I visited the Seattle area, locals were complaining about all the Bay Area people moving up there and driving the rent up. I wonder how big a problem that might become for places that are appealing to Bay Area residents like Seattle, Austin, Denver, etc.

amyjess8• 10 years ago

Locals in Dallas are similarly complaining. We've had a lot of companies move here in the last few years, and housing prices have skyrocketed as a result. So far, rents haven't gone up quite as much as purchase prices, but they're going up too, and it's only a matter of time before rent catches up.

We used to be one of the cheapest cities in the country, and while we're still cheap compared to California, the gap has noticeably narrowed.

(edit: I've also heard of Californians moving here who make an offer for well above the asking price, just to make sure they get it, which contributes to the skyrocketing prices)

chiph2• 10 years ago

It's already a problem. It's not uncommon for home sales in Austin to be all-cash, and 10% over the asking price. It's not all Californians though - a coworker reports Chinese investors buying 3 homes in his neighborhood.

Combine the inflow of new residents with the existing stressed road system and city & county council inaction on mass transit, and traffic is ugly. It can take me 35-40 minutes to go 8.5 miles some days.

brogrammernot• 10 years ago

It'll be a large problem. The issue is that the concept of ownership is changing in the "millennial" generation. There isn't a drive to own a car, a house or other large purchases so the concept of paying $200-500/more a month for leasing an apartment isn't as cumbersome as it was for the past generation.

So as the technology folks from other cities move into these newly labeled "tech hubs" they'll drive the rent up because the costs seem so much lower than they actually are. It's a hard concept for some reason to grasp that they can pay $1500/month for a 1 bedroom in other tech cities that's $2800/month in SV/SF. However, what they don't realize is that it used to be $1100/month but landlords take advantage of the fact that $400/more/month is not an issue for someone coming from SF/SV

chadgeidel• 10 years ago

Pretty sure it's already happening in Denver. I've got a few co-workers who moved from the Bay Area recently. Primarily because of housing and more child care options / schools.

jseliger• 10 years ago

locals were complaining about all the Bay Area people moving up there and driving the rent up

My family moved from CA to the Seattle area in the '90s and people complained about the same damn things.

The other day I was talking to my Dad about this, after I sent him an article saying that the average price of a house in Seattle (or maybe King County) hit about $600,000, but in SF / SV it was $1.2 million. He observed that Seattle-area prices were also half of Bay Area prices twenty years ago, and that it's pretty funny that the ratio has remained about the same.

ianai3• 10 years ago

I hope they and their companies do leave. Many places in the US would kill for the problems SV has.

toomuchtodo3• 10 years ago

Inflated real estate prices and a tax base driven by a cyclic industry that pushes everyone else out of the housing stock?

pinaceae2• 10 years ago

Living and working in the East Bay is totally possible and actually getting easier. Tri-Valley has added a shitload of housing (condos), BART terminates in it, and some great companies are hiring like mad.

ryandrake6• 10 years ago

Can you name a few? Tri-Valley is nice, although Pleasanton and Dublin are pretty much unaffordable already. What would be great is if they could extend BART out to Tracy or even Stockton. They're still semi-affordable, but the commute by car is brutal.

DannyBee2• 10 years ago

Yeah, you aren't kidding on childcare. I recently got the last spot for at a daycare that literally won't even finish being constructed for 6 months (and at the time we did it, it was 9 months).

schoen2• 10 years ago

Maybe someone will start trading daycare futures.

eitally4• 10 years ago

The new Primrose in Willow Glen?

chimeracoder3• 10 years ago

and at the time we did it, it was 9 months

Yeah, I know people who have literally planned their pregnancies around expected childcare availability. As in, they make sure they can have a spot lined up quickly before they even start trying to get pregnant.

pj_mukh• 10 years ago

If people were leaving en masse, the rent would come down! Still waiting. Desperately waiting.

ex3ndr3• 10 years ago

Always wonder - what's a problem buying house in SF? Awesome 3br in luxury part of SF costs ~500k, if you and some of your friends just try to find money for initial payment (say 100k) then you could just pay only 1-2k$/month.

moultano2• 10 years ago

I would be amazed if you could find a property of any type at all available in SF for 500k.

imh3• 10 years ago

An awesome 3br in a luxury part of SF is definitely not going to be ~500k. This search [0] puts them in more of the 1.5M - 3M range.

[0] https://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco/filter/mi...

ohstopitu• 10 years ago

Just out of curiosity: How's the public transport situation in the same area? (I mean, Public Transport + car pooling would help reduce this issue no?)

js_what_• 10 years ago

Interesting that there is a claim of ~5% mega commuters in bay area. The 2012 census bureau study (using 2006-2010 data) had that number at about 2% [1].

On that note, you'll see that traffic/commute is worse than L.A. in many cities. I think L.A. just gets the publicity but there are a lot of people around the country suffering in silence.

[1] https://www.census.gov/hhes/commuting/files/2012/Paper-Poste...

bagacrap• 10 years ago

percent "megacommutes" is a pretty odd metric. LA is "leading" in total time wasted in traffic[1].

[1] http://inrix.com/scorecard/

Tempest19817• 10 years ago

Let's all work from home 1 or 2 days a week. But I suspect things still aren't bad enough to consider any changes.

cmdrfred4• 10 years ago

I heard a executive scream "but face time!" somewhere in the distance. Results only workplaces would make this possible but I don't see that happening.

norea-armozel3• 10 years ago

I never understood the need for face time in positions that aren't sales and the like. When I write code it's mostly at my workstation without the need for chit-chat. And meetings I do have can be done over a Skype conference call or some shared whiteboard app. If anything, there needs to be a tax on employers who force tech workers to be in an office.

stillworks• 10 years ago

I think that is the practical solution.

Even public transit systems have to go suffer rush hours !

Capacity of a transit system be it public or individual will never match the load.

If the employers only ask the employees to come in 2 days a week or only when necessary, there should be a significant improvement in the situation. This could be even tried as an experiment for a while to see how it plays out.

I have been commuting in London for about 7 years now and I cry when I see how much the commute costs me and the sub-par service that I have to deal with on the services feeding into the main hub I have to get to to be able to use the tube.

The tube service itself is not so bad but I cannot afford to live inside the zones where I only have to use TFL services.

The best solution is for the companies in SV (or other major employment nerve centers) to realise that making all of your employees commute everyday into work is the root cause.

Just chiming in here with this example since I have had the chance to use the VTA for about a month and I have first hand experience of a well established transit system i.e. London.

I personally loved the VTA trams since very few people used them even in rush hour, they always travel at ground or above ground level (underground travel does get a bit depressing for me), effective air conditioning (never experienced a fart-attack although my time spent on VTA is very little), always get a seat and there's "free" Wifi.

Most local coworkers who I knew there were driving and they were driving in early and leaving early to avoid the back up on 101 or the 280 routes.

That's what I do on my commute on the public transport system even. But if everybody managed to learn that trick, then it's the same situation in the end.

FT_intern• 10 years ago

the commute is very relaxing if you're on a corporate bus

orian9• 10 years ago

As far as being forced to sit in corporate bus for over hour is relaxing ;-)

amyjess8• 10 years ago

Bring a book (or an e-reader) or a handheld gaming console.

Don't think of it as a commute; thinking of it as blocking out two hours every day to play video games!

Tempest19817• 10 years ago

It would help with the larger companies increased the number of buses they run, and expand the routes for broader coverage. It could be done immediately, whereas expanding BART will take years, and be focused on a small area.

Schweigi2• 10 years 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.

mc323• 10 years ago

No 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.

orian9• 10 years ago

But 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

ChuckMcM4• 10 years ago

Your 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.

Schweigi2• 10 years ago

For 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.

mc323• 10 years ago

The 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.

user59944613• 10 years ago

Dunno about the rest but what is called "Paris" is only a 2 mile radius in the center of the greater city.

Nav_Panel• 10 years ago

These 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).

Retric• 10 years ago

Density counts where people live not where they work which leads to misleading numbers.

oldmanjay• 10 years ago

Did you decide to compare cities with suburbs just to erase any vestige of intellectual honesty?

Xixi• 10 years ago

I 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.

Tempest19817• 10 years ago

Yes, 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.

orian9• 10 years ago

But 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 ;-)

mikeash• 10 years ago

Isn'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• 10 years ago

From 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.

pm246016• 10 years ago

VTA 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.

jbob20002• 10 years ago

Public 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.

jkern• 10 years ago

I 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• 10 years ago

It sounds a lot of what you are complaining about could be solved by "better public transportation", as the OP was commenting about.

aboodman• 10 years ago

I 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• 10 years ago

The point is to provide options - sure, if your job requires a car/truck you're obviously not going to use public transit. If you're in poor physical health, you probably can't take standard public transit - though accessibility options often exist. If you travel with kids often you might be less inclined to take transit (though plenty of people with kids do anyways).

But if you're one of the hundreds of thousands of other people in a major metro who don't fall into those categories, you'd probably appreciate the option to not have to obtain a personal vehicle or use it exclusively for your commute, errands, a night on the town, etc.... and the best part is that for all the remaining people who do drive, every person who takes transit is one less person contributing to traffic congestion!

Transit options benefit everyone. Your comment reads like you don't support transit options because they don't suit your particular tastes - I suggest you instead consider advocating for transit to make life better for both yourself and your community, regardless of whether you personally use transit or not.

CalRobert2• 10 years ago

Cars also work better for healthy people than unhealthy people. My grandmother lost her license a while ago as her vision and reaction times (and, perhaps, judgment) faded. She might have benefited from access to strong public transport. As it is, her beautiful home in a lovely spot became something of a trap as it was too far from any amenities to be walkable.

CaptSpify7• 10 years ago

This is always so weird to me. These problems have already been pretty much solved in other countries, but the US always thinks it's a special snowflake. Public transport works pretty well for non-young healthy people in other countries.

diet_dr_pepper• 10 years ago

I live in NYC and commute via subway everyday, and I can assure you there are plenty of elderly people and parents with small children using it.

saiya-jin• 10 years ago

ever been to europe? we've solved this in most big places, public transport is faster way to travel in any city centre, cheaper too (for daily commuters). sure, by principle it can't solve issue for people like you describe, but for 80-90% it does.

this would make roads much less clogged so those who really need (and pay for it) should go on their own. it's very real added value that helps environment, increases happiness, cuts times and so on. what (local) government should do is to motivate people/orgs with some monetary subsidies.

jacobolus3• 10 years ago

Public 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.

Is this a joke? Car travel works for healthy people who are ~20–60 years old with a stable income.

For everyone else – children, teenagers, elderly people, the disabled, the poor, etc. – cars are terrible. The lack of other transportation options is perhaps the biggest reason that living in car-centric suburbs is hell for teenagers; they end up entirely dependent.

Go take a bus in a city and you’ll see a huge variety of people riding.

sampo7• 10 years ago

Public 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.

Do you seriously think every old person in e.g. New York City owns a car to get around? Have you ever been to New York City?

galdosdi3• 10 years ago

I don't blame you but this is a classic attitude from someone who has never experienced good transit, so assumes transit always sucks (and weirdly, then concludes we should not try to improve transit). This is like saying hamburgers are bad when you've only ever eaten them at McDonald's (and then mocking your friend who's trying to show you how to make a delicious hamburger from scratch by grinding up good cuts of meat).

You won't convince a salesman to carry a projector, screen, and a box of pamphlets on the bus and train.

This would not be strange in Manhattan. You couldn't convince the salesman to waste his Time, which is a rare commodity for working people as you say, driving a car which would be slower than taking the subway.

I'd rather sit and wait in traffic in my car than stand outside in the rain or snow waiting for a bus.

Subways avoid this problem. They're also expensive, but there's easier solutions -- bus and outdoor train shelters (which obviously protect from rain/snow) are sometimes heated in the northeast for this reason too.

Also, dealing with rain/snow is pretty easy and pleasant if you just dress right. The prevalance of cars in this country means many people never learn to dress right because they can get away with never spending more than 60 seconds outside, the brief space between the car and the building door.

And on top of that, transit for me would be about $400/month.

Here it's $100 a month.

I'm not sitting on a rough seat crammed next to 5 other people for 2 hours.

A lot of people find dealing with repetitive constant stop and go traffic but having a comfy seat to be a crappy tradeoff compared to having less space but freeing your mind to read, doze, whatever. There are crowded an uncrowded systems and lines.

Go try some good transit, then tell me what you think.

mikestew2• 10 years ago

If you have kids or move a little slowly due to health or old age, public transit is a straight up no-go.

All of the slow-moving elderly I see on the buses around Seattle would like to have a word with you.

I'll take my car, with its 8-way adjustable seat, climate control and cup holders, thank-you-very-much.

I tried it for a few weeks when I got tired of riding the bus. Jaguar S-Type, leather, walnut on the dash, about as nice as one's going to get.

I'd rather sit and wait in traffic in my car than stand outside in the rain or snow waiting for a bus.

To each their own. After two weeks of sitting on the 520 bridge staring at the bumper in front of me, I said "fuck this" and went back to the bus. You already said time was a "rare commodity" for working people, yet you'll sit in traffic while I sit on the bus making a bug fix or reading a book?

And on top of that, transit for me would be about $400/month.

Yoiks. $100 for me to ride the bus, versus $200-$300/month just for parking in downtown Seattle. That doesn't include gas or the $50K Jaguar. Again, though, for me it had nothing to do with money spent.

But we all have our limits. Currently I ride the motorcycle to work (a different destination from above), which allows HOV lane usage, which whittles my commute down to 30 minutes and I park in front of the building. And my ride to work is a motorcycle, which is a plus in my book. Versus 90 minutes on the bus, a transfer, and the bus doesn't drop me anywhere near the building.

clusterf• 10 years ago

I like taking the train and biking. i can do work on the train. As for rain, we need it. temperatures never get cold enough to be uncomfortable outside. most employers will pay for your public transit costs.

gumby• 10 years ago

Public transit works best for young healthy people.

So what if this is the case? Moving 20% of the moving population in 2% of the vehicle-volume almost quadruples the capacity for everyone else.

I don't buy your assertion in the large (most regions with effective pubic transport seem to move a roughly representative population of users -- including wealthy people). My point is that it could be true in the Bay Area (which is more spread out than your typical big city) but still not refute the need for mass transport.

lsc• 10 years ago

A lot of this is comes down to preference.

I mean sure, I would prefer to be in the back of my private car, but given the choice between the stress of driving, and the stress of reading somewhere crowded? I will pay extra to get the time reading, and I will deal with the crowds for a discount.

The monetary equation won't balance, if you are neutral on driving vs reading preferences, until we start requiring reasonable liability insurance minimums, and until I can get housing and my employer can get office space without paying for parking.

The true costs of driving in silicon valley are dominated by parking and by the unfunded liability inherent to the activity.

beambot2• 10 years ago

They 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...

muzz5• 10 years ago

That would provide an amazing throughput in terms of number of people. Rather, I find they are full of electric vehicles with a sticker but only one occupant

melling3• 10 years ago

Someday, 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...

honkhonkpants5• 10 years ago

Why do I need a maglev to go 70? A bus can go 70. Any old steel-wheeled train can hit 200.

cbhl• 10 years ago

One 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-overnigh...

bdcravens• 10 years ago

If the concern is commuter traffic, then lines that only run during commuter hours makes this concern moot.

honkhonkpants5• 10 years ago

The simple solution is to give the homeless homes.

eloisant• 10 years ago

Even without creating new lines, simply increasing the frequency of the Caltrain would make a big difference.

sampo7• 10 years ago

One of the big challenges in increasing spending for public transit is homelessness.

San Francisco might be the only place in the world where that is a big challenge in public transport.

(I am not saying that really isn't a problem in SF, but for whatever reasons, the problem doesn't exist elsewhere.)

closeparen8• 10 years ago

Yes, 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• 10 years ago

BART is the joke. It's dirty, deafening and run inefficiently. The cars were built in the 70s.

11thEarlOfMar3• 10 years ago

And even the coffee shops are more crowded as folks hang out waiting for traffic to ease before heading home in the evening.

orian9• 10 years ago

Oh, from the european perspective, the SV housing / transport seems little... weird.

If you look at urban design & public transport it's amazing how well it works despite all obstacles.

Public transport doesn't make sense in low population density areas and wide road make the distances even bigger. I mean, some US cities managed to realize a car-utopia Houston with 11 lane highway or Phoenix. The question is, does it make sense?

I'm surprised that no one tried to buy a shit lot of land and create a more-cityish city. In this context SFO is city with a city life, especially some older districts.

cx10002• 10 years ago

Agreed, the area is suburban and has been growing into having a large city-level population without the necessary infrastructure. Kind of like if Google added a little php to their backend after becoming the most popular search engine.

amyjess8• 10 years ago

Because a lot of people don't want to live in a more-cityish city. Some of us prefer the suburbs.

A place like Houston or Phoenix is perfect for me. Actually, I live in suburban Dallas (and I work farther out in the suburbs), and I have no desire to move. Though it's possible I might have to move out of state next year, in which case I'm seriously looking at St. Paul, MN.

chrisper5• 10 years ago

Yeah, but a "suburb" like San Jose is just annoying. It has the population of a city, but the life of a suburb (=nothing going on). So basically the worst of both.

I mean, I am like you, that I would rather live in a smallish community where it's calm and everything over a city, but if you combine that feature with "there are people everywhere" then it is not that great.

orian9• 10 years ago

Sure. And you could do that. It's just that a lot of services doesn't make sense in such setup and the infrastructure cost per person is few times higher than in a dense areas. Usually this means higher taxes.

germinalphrase• 10 years ago

What draws you to St. Paul?

It always felt more "town" than "suburb" - and certainly it's a river hop from "city".

norea-armozel3• 10 years ago

Yeah the Twin cities are nice. If you want to live in the burbs around here it's not that hard to get around. Mind you, I'm from Wichita where the worse commute time was around 30 minutes (metro is tiny comparatively). At worse in the Twin Cities it's maybe... 45 minutes to an hour at the worse it seems to depend which route you take. It can be much worse if you take 694 heading to St Cloud, though. I can't figure out how the anyone takes that route without losing their minds.

ghaff8• 10 years ago

Because most cities--and all cities that most people would want to live in--grow organically and have history and culture. Try decreeing an area in the middle of the desert or prairie (think Denver's airport) to be a city and start building on it). Sure, you could do it. With the minor problem that you'd have neither employers or people who wanted to live there.

closeparen8• 10 years ago

If we ever reach an oversupply of high density housing, this line of thinking might make sense.

As it stands, apartments in high density areas are at an extreme premium over apartments in low density areas. Given little to no change in existing housing stock, the best thing we can do for affordability is expand the surface area it's reasonable to commute from, and that usually means freeways and parking.

Public transit actually can work well in low density: people in suburbs drive from a few miles around to a train station with ample parking, and then take the train into the much more transit-oriented city. We need more of this.

overcast8• 10 years ago

Every time I read these articles, I feel like I made the right decision staying in the Northeast and not chasing the startup culture of the West. Sure I make less money on paper, but my office is five minutes away, my large house is only $1200(including the $6000 in escrow taxes!), only 36.5 hours a week, no on call, totally flexible working hours, I get to travel all over the world, and I live like a king. All that free time saved from virtually zero commute, and no overtime required, adds up to A LOT of time for my personal projects, and vacations. As I get older, I'm definitely valuing that over "being in the industry".

japhyr• 10 years ago

Where in the northeast are you?

overcast8• 10 years ago

Rochester, NY. Cost of living is super cheap, lots of good food, you've got the great lakes, finger lakes, all kinds of outdoors shit, tons of festivals, and most importantly everything is only 15 minutes away on expressways. Only real issue is winter, but the change of seasons is enjoyable.

chrisper5• 10 years ago

Good decision. I am originally from Europe and I am on a Visa here and consider going back home despite the lower pay. I mean I like tech stuff, but I do not like it that much.

CalRobert2• 10 years ago

Being able to walk to work, getting 4+ weeks off a year guaranteed by law (so people actually use it instead of hearing they have unlimited PTO and then getting chided for taking a week off), the thought of my kids not having crushing student debt, the ability to live a somewhat lower-carbon lifestyle, not being miserably hot every summer, and a substantially reduced likelihood of being killed every time I go for a bike ride are good reasons to be in Europe.

ElysianEagle• 10 years ago

May I ask what you do that enables you to travel all over the world? I've been thinking of ways that would let me travel more without quitting my job or switching out of tech entirely so any tips would be appreciated!

overcast8• 10 years ago

A large, "boring", global company. Offices all over the world, let's me pick and choose where I want to visit for corporate IT work. Also affords me the free time to work on my own side businesses, and travel more :)

edw519• 10 years ago

I'm definitely valuing that over "being in the industry".

You ARE in the industry.

For every programmer in Silicon Valley, there are x of us not in Silicon Valley. And there's probably little correlation between whether or not you're in Silicon Valley and the coolness and value of whatever you're building.

I love visiting but I can't imagine living there.

thearn4• 10 years ago

I love visiting but I can't imagine living there.

That basically sums up my feelings on the bay area too.

overcast8• 10 years ago

There's no denying the connections in that part of the country. I guess that's what I was eluding to. I'm just finding it's not worth it for most.

amyjess8• 10 years ago

I love visiting but I can't imagine living there.

This sums up how I feel about NYC. I have family there, both my parents were originally from there, and I've had a good time every time I've visited, but I wouldn't want to actually live there. It's a great place for spending a weekend, but it's too noisy, crowded, and expensive to go about my day to day life there.

refriedbeans3• 10 years ago

I work from home, live in SF, travel often, and make more here than anywhere else and put more away even with insane prices. But I also sell software development services, so not really a better place to be.

Even if I didn't, I would never leave because of the weather and activities.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ to each their own.

overcast8• 10 years ago

Not the same situation being discussed, but I'm glad you've found your way there. This is more to do with the hordes that commute daily, and grind it out. Working from home, with your own company, is a completely different story.

draw_down• 10 years ago

West != Bay area. :)

davidw3• 10 years ago

Not everyone has those horrible commutes. It only takes a few successful exits in the millions to afford a house in Palo Alto, or just one in the billions!

Tempest19817• 10 years ago

Will self driving cars be the panacea? Or merely a tool to make painful commutes more tolerable, for those who can afford them?

ssharp• 10 years ago

Assuming every person replaces their car with a self-driving car, how much would roadway throughput improve as a result of smarter communal driving? The assumption is that the self-driving cars are a 1:1 replacement of human-driven cars and ride sharing does not increase or decrease.

amyjess8• 10 years ago

The idea is that you'd use your commute time to do something other than drive. You could read a book, watch a TV show, play video games, etc. You could even take a nap if you wanted to.

imh3• 10 years ago

I'd bet it's somewhere in between. I think the determining factor is nuisance. People will put up with certain long commutes and high prices for a given reward. If tech makes it so we can accommodate more people going further at the same nuisance level, we'll probably do that instead of the same number of people at a lower stress level. People will keep moving in until it gets shitty enough to overcome their desire to be here, right? If so, then the level of shittiness is constant over time and tech.

sampo7• 10 years ago

When commute becomes more bearable, more people will buy houses behind an even longer commute, so the total amount of miles commuted daily will increase.

aninhumer• 10 years ago

I think self driving cars might make public transport much more viable, by increasing the effective range of stations.

An entire sprawling suburb could be served by a single station, with people taking self-driving taxi rides from their doorstep (timed to allow a short transfer) and then getting in another taxi to get to their destination. It would be almost as convenient, but people wouldn't be wasting tonnes of road space for the bulk of their journey.

A service like Uber (or possibly Google maps) could even offer integrated tickets for the whole journey.

11thEarlOfMar3• 10 years ago

Public transportation is not going to come to the rescue. The communities involved won't tolerate the additional taxes, nor will they cooperate in making an efficient system.

Can we pin any hopes on fully autonomous vehicles?

CaptSpify7• 10 years ago

...nor will they cooperate in making an efficient system.

You mean like the rest of the world has already proven to be doable? What makes this area unique?

CydeWeys• 10 years ago

Anyone know what the % drag on SF's economy caused by the lack of housing is up to?

SF has had a shortage of housing for decades, and it just gets worse and worse. Is there any point at which the NIMBYs will be defeated and zoning policy adjusted to allow real densification? Or is power stacked so much in their favor that it will never happen?

honkhonkpants5• 10 years ago

The article makes disingenuous claims about measure B. The county plans to spend nearly all of that money on freeways, which history has shown will not relieve traffic. Their plan calls for almost nothing for public transit.

toast0• 10 years ago

The county plans to spend nearly all of that money on freeways, which history has shown will not relieve traffic.

Additional freeway lanes improve throughput, but don't remove congestion at peak: it will reduce the duration of congestion. If you want to handle peak traffic without congestion, you would have to build a lot more capacity than is reasonable (or significantly reduce demand).

Since demand for transit is increasing continuously (as more people move to the area), and supply of transit increases slowly and only in steps, it's no surprise that the new supply is quickly matched with demand. Lots of people would like to go places during rush hour, but the freeways are full for several hours, and Caltrain is too.

noahlt• 10 years ago

Fortunately, the election's just around the corner, and if you'd like to help solve these problems, you can do so with your ballot.

http://www.sfyimby.org/endorsements-nov-2016 Is a good pro-housing voter guide for San Franciscans.

dkhenry2• 10 years ago

After visiting the Palo Alto region for work I don't understand why anyone would drive anywhere. It was so extremely friendly to biking, I could get from Menlo Park to Redwood city and even across the bay to Freemont with no trouble whatsoever.

chrisper5• 10 years ago

Because you can't get anywhere without a car here. At least in San Jose. And to be honest, I would not ride a bike here after seeing how people drive around here.

How do you get your stuff home from Costco? I mean there is delivery, but still.

dkhenry2• 10 years ago

I was able to get everywhere I needed to go, granted I was staying at an AirBnB so I didn't need to go shopping, but I rode past a safeway during my adventures and I can put plenty of stuff in saddle baskets.

About the people driving, I also found that there are tons of roads right off the main through fairs that are very very bike friendly, very little traffic and lots of bike lanes. I think you underestimate just how far you can get on a bike in a reasonable time. Like I said I commuted from Menlo park to Redwood city and to Freemont ( across the bay ) with no trouble whatsoever.

ChuckMcM4• 10 years ago

It would be interesting to understand where they work. Back in the dot com days there were people living in Livermore and driving into San Jose (aka "the South Bay") but now it seems more people with "long" commutes are driving into San Francisco. And one of the people who worked for me (at an office on the peninsula) was thinking about moving to San Francisco, even though they currently lived much closer because they enjoyed the more urban lifestyle offered there.

As a result of all these different forces I realized how challenging it is to not have some bad commutes. And in Sunnyvale we're in the midst of a debate started about choices the city council has made to allow more local housing to be developed. There are a lot of apartments and condos being built and some residents are complaining about traffic and change. It will be interesting to see if folks approve additional transit dollars.

justinzollars2• 10 years ago

I had to sell my house in Berkeley because my commute to San Francisco was eating up 3 hours every day - the time I allocated to side projects.

Our politicians have given up, no one even talks about making our transit system better. Total losers.

(12 miles)

Tempest19817• 10 years ago

We should assign the problem to engineers, instead of politicians. Are there any such efforts? Or have they given up just because of the costs?

justinzollars2• 10 years ago

Exactly. This is exactly the problem. In the 50's congress was made up of Engineers today its made up of attorneys.

HillaryBriss• 10 years ago

California's state and local governments are probably unable to solve these problems. The legal structure, rather than supporting a solution, seems to actually make these problems quite likely.

I suspect that, in a democracy which places an emphasis on freedom of career choice, free rights of personal movement (from pretty much anywhere to pretty much anywhere else), essentially unregulated road and highway access, the high cost of infrastructure creation and maintenance, the high cost of government workers, combined with relatively strong individual property rights -- gridlock and skyrocketing housing costs are truly unavoidable.

“If the economy tanks, then we won’t create jobs the way we used to, but nobody wants the economy to tank,” Hancock said. “We don’t really have a fix for this problem right now..."

muzz5• 10 years ago

Transbay bus is around 45 minutes to SF and BART is not much longer, so you must be going to somewhere other than downtown

encoderer• 10 years ago

Hills? My commute from Berkeley via AcTransit to Soma is 45 mins each way.

natch• 10 years ago

Just choose where you live carefully (and pay the big bucks and sacrifice space) and work close. I've never had a bad commute in SV but then I don't live in a palace.

11thEarlOfMar3• 10 years ago

I'm wondering specifically about the Warm Springs District in Fremont. This is where:

- A new BART station is set to open shortly, and,

- Across the street, a new single family housing development with 4,000 (yes, four thousand) new housing units is under construction [0],

- And, next door, Tesla will be building 500,000 Model 3s annually with 3,000 additional workers.

The AM commutes via I-680 / Pleasanton and I-880 / Oakland are already Hell on Earth. It's going to get much worse before it gets better.

[0] https://www.fremont.gov/1515/Warm-SpringsSouth-Fremont

ryandrake6• 10 years ago

Still ultra-expensive. That area is highly desirable due to the factors you listed. Cheapest homes you're going to find in that area start at $1M. Check out this charming little starter home: [1]

1: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Fremont/47040-Havasu-St-94539/home...

muzz5• 10 years ago

Infill development of single family homes basically makes the exurbs (like Pleasanton) become "farther" since traffic becomes worse

ryandrake6• 10 years ago

I live in Livermore, and my commute to the South Bay averages about 2 hours each way. It sucks, but I've gotten used to it and you just have to accept it because there's really nothing you can do about it. There are only a few major road arteries, and the public transit options are a total joke--it takes LONGER because you need to drive to the train station, then bike or take a bus from the other train station to your work.

Honestly I have no idea what the solution is. Build more lanes on the highway and more people will choose to commute, quickly using those new lanes up.

goostavos2• 10 years ago

2 hours each way

Jesus, man. That's time you don't get back. I'd factor that into your salary, take the difference off, and move somewhere sane.

ryandrake6• 10 years ago

I've lived in sane places. Problem there is you've got a handful of tech employers in most of these places. If you lose your tech job in the Bay Area, you can interview at dozens of local companies a week pretty much forever until you find something. If you lose your job in SaneTown, USA, you can exhaust the entire local hiring market in a week and if you come up empty you're moving (probably to a different State).

istorical2• 10 years ago

You could move to a new apartment or a new city.

Tempest19817• 10 years ago

We need to encourage clustering/density/jobs in more remote areas where housing is cheaper, instead of downtown SF/SJ/Oakland. Wouldn't that help? Or just result in broader sprawl -- I'm picturing LA.

1_2__32• 10 years ago

Anyone living here could have told you this years ago.

1_2__32• 10 years ago

It's hard not to see this as a life-and-death struggle between people who think public transportation is the way of the future and people who think cars are the future.

I know which way the HN crowd leans, but I feel compelled to point out that while pro-transit folks may feel comfortable being ideologically "correct", in practice this has just not worked out in the US and any argument about why sounds like someone hammering a bell upon which is inscribed "no true scotsman".

Either there's been a multi-decade cabal holding the entire country in its grip and preventing us from leaping into our beautiful public transportation future... Or Americans just do not want it, kicking and screaming about sustainability to the contrary.

davidw3• 10 years ago

Either there's been a multi-decade cabal holding the entire country in its grip and preventing us from leaping into our beautiful public transportation future... Or Americans just do not want it, kicking and screaming about sustainability to the contrary.

Zoning, basically. It makes density illegal in enough places that transit isn't terribly practical. It also makes even walking to a corner store something that is no longer an option in many new developments. If you'd like to read all about it, this book is very thorough:

http://amzn.to/2fz1hPI

If you'd like something a bit more tl;dr, these are good: http://amzn.to/2erOJXL http://amzn.to/2fyXrpG

ghaff8• 10 years ago

But "Zoning" (to the degree that's the central reason) was also not created by a "multi-decade cabal". It's largely the summation of the preferences of residents in different areas.

CaptSpify7• 10 years ago

Americans generally just don't want it, which is a problem because we keep passing the buck to future generations. It's not a matter of preference, it's simply unsustainable both environmentally and density-wise.

It's hilarious to me to watch as well. I have co-workers constantly complaining about spending too much time in traffic. I spend just as much time in traffic as they do, but I don't mind because I'm on a bus. I'm usually reading a book, or working on my laptop, while they are just staring at cars in front of them. The answer is right in front of their faces, but "I need a car because of.... reasons" is too ingrained in our culture.

beachstartup• 10 years ago

"even worse than LA"

people in the bay area loves chiding LA like this.

but you are quickly starting to understand first hand how exactly LA came to be the way it is. it was/is a mixture of extremely powerful political, economic, and social forces exerted over generations.

unfortunately SF/the bay is doing nothing to fix it -- at long last LA is building new housing, mixed-used real estate, and new light rail and other public transit very aggressively.

it will probably take the bay area another 2-3 decades to overcome the resistance, just like LA.

bsimpson• 10 years ago

I'd be curious to know if distance is a factor they accounted for. Traffic in LA is straight-up gridlock (or at least it was when I lived there). You could spend an hour going 10 miles, and that's not even during commute hours.

If you spend 90 minutes driving from SF to Mountain View, traffic definitely makes it slower/worse than it would otherwise be, but it'd still be a 45 minute drive without traffic.

People may spend more time driving in SF/SV, but that's largely a factor of how far apart desirable housing and jobs are for many people. I wouldn't be surprised if traffic on the Peninsula made commutes 2-3x longer than they'd be without it, but in LA the factor's more like 6x.

muad• 10 years ago

LAX is a perfect example.

It can take you over an hour to get from the off ramp to your terminal. Less than 1 mile.

rckclmbr3• 10 years ago

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned e-bikes. As far as I can tell, that is the answer to the bay area traffic. Since I bought one roughly 5 months ago, I've commuted almost 3000 miles. My commute is the same every day, and it is a lot faster than a bad day of traffic. The bonus is that I don't have to change into bike clothes or shower.

Details:

12 mile commute

40 minutes by ebike, every day

25 minutes by car, best day

50 minutes by car, average day

1 hour 40 minutes by car, average day

schoen2• 10 years ago

(Daily cycling commuter here)

Two things that discourage people from commuting by bike that would still apply to ebikes:

You get really wet in the rain.

You get injured in a typical collision with a car.

Two specific issues with ebikes:

They're rather expensive compared to a bike, and even compared to some used cars.

I see a risk that they could someday become regulated and licensed as mopeds.

Mekkanox2• 10 years ago

That's definitely a viable option for biking around a city that doesn't have favorable spring or summer weather. Can you store your bike inside instead of locking it up on the street? I imagine an e-bike would be at greater risk of theft than a regular bike. That might be an issue for folks who commute by bike but have to lock it up outside.

rckclmbr3• 10 years ago

Yea, I lock my bike inside the office (where I charge it as well). I also keep it in the garage. Additionally, I have a GPS on it, so if it does get stolen, it's a lot easier to locate

closeparen8• 10 years ago

What's the draw of an ebike vs. a low-end motorcycle?

Also, one very simple answer is that the Bay Bridge isn't passable on anything short of a 250cc motorcycle and won't be until 2018.

rckclmbr3• 10 years ago

What's the draw of an ebike vs. a low-end motorcycle

Main draw is that e-bikes are usable on bike paths and through parks. You feel like a kid again by taking "shortcuts".

iblaine• 10 years ago

By 2010, the commute in SF was worse than LA. While caltrain & bart do help in SF, when it breaks, you got problems. Bart is pretty reliable but Caltrain seems to break or hit something/someone a few times a month.

bluedino• 10 years ago

Remember Scott Collins (of Netscape) commute in 'Code Rush'? He lived in Michigan and commuted via airplane every 2 weeks to Silicon Valley

ghaff8• 10 years ago

Some variant of that is actually not especially unusual. In my experience, there's a sizable group of people who work remotely (or at least remotely from the HQ office) but they fly in on a regular basis.

johan_larson2• 10 years ago

The LA area has people who fly in every week from someplace further east, maybe Nevada. They spend the week in shared apartments that probably contain nothing but bunk-beds and a microwave. Then they fly home for the weekend, and still come out ahead.

forbin_meet_hal• 10 years ago

When I was in the Bay Area during the '90s dot-boom, it took me 90-100 minutes to get from Fremont to Palo Alto. During the dot-bust, it was more like 40 minutes. I cannot imagine what it's like now.

I regret that I didn't use that time to learn Japanese or something.

eip• 10 years ago

If you sit in traffic for hours to get to and from work where you sit in front of a computer all day then you are living in the past.

Silicon Valley’s “megacommute” even worse than L.A

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