
San Francisco Should Always Have a Subway Under Construction - capkutay
https://medium.com/art-marketing/san-francisco-should-always-have-a-subway-under-construction-76d3ddf481c1
======
thescriptkiddie
Is it just me, or is this obvious? Subways have proven over and over to be the
most economical and least objectionable mode of mass transit wherever density
is high enough to support them. Any place where subways are viable should have
them - buses, trolleys, and light rail are not a substitute. It follows that
any place with growing density needs to build more subways, even if that means
eternal construction. Besides, subway construction is hard to get upset about,
being mostly underground. It's far less disruptive than tearing up streets or
surface level rail.

~~~
hiou
Many people are against public transit based upon a very vocal(and wealthy)
minority that is opposed to it being government run instead of private
enterprise. It's essentially the opposite of the ideology that caused the
build up of many subways systems in the past. These very wealthy powerful
people can use their power and money to distort the public opinion so that
cheap bus projects end up looking like expensive subway projects and subway
projects look like building a land bridge to Mars.

For a great example take a look at the new Maryland Governor and one of his
first actions coming into office[0][1] This is someone(and his backers) that
are ideologically opposed to public transit even when it is overwhelming
supported(and paid for) by the regions it directly effects.

[0] [http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-sun-
investig...](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-sun-investigates-
transit-20150627-story.html) [1][http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-
republican-gov-larry...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-republican-
gov-larry-hogan-made-his-first-big-mass-transit-
decision/2015/06/27/13f48dbc-1ceb-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html)

~~~
superuser2
On the liberal side, many people are against public transit expansion because
better public transit coverage in outlying areas makes housing more valuable,
pricing people out of their apartments.

I live in a dead spot on the South Side of Chicago where, ~80 years ago, the
neighborhood association actually had the El demolished over gentrification
concerns.

There is little liberal objection to improving public transit in already
expensive downtown areas, but plans to improve commute times from the south
and west sides of San Francisco will almost certainly be met with vigorous
opposition. Even if they wouldn't cost anything.

~~~
Frondo
I am not familiar with any liberal opposition to public transit...anywhere. I
have lived in a number of liberal-leaning cities, all of which had extensive
public transit.

The opposition to those systems (their expansion, in some cases even just
their operation) was universally from the right, because "run gubmint like a
business, and if it doesn't make a profit, pull the plug!"

~~~
refurb
Hmmm... BART was supposed to go up into Marin county and down to San Mateo
county, but it was killed by the local populous.

I guess it was all those right-wingers in Marin?

~~~
knorby
Apparently it wasn't really killed by the local populace. There is narrative
about how it would have caused sprawl-like development (certainly a
conservative mindset in context). I couldn't find any references to that for
Marin though. It seems what did it in for Marin at least was a campaign from
the GG Bridge district, fearing a loss of power and money; there was strong
support in Marin for BART
([https://books.google.com/books?id=z56Ui3QFYPgC&lpg=PA136&ots...](https://books.google.com/books?id=z56Ui3QFYPgC&lpg=PA136&ots=FvOprjIghn&dq=marin%20bart%20opposition&pg=PA136#v=onepage&q=marin%20bart%20opposition&f=false)).

Edit: diction

~~~
chockablock
'populace' not 'populous'

------
rajacombinator
SF could also, you know, get rid of stupid laws that prevent building more
housing, and, I dunno, maybe try to get people to stop peeing and pooping on
the sidewalks.

But that's in a perfect world where the local govt cares or has been properly
incentivized. (Bribed.)

~~~
teacup50
Adding more housing doesn't solve density, reduce demand, or lower prices:

[https://pricetags.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/big-money-big-
bui...](https://pricetags.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/big-money-big-buildings-
and-why-just-adding-supply-doesnt-work/)

Adding more housing tends to exacerbate all the problems they're already
facing.

~~~
seibelj
If 1 million people live in a city, and you add 10 million more apartments,
would that lower the price of each apartment? Of course, because you increased
the supply. Adding housing absolutely decreases the average price of housing.
This is supply and demand.

Now, does adding a small amount of housing have any appreciable effect on
average price? No.

Therefore, the solution is massive construction of new housing.

~~~
wpietri
If a freeway is full of cars and you add lots more freeway, won't that make
more space for cars?

The obvious answer is yes, but the obvious answer is often wrong. Adding more
freeway can create more demand, meaning no progress is made. [1] [2]

Right now the major constraint on having a larger tech industry in SF is the
real estate expense; both offices and apartments are through the roof. It's so
bad that established companies are opening or expanding offices elsewhere, and
even many startups are trying other things. They wouldn't be doing that if
they could keep expanding here, so no, adding lots more housing might do
nothing but create more demand.

Also, saying "massive construction of new housing" so glibly suggests that
there is a lot of empty land just waiting for construction. Take a look at a
map of San Francisco: there are buildings almost everywhere, and the people in
them are generally pretty happy where they are. Where there are no buildings,
we mostly have parks, which people are also quite fond of.

Mencken wrote: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear,
simple, and wrong." As here, an number of those answers come from applying
Econ 101 in a way where one might as well be saying, "Assume a spherical
cow..." [3]

[1] [http://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-
demand/](http://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow)

~~~
hglman
San Fransisco has a lot of land zoned single family.

[http://www.sf-
planning.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documen...](http://www.sf-
planning.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=9016)

You could easily rezone and up the density by a factor of 4 or 5.

~~~
wpietri
Have you tried asking people living in those homes about your "easy" plan? The
one that would involve them living somewhere else for a couple of years during
construction and then moving back to a smaller, less appealing place? As I
said, San Francisco residents mostly seem pretty happy where they are.

~~~
abritinthebay
Congratulations! You're the exact cause of the problem SF has had for nearly
30 years now!

How are you finding that has worked out for SF overall?

~~~
teacup50
Were you even in SF 15 years ago, when the .com bubble popped and housing
prices returned to a degree of sanity?

If you want to see the cause for "the problem SF has had for nearly 30 years
now", look in the mirror.

~~~
wpietri
I agree, and the maddening thing for me is that my fellow people in the tech
industry so rarely say, "Why yes, we _are_ the problem. What can we do about
it?"

I wrote this more than a year ago: [https://www.quora.com/Why-are-some-San-
Francisco-residents-a...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-some-San-Francisco-
residents-angry-with-technology-companies-and-their-workers/answer/William-
Pietri?share=1)

As far as I can tell, the willful obliviousness is just as bad as then, and
maybe worse.

~~~
abritinthebay
Thinking the tech industry is the problem is pretty much like saying you get a
cold because you go out in cold weather.

It's not true, but it sounds right if you don't look too close.

The tech industry isn't the cause of anything but growth. Growth isn't bad.
Growth is totally manageable. It's not like these issues magically showed up
in the tech boom of the 90s - it just made them worse.

However what DID cause this: bad urban planning, lack of ability to change,
being systemically unable to fix the housing issues over the last 40 years.

Plenty of places cope with growth periods better than SF, but SF doesn't want
to cope with them: it wants to have it's cake and eat it too. It can't, but
it's been trying for a long time and failing horribly.

This is not a new development. It's not a new problem. The solutions have been
the same for a long time but no-one wants to change to fix them.

~~~
wpietri
Growth isn't necessarily bad, but neither is it necessarily good. Some growth
is manageable; some isn't.

It appears we both agree that rapid growth is a proximate cause of the
problem, and the tech industry is the main cause of that rapid growth. Where
we differ is that you think a bunch of other people should immediately change
to accommodate you, while you simultaneously refuse to acknowledge their
perspective, which is that their previous system was working well enough for
them until tech people came along in overwhelming numbers. And that maybe they
were perfectly happy with how things are, and feel no particular need to
change to suit you.

The rest looks like dickish handwaving to me. If you'd like to just keep
yelling at people, stop bugging me. If you'd like to have an actual
discussion, then start behaving respectfully.

------
azinman2
The biggest deal to me is that this was written by local politician Scott
Weiner. Hopefully this idea circulates more around those in charge in SF.

~~~
raldi
Wiener, not Weiner.

~~~
simoncion
And it's pronounced _exactly_ like it is spelled. My inner five-year-old
giggled for ten minutes the first time I heard Mr. Wiener introduce himself.

Anyway, the guy _seems_ like he's doing the right thing for the city.

------
ChuckMcM
I tend to agree with this, and its nice hearing it from someone in a position
of authority, but it is a minority view unfortunately. San Francisco has been
poisoned by the "low hanging fruit" which is a series of "manageable" projects
which are going to improve things but which turn out much more expensive and
much less effective than the "big thinking" alternatives. And yes, I know it
is easy to get tricked into comparing the projected cost of project A with the
actual cost of project B (as project A would have had overrurns etc) but you
can double or triple the proposed cost of some of the larger projects and not
come close to the actual cost of some of the "simpler" projects.

It isn't about cost, it is about willingness to embrace change and move
forward.

~~~
rz2k
I wonder if the right vocabulary is to talk about local optima, even though
that isn't really the problem with being incrementalist as a rule. Or maybe
once upon a time "paradigm shift", also not the right concept.

Anyway, my point being that constant iteration or the use of heuristics have
value, but it can also be useful to understand models, and occasionally take a
break to think big about the direction you want to move in the long term, with
the realization that many of the steps to get there will violate some pet
heuristics.

~~~
gozo
You can't really have a paradigm shift without a foundation. Apple had a long
history in software before the iPhone, SpaceX and Tesla have been leveraging
the US long history of car and space industry etc.

As far as I know the US does not have a very good foundation for public
infrastructure projects nor the cooperation between public and private
entities. What you need to do is, like China, buy the best proven technology
currently available. Then after you've made that work, take all that knowledge
and invent the next big thing.

------
Balgair
">>Making it easier and faster to approve transit projects."

I moved out of CA, and man alive is it surprising how... corrupt... Caltrans
is. I mean, really. In Denver we are building a rail line all the way out to
the airport from downtown, something that I got to see start (2011) to finish
(granted, spring 2016, but I have no doubts about it) for $1 billion
total([2], projected cost) at ~8200 per foot. It's not a subway, so no
digging, and the land is cheaper, but all the same. Something like this would
be unimaginable in CA to take less than 15 years. The AirBart cost about
$29,000 per foot and still costs $6 per ride [0] with a development time of
~30 years([1]data is suspicious though). Yes, it's elevated and in earthquake
country, but my god, 29k a foot?! That's 3.5 times the cost per foot than in
Denver. I honestly don't see it. Sure, the balance sheets are all likely out
there in the public ledger, but honestly, I don't if I can trust them. In the
end here, the author of this piece is right, but he misses the issue of
corruption that plays into "Showing a willingness to think big." You can think
big all you want, but if there is excessive need to 'grease wheels' to get
something moving and built, then all the pie in the sky thinking in the world
isn't going to do anything without the cash.

[0][http://archives.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/controversial-
ba...](http://archives.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/controversial-bart-to-
oakland-airport-connector-opens-but-questions-remain/Content?oid=2912859)

[1][https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2014/news20140612-0](https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2014/news20140612-0)

[2]

~~~
spikels
$29k a foot is nothing! The Central Subway project currently under
construction from Chinatown to the CalTrain station (the only major subway
project built in SF in many decades) will cost $1.6 billion (assuming no cost
overruns) to build and go 1.7 miles. That's around $190,000 per foot!

------
oldmanjay
Being the jewel of the Bay, San Francisco should aspire to something more
interesting than near-constant subway construction. What if commuters to the
peninsula were launched from glider bays at the top of the city skyscrapers,
sent floating peacefully home with nary a cubic inch of congestion? It's
probably brilliant and I just don't realize it yet.

~~~
masterleep
What about personal transportation devices powered by bio-waste scraped off
the sidewalk?

------
shawnps
Meanwhile, in Tokyo:

[http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/info/map_a4ol.pdf](http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/info/map_a4ol.pdf)

[http://www.tokyometro.jp/en/subwaymap/pdf/routemap_en.pdf](http://www.tokyometro.jp/en/subwaymap/pdf/routemap_en.pdf)

~~~
ajmurmann
Japan had a interesting mix of private companies providing and competing in
areas where public transit is actually profitable and the government providing
it in areas where it won't be profitable. To me that's politics done right.
The market is the strongest force you can use if it works in your favor. But
it's key to understand when it won't. Too bad that on the US that decision is
usually driven by ideology rather than practical thought.

------
rayiner
The big takeaway from all these stories is that there's no solution to these
problems. To address its housing and transit issues, San Francisco should have
changed its zoning and construction plans decades ago. Now, nothing it can do
will meaningfully address the problem in any relevant timescale.

~~~
hugh4
Why not just leave San Francisco basically as it is? The city works okay right
now. You can get around it reasonably well.

Housing and transport are only a problem if you're going to keep trying to
cram more people in there. That's silly.

Part of what makes San Francisco one of the USA's most appealing cities is
that it _hasn 't_ expanded all that much in the last eighty years or so -- due
to its unique geography which prevents outward expansion. (The population in
1930 was 634,000, in 2010 it was 805,000.)

------
SCAQTony
San Francisco, as well as L.A., are located on one of the most active fault
lines in the USA.

[http://www.wired.com/2008/10/five-us-
earthqu/](http://www.wired.com/2008/10/five-us-earthqu/)

Even Tokyo has most of it's trains above ground. See Yamanote line with 29
stations versus the 16 cumulative underground stations that both the Tokyo
Waterfront Area Rapid Transit and Saitama Rapid Railway Line serve.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway)

Also of note, the New Oakland Bridge that took years to build, went seriously
over budget, included a very disappointing design flaw. This bridge was mostly
paid for by the State of California not San Francisco by itself.

[http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Bridge-s-
troubles-...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Bridge-s-troubles-How-
a-landmark-became-a-6021955.php)

If San Francisco wants to have dozens of miles dug beneath its surface
ignoring the potential of a "black swan" earthquake event then perhaps San
Francisco and not the state of California should pay for it. Or more
accurately, San Diego county, Orange County and Los Angeles county should NOT
have to pay for it.

We love you San Francisco but you're not that awesome.

~~~
mattthebaker
It is not a very good argument to call SF seismically active and then compare
it to Tokyo. Tokyo sits where three active fault lines converge. Having lived
in each for a year, you can expect to experience more activity in two weeks in
Tokyo than a year in SF.

Also, claiming that most of Tokyos subway is above ground is incorrect. The
subways, Tokyo metro and Toei, are nearly entirely underground within the city
center. This is hundreds of stations. Yamanote line is part of an entirely
different set of trains for longer distance transit.

~~~
SCAQTony
Respectfully this is why I called it active. Much like a weather report here
is a seismic map of northern and central California:
[http://scedc.caltech.edu/recent/](http://scedc.caltech.edu/recent/)

------
pico303
Isn't there a consideration of geological stability underneath San Francisco?
I don't think much of the city could support tunneling underneath; large
chunks are built on sand dunes and landfill.

[http://priceonomics.com/what-parts-of-san-francisco-are-
buil...](http://priceonomics.com/what-parts-of-san-francisco-are-built-on-
land-fill/)

~~~
luminiferous
The liquifaction susceptibility map shows that most of Market St is red.
Seeing as that's where the existing BART tunnel is, I suspect it's not much of
an issue.

~~~
tizzdogg
I think the bigger issue is all the hills. They are bedrock, so arnt an issue
for liquifaction, but make any underground line much more difficult to
construct. For rail to get most places in san francisco its not enough to just
rip up the street and put tracks underneath, like was done along market
street. You need serious tunneling. Thats why historically transit in SF was
mostly cable cars, which were replaced over time by buses. Its much easier to
go over the hills.

------
natrius
Effective ride-hailing services like UberPool and Lyft Line make congestion
pricing feasible. Congestion pricing can banish traffic from the face of the
planet.

Our roads can move a certain number of vehicles per minute at their maximum
throughput. When more cars attempt to access the road, throughput goes down.
Set the price of driving on a road at the level that maximizes throughput.

As prices go up, some people won't be able to afford to drive alone. Instead,
they'll pick up paying passengers, or pay another driver for a ride. As more
people desire to travel in San Francisco, the price will go up, and more
people will share a van (or a bus!) to get where they need to go. Traffic
won't come back.

Today, San Franciscans pay for their commute by sacrificing time they could
spend with their friends and family. Instead, we should pay by sacrificing
personal space during our commutes.

Subways are an unnecessary expense when our streets are so poorly utilized. We
can triple the capacity of our roads by charging a price that keeps traffic
moving.

~~~
justizin
> Subways are an unnecessary expense when our streets are so poorly utilized.

It terrifies me that you are serious. The best way to better utilize our
streets is to dedicate more space for cycling, there is absolutely no way to
get the same density in an automobile.

Your idea also presents basically no solutions for people who don't have
elasticity in their budget. "Sorry, grandma, you can't go to the doctor today
because the market is readjusting the price of transit to optimize for
throughput in the future, when you might be dead."

~~~
silencio
Better bike routes/friendlier designs are a good thing, but they're still
space inefficient compared to rail systems or even just plain buses. This is a
favorite gif of mine to show the difference:
[http://i.imgur.com/kw8DaST.gif](http://i.imgur.com/kw8DaST.gif)

In an ideal situation, we would have good subway systems alongside more
promotion of bike use. I personally have a couple disabilities making bike use
difficult :( I would kill to have a Seoul Subway-esque system in SF (the best
system I've experienced firsthand, I'm sure there are better but it's among
the best/biggest).

~~~
prawn
Someone should update that GIF to show the people using the subway. That frame
would show the street empty, everyone being underground.

------
rdl
While I'd love to live in a city with an effective government and great mass
transit, I just don't have faith in SF city government specifically or in most
local governments generally being able to accomplish the largest scale civil
works projects successfully.

While some kind of big master plan would, if executed well, produce a better
result, I'd prefer to stick to smaller projects with reasonable deliverables
which actually happen, and then hack together a less effective than ideal, but
still better, end result.

Arguing like this for all-or-nothing is a great way to get nothing, which
makes me sad because SFBA transit is such shit today.

------
tempodox
I can't wait for the day when car travel for personal transportation in cities
is simply forbidden.

------
atarian
BART is currently being extended from Fremont to San Jose:
[http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay...](http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=5782566)

What's stopping an extension from San Jose to Millbrae?

~~~
capkutay
Peninsula voters are somewhat allergic to inbound public transportation from
the East Bay for whatever reason.

------
mentos
I'd be interested to see SF experiment with increasing their tolls to reduce
congestion.

------
stretchwithme
I disagree, because robotic transportation is going to make public
transportation obsolete long before the debt acquired is paid off.

And by then, robotic construction and material will have advanced so much that
it will be much cheaper to build underground in the future than it is now.

But underground is definitely the way to go for transportation, even in
earthquake country. The surface should be quiet and safe, our streets
converted to bike paths and gardens.

So lets at least make sure that underground construction could also
accommodate vehicles other than trains. Because all that track will eventually
be ripped out when we are liberated from the tranny of the train schedule.

~~~
chipsy
Public transportation will take up the same advances as private. Eventually.
Private is going to jump on that stuff first, of course.

Robocars constitute a percentage improvement at the surface, but don't
overcome inherent capacity/land-use/energy tradeoffs between a packed subway
car and a congested highway. You cannot get around the problem of automobiles
using more space. [0]

You will have robocars, but also robobuses and robotrains. This is a "all
over, everywhere, better" improvement, not a "this one wins and crushes the
others." Flexibility is important - the city is making some progress on bike
paths and can continue doing much better still.

Furthermore, better architecture, land use, and future lifestyle changes hold
the potential to keep density at a higher average level while improving the
feeling of street life to be more like the "peaceful suburban" ideal -
walkable, yet quiet and non-disruptive. Framing transportation as a land-use
problem - something built up from prior decisions about what real estate to
build and where to build it in order to minimize average trip times and
potential disruptions - rather than an engineering exercise of making as many
roads and rails and tunnels and bridges as you can so that every vehicle may
race along at 200 MPH for the smallest errand - drastically changes what you
can do and the budget you can accomplish it with, which makes it more likely
to be realized in our lifetimes.

That said, I agree with the article. SF has fallen far behind its housing
demand, and the lack of a "virtuous cycle" of transit projects to encourage
development in outlying neighborhoods shares some blame in that. It should not
be the case that it's harder to go between downtown and the Richmond than to
make the same trip to Oakland.

[0]
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/carltonreid/7999178447/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/carltonreid/7999178447/)

~~~
Symbiote
"Robotrains" are already fairly common: [1].

However, replacing road traffic with robots is more appealing. Railways
already have an almost-perfect safety record, and the cost of the driver is
spread over many passengers.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems)

------
beachstartup
LA always has a subway (technically, light rail) under construction. Been that
way for about 30 years now.

~~~
nerfhammer
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Rail_(Los_Angeles_County...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Rail_\(Los_Angeles_County\)#Expansions)

------
sutro
[http://m.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/covering-their-tracks-
the...](http://m.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/covering-their-tracks-the-central-
subway-project-buries-millions-in-a-deep-dark-place/Content?oid=2949067)

------
lukas
I would love to see the subways in SF improve but maybe self driving cars
changes the calculus? Could this become a tealistic alternative to public
transportation? I'm sure some people here have thought about this a lot more
than I have - want to weigh in?

~~~
masterj
Self driving cars still require a significant amount of surface area that
could better be utilized for: housing, bike transit, pedestrian areas, parks.

And though coordination by autonomous vehicles could cut down on highway
congestion, speeds within the city are unlikely to match what a subway system
could offer. You don't want cars rushing through your neighborhood at 60 mph,
no matter if it's a machine or a human behind the wheel.

~~~
ascagnel_
If gridlock is a major issue now, self-driving vehicles won't help in a major
way, since you still need X square feet to move Y people (up to a maximum M,
as defined by the size of a vehicle) Z miles. Pushing more individual cars
onto buses would help in this situation, but not as much as a dedicated subway
line that is less impacted by vehicular traffic flows.

Self-driving cars would help by removing some drivers not paying attention and
causing additional congestion (eg: not moving on green lights or causing
accidents).

~~~
untog
In theory, intelligent self-driving buses could make a difference, though.
Still less than subways though, of course.

------
simonjgreen
"Unprecedented growth"...
[http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/urban_growth1.html](http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/urban_growth1.html)

------
PhantomGremlin
Building more subways in SF is a much smarter use of money than the high speed
"train to nowhere" that California is spending billions of dollars on.

~~~
dragonwriter
BART and Muni improvements are _part of_ the billions being spent on improving
existing local and intercity transit systems as _part of_ the High-Speed Rail
program you are complaining about.

And the major population centers of California aren't, exactly, "nowhere".

~~~
haugstrup
This. Regional and state-wide transit is all connected. The high speed rail
project also includes regional upgrades like the electrification of Caltrain.

2 hours and 40 minutes from downtown SF to downtown LA by train beats flying
once you factor in transport to and from airports, security checks etc. Not to
mention that SFO and LAX can't increase capacity to follow demand. The high
speed rail project makes a ton of sense.

~~~
ghaff
In the case of the Acela, the electrification of the New Haven to Boston
segment significantly sped up the non-Acela Northeast Regional service from
Boston to New York. In fact, the ~2X price difference between the Regional and
the Acela to save ~45 mins usually doesn't make sense when I'm paying out of
my own pocket (or when the Acela doesn't run at a convenient time).

I don't have a real opinion on California high-speed rail. It's certainly
hugely expensive and probably depends on whether it makes sense for relatively
price-insensitive business travelers as the Acela does.

~~~
haugstrup
I don't think it's about price. I believe it's about capacity. Population is
growing -- in SF it's growing a lot -- but SFO and LAX are at capacity.
California needs another option for moving people between LA and the Bay Area
since it's not possible to fly more planes.

~~~
throwaway_exer
Actually, in NorCal there's also Oakland. And San Jose Airport is not at all
busy - they just blew 1.2 billion on Terminal 3 with no airlines committing to
use it.

And in SoCal, I normally use John Wayne, not LAX - one of the worst airports
in the world due to endless construction.

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guelo
Bart gets its operating and capital improvement money only from fares. A lot
of the value that Bart creates by increasing property value around its
stations is captured only by landlords, if it were able to capture some of
that value it would be able to expand much quicker.

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machinshin_
Why?

1/2 the city is gonna be underwater by 2050, right?

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rdlecler1
Subways could very well become obsolete by the time they are finished. uber-
enabled driverless cars the size of a smart car could drive bumper to bumper
door handle to door handle in their own lanes and massively improve
transportation, especially for the last miles from door stat to door step.
Save the money and speed up adoption of driverless cars and we'd be better
off.

~~~
sea2summit
I agree, but I'm not sure we can afford to wait ~5+ years for self driving
cars; on the other hand that's probably how long it'll take to build more
subways, at a minimum. Whatever is done it needs to be done immediately.

~~~
azinman2
Self driving cars are still subject to congestion in identical ways because
they take up just as much space and need safe distances between cars. It also
adds noise & pollution, not to mention the fact that the energy to build a car
is really really large (and they don't last as long per total miles per
person).

As linked to above, see this gif:
[http://i.imgur.com/kw8DaST.gif](http://i.imgur.com/kw8DaST.gif)

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hugh4
I reject the premise that San Francisco should be planning for an ever-
increasing population.

At some point I think that San Francisco should look at itself and say "Hey,
we're a small, earthquake-prone hilly penninsula, we can't expand outwards.
Traffic flow is constrained by planning decisions made a long time ago. We've
got a pretty good quality of life as it is, and lots of nice historic
buildings. Let's just put a lid on it and declare we're basically full".

Many of the nicest cities in Europe are ones where at some point in the past
they've decided to stop building in the historic city centre and just leave
things as they were at some particular point in time.

If anything I think San Francisco needs _fewer_ people. San Francisco should
focus on quality of residents, not quantity.

~~~
reality_czech
San Francisco basically has done exactly what you suggest. Most city residents
don't believe that anything should be built (or if it should, it definitely
shouldn't be in their neighborhood.)
[http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/02/04/sfs_population_is_g...](http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/02/04/sfs_population_is_growing_way_faster_than_its_housing_stock.php)
As a consequence, it is "focusing on quality of residents, not quantity" (the
"quality" that they're looking for is the green stuff).

~~~
hugh4
And San Francisco is a nice place. So what's the problem?

Sure, not everyone who wants to live there can afford to live there, but
that's always the way it is in desirable places, otherwise we'd all live in
Vanuatu or something.

~~~
jessaustin
San Francisco _is_ a nice place. It will probably get nicer, as more and more
grubby natives are replaced by nice presentable dot-commers.

It's just that some people object to that process. Including, seemingly,
people who live and vote in SF. They believe they can have a city that limits
overall housing supply while simultaneously growing housing supply for the
homeless, for the working poor, and for everyone else.

San Francisco is a nice place.

