

Silicon Valley Can't Get Transit Right - blackjack48
http://m.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/01/silicon-valley-cant-get-transit-right/4374/

======
kjackson2012
You can't blame Silicon Valley for what is the idiocy of various levels of
governments.

When I first came to the Bay Area, it took me an inordinately amount of time
to realize that the BART didn't go all the way around the Bay. I just assumed
that it did because it's what made the most sense.

In fact, the county of San Mateo voted against BART because they didn't want
people from other counties to come and take their jobs. So, because of this,
you have a ridiculous patchwork and mishmash of transit "solutions" from
various levels of government, none of them really working well. If you had a
BART that went around the Bay, you could eliminate Caltrain completely, and
move that money into making BART even better. Of course, those are at
different levels of government, which means that you couldn't really do that.

It's at the point now where, except for people that take Caltrain during rush
hour, and MUNI in SF, most public transit around the Bay is for poor people.
Most people with higher paying jobs can't afford how slow public transit is,
and it creates this negative feedback loop where they don't get enough funding
to justify a better schedule, etc.

Yes, Google has a great bus system that is a competitive advantage when it
comes to hiring people. But this is _private_ transit, and it doesn't directly
translate to public transit. If you have to service an area like the South
Bay, you have to not only service the areas that people need, but then you
have to deal with unions, costs, etc.

~~~
car
It was not the county that voted against a BART system that would go around
the Bay, it were the interests of a real estate devloper and Caltrain that
fucked this up for the rest of us. It never even got to be voted on.

Seeing the pathetic state of public transit in the Bay Area, and thinking how
much better it could have been, it incenses me to see how darwinistic
capitalism rides roughshot over the common interest.

Here the story from our local paper, lest we don't forget history:

 _Electric trains could have been here long ago. In the late 1950s, San Mateo
County was one of five counties in the San Francisco Bay Area Transit
District. The district could assess taxes and issue bonds and had a round-the-
Bay light-rail system planned, according to a history at the website of Bay
Area Rapid Transit (BART).

The plan derailed, according to the BART account, because San Mateo County
supervisors were "cool to the plan." They chose to exit the district in
December 1961, citing the proposed system's "high costs" and the "adequate
service" from Southern Pacific commuter trains, now Caltrain.

George Mader, who retired in 2010 after 45 years as Portola Valley's town
planner, has another angle. The "cool to the plan" characters were two men of
influence, he said in a March 11 letter to Portola Valley Mayor Ted Driscoll.

The "major problems," Mr. Mader said, were T. Louis Chess, who chaired the
county Board of Supervisors and worked for Southern Pacific Railway, and David
D. Bohannon, a "major player" in the county and the developer of the then-new
Hillsdale Shopping Center.

Mr. Bohannon claimed that BART would take shoppers away from Hillsdale and
into San Francisco, Mr. Mader said, adding that "shopping was rather good (in
San Francisco) at the time." For his part, Mr. Chess was protecting Southern
Pacific, Mr. Mader said. And the county voters would have had to decide on
whether to join BART.

"These short-sighted and selfish people did not let the residents vote," Mr.
Mader said. "A travesty!"_

EDIT: cited from <http://www.almanacnews.com/story.php?story_id=10935>

EDIT: clarification

~~~
glenra
> it incenses me to see how darwinistic capitalism rides roughshot over the
> common interest.

Under actual "darwinistic capitalism" anybody who wanted to would be able to
start a competing transit service, even if it stole all the customers of a
current one. At a minimum, you'd see a thriving private jitney industry -
private bus services outcompeting the public ones and private part-time cabs
underpricing the metered ones. No, to get mass transit this bad requires
_active interference_ with the workings of "darwinistic capitalism". In
particular, laws making it _illegal_ to compete with the established quasi-
monopoly firms. The government at various levels doesn't just do a bad job of
providing transit, they also make it illegal to compete with the crappy
transit they provide. Fix _either_ half of that equation and things are a lot
better.

~~~
tossacct
>>>even if it stole all the customers of a current one

Many taxi companies are required to serve anyone at any time(24/7/365) for
fixed prices, regardless of the cost of the trip. It is unlikely that the new
transit service will steal all the unprofitable customers.

Many of the regulations around transportation are very utilitarian. There are
people who can not drive and are unserved by public transportation, but will
die if they do not have access to transportation. We the people(you too) have
decided to contract out their transportation to cab companies. In exchange for
this incredibly unprofitable mandate, cab companies get price fixing which is
essentially a monopoly on many routes.

~~~
glenra
Regulators want to make sure, above all, that the drivers are paying taxes and
paying for the use of their vastly (and artificially) expensive taxi
medallions. So the regulations tend to require the use of an expensive and
finicky and limiting piece of equipment - a taxi meter. Private jitneys don't
need a meter, so they're immediately less expensive. The private alternative
to a meter that works as well or better for a nearly zero cost is a "zone
card". Draw a stylized map of the area divided into "zones"; there's a fare
for within-zone travel or a higher fare to cross some number of zones to get
to another area. The zone map and price schedule can be printed on a card
handed to the passenger or (where jitneys are legal) put on a sticker on the
door of the car, so the passenger knows the charges before they get in.

Now the cab driver has no incentive to avoid passengers who want to cross a
bridge to a less profitable area (ever try to get a cab to Brooklyn from
downtown manhattan?) and no incentive to take the long way around to bump up
the meter charge in slow periods - the driver's interests and the passenger's
are aligned. Better yet, drivers have the flexibility that they _can_
negotiate other fares when that's appropriate - for instance, charging more in
a hurricane.

Rigidly fixed prices are NOT a good thing for customers if you want there to
be service at any time to/from any region. Fixed prices mean many areas get
little or no service - the cabs stick to the more popular routes and people
who live in poor neighborhoods get shafted.

The regulations on cabs are not at all utilitarian - they are pure rent-
seeking. Concentrated benefits accrue to the few who own medallions;
distributed costs are paid by drivers and passengers everwhere.

~~~
tossacct
Taxi laws are different in different places. Many places you have the option
of calling a taxi company, and they are legally required to send you a cab.
Obviously not NY.

Your "zone" idea is logical. So logical that it is the law in some places,
like the Bay Area which is the subject of the comment you replied to.

(2) Out-of-Town Trips. Drivers are authorized to collect 150 percent of the
metered rate for out-of-town trips exceeding 15 miles beyond City limits.
[http://www.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/California/transporta...](http://www.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/California/transportation/divisionii/article1100regulationofmotorvehiclesforh?f=templates$fn=default.htm$3.0$vid=amlegal:sanfrancisco_ca)

>>>Rigidly fixed prices are NOT a good thing for customers if you want there
to be service at any time to/from any region.

This holds true for NY, where you can't call a cab with a phone. Other places
you can call, and the cab is legally required to come and pick you up.

>>>The regulations on cabs are not at all utilitarian - they are pure rent-
seeking

I agree that some are, but I think that I have listed some laws do service the
public good. Am I wrong? NY tip: you can implement the zone system yourself on
an ad-hoc basis - give them enough money and they _will_ take you to Brooklyn.
I hope you have a lot of money though :) .

------
Bud
I am so pleased to see attention focused on this sad state of affairs.

The San Jose light rail line referenced in the article is literally right
outside my front door. Yet I have never ridden it, despite living in San Jose
for over a decade. Why? Because it simply doesn't take me anywhere useful in a
useful amount of time. It can't even take me to the airport well, and that
airport is only a couple miles away. That's sad.

There is plenty of money in Silicon Valley, and plenty of need for relief from
traffic congestion. It's true that San Jose is low-density. But I know we
could do a lot better than we're doing. There's not even a fast, frequent
train between San Jose (10th largest city in the US) and San Francisco (14th
largest city in the US), for chrissakes. That's pathetic.

~~~
warfangle
Low density is a reason to invest in public transportation, not a reason to
divest from public transportation. To wit: most of Queens was farmland when
the subway transit was built.

Good public transportation, along with solid city centers, begets population
density (and economies of scale).

Poorly planned public transportation lingers as an afterthought; a mistake; a
rallying cry that public transportation does not work in low-density areas.

~~~
wilfra
It's not farmland low-density, it's just not manhattan. And I don't know that
they want it to become more dense than it already is. Northern California
likes its trees, low-rise buildings and greenbelts. I don't think anybody
wants to see a concrete jungle from Santa Rosa to Gilroy, like happened in LA.

------
Stratoscope
It's not just mass transit that is messed up here. They mess up the highway
system too. Case in point:

[https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.258034,-121.963785&t=...](https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.258034,-121.963785&t=u&z=17)

This is the interchange at Highway 85 and Winchester Blvd. (The red roofs are
Netflix and the Aventino apartment complex.) It's a half-interchange, only
connecting with traffic on 85 to or from the north (west). But note the
unusual configuration of the interchange: why all that empty space between the
ramps and the freeway?

It's because the interchange was designed as a folded diamond:

[http://www.smartmotorist.com/images/driving_guideline/folded...](http://www.smartmotorist.com/images/driving_guideline/folded_diamond.gif)

[http://www.smartmotorist.com/driving-guideline/driving-on-
ex...](http://www.smartmotorist.com/driving-guideline/driving-on-
expressways.html)

But the Town of Los Gatos didn't want extra traffic on Winchester, so they
only allowed half the interchange to be built. The result is unsurprising:
traffic to or from 85 on the south (east) has to get to Winchester via Highway
17 and Lark Avenue a half-mile to the south.

Lark would be a busy street without this, but with the extra Winchester/85
traffic it gets some real traffic jams. So instead of the bit of extra traffic
on Winchester, there's a big mess on Lark.

------
AllTheThings
I hope, perhaps naively, that the positive focus this article gets on
HackerNews seeds if not the beginning of change but at least the awareness of
just how terrible Silicon Valley transit is.

I'm native to the Bay Area but am studying my Masters in Computer Science
outside of California and come back every so often to interview, visit
friends, and help out my family. Both of my parents work so I don't have
access to their cars. I've never had a car (only driven my parents cars on
weekends in high school) and because I'll be finishing up my education soon I
haven't felt the need to buy one of my own. For reference, I live with my
parents currently in the San Jose / Morgan Hill beyond the commonly serviced
Caltrains zones (but still in their extra commute-serviced zones).

Visiting friends, attending interviews, or just taking in the sights somewhere
is something I've gotten used to doing on public transit since I've never had
a car. The VTA is awful. Most of their schedules use timepoints rather than
actual stops for scheduling (is this the case to allow busses slack time in
between timepoints?), even on the Light Rail which is not as traffic sensitive
as the bus. My nearby Light Rail station isn't even listed on the the
schedules for most of the VTA schedules.

Google Maps is just awful at planning trips using VTA. It takes a definite
know-how of how the system works to use it effectively. In contrast to what
other posts have discussed, using Caltrains to get to San Francisco makes the
trip from San Jose to San Francisco relatively painless; I take a 30 minute
bus to a Caltrains stop and take a train directly into San Francisco. The main
San Jose transit hub (and the best serviced Caltrains stop in the area), the
San Jose Diridon, is inaccessible on my Light Rail route, the Blue Line (or
the 901). To reach Diridon I can either take a bus from another nearby transit
station or take the Blue Line North to the SJ Convention Center, transfer to
the Green line, and then go South. Using the Light Rail exclusively is a death
sentence however. Using the Light Rail to move from my Light Rail station to
Mountain View takes _2 hours_. Making the detour at the Convention Center to
switch Lines and then using Caltrains is still faster.

Trying to visit Santana Row is awful. I take the Light Rail to a stop from
where I can take a bus (the 323) which takes me to Santana Row, all in all a
15-20 minute drive from my home under normal conditions. To visit a friend in
Union City I have to take the Light Rail then transfer to a bus (the 181),
then transfer to BART Fremont and ride BART to BART Union City. We live,
ostensibly, 25 min. away in normal traffic, but actually live 3-4 transfers of
public transit away. Awful.

Safety is another huge issue on the VTA but a smaller issue on BART and mostly
nonexistent on Caltrains. I rarely feel safe enough to take out my expensive
smartphone on VTA. If I can get onto the Caltrains quickly the increase in
fare is worth the safety I have to now use my electronics. BART is a mixed
bag, but is definitely safe enough.

That said, VTA is cheap. An 8 hour Light Rail pass is $4, and a single bus
ride is $2. I can take a single bus to downtown Palo Alto and back and spend
$4 on the round trip. I can ride into downtown San Jose and pay $2 - $4
depending on how long I stay, pay nothing for parking, and not have to worry
about my car at all. A trip into San Francisco is expensive ($22 round trip,
$18 for two Caltrains trips, and $4 for two VTA bus rides), but is still
cheaper than gas and parking isn't an issue.

I really wish the various local governments in the Valley took charge of
things and created a safe, unified transit system. The Clipper Card has gone a
long way in making it much more painless to endure the many transfers needed
to get from my home to any location of interest. It's hard though. The suburbs
of the Bay Area is very much dominated by cars.

------
narrator
Ok guys, I'm going to help us all stop pussyfooting around the issue. Maybe
you people in Europe have a hard time understanding this, but I think a lot of
the nervousness about mass transit has to do with the possibility of too many
of what suburban neighborhoods consider "the wrong people" (e.g poor) showing
up because they can now easily get there via cheap mass transit.

The happy rich people live in the suburbs because they don't like the people
in the inner cities and the only way they can limit their interaction is with
distance. Why do you think the shiftiest neighborhoods are always around the
greyhound station? For example of this extreme anti-poor paranoia: Palo Alto
recently threw a huge fit because they wanted to put in a 7-eleven saying that
it would attract an undesirable element. ([http://www.mercurynews.com/san-
mateo-county-times/ci_2199808...](http://www.mercurynews.com/san-mateo-county-
times/ci_21998087/controversial-7-eleven-proposal-heads-san-mateo-city))

------
zopticity
My friend who came from Tokyo says the transit here (bay area) is horrible.
She states that you can't get anywhere you like and the scheduling system
isn't always on time. In Japan, people rarely drive because the public system
is everywhere and very efficient. You get a train every 5 minutes so you don't
have to wait 30 minutes just for your ride.

If VTA (being in the center of the valley) implements some sort of GPS tracker
on their trains, I think it give people a better idea when to head for the
train station.

~~~
untog
Tokyo is fantastically dense, though. It isn't really a fair comparison.

~~~
snogglethorpe
Tokyo is certainly more dense than SV for the most part, but it isn't really
_fantastically_ dense. It's very large, and has locations ranging from dense
urban centers to mountains, but for the most part is rather less dense than
you might think based on its reputation. E.g. a _lot_ of Tokyo housing stock
is 1-2 story single-family dwellings (high-rise dwellings were pretty rare
until fairly recently, in part due to the earthquake risk).

It has absolutely fantastic public transit _everywhere_ , even outside the
denser urban cores.

AFAICT, this comes from the way the city is structured: dwellings and
businesses tend to cluster around rail lines and stations, increasing their
efficiency, which makes it easier to support a large number of rail lines
(rail transit is a profitable business in Tokyo), and that in turn increases
the effectiveness of the network (the well-known "network effect"). Even
though most rail transit is private and run by a huge number of different
companies, they well-recognize the importance of the network effect, and so
tend to cooperate, trying to make transfers easy and liberally using
interlining.

There are also well-developed secondary transit networks (bus and bicycling)
that increase the effective coverage of the rail lines.

------
droithomme
I suppose the idea of this article is supposed to be that since there is a lot
of smart people and technology there it is ironic they can't get transit
right.

However, Bay transit is very good compared to most of the rest of the US.

And it's not necessarily correct to assume that the great intellectuals in the
area are drawn to working for public administration as bureaucrats.

~~~
jfb
Compared to LA, Houston, perhaps. Compared to New York or Chicago? No. It's
remarkably poor. The fact that BART didn't reach SFO until 2006? or so is more
or less all you have to say.

 _EDIT_ : Although, to be fair, the Valley and San Jose are way too low
density to support a decent transit infrastructure. San Francisco's MUNI
disaster is a problem of a different order.

~~~
jbail
With regards to density, San Jose has a density of 5,256 people per square
mile. In contrast, Denver (which has an awesome train/bus system) has a
density of 3,698 people per square mile.

If low density is why San Jose can't support a decent transit infrastructure,
then how can Denver do it with even less density?

~~~
lilsunnybee
I live in Denver and second that the light rail / bus system is pretty
awesome. It should be even better with light rail expansions coming in the
next year or so.

~~~
jbail
I live in Denver too and I haven't driven to work in 6 years. Instead of
driving myself, I read, listen to music and chill out. I also don't worry
about traffic, weather, or really much at all. It's great for drinking after
work too.

I share your enthusiasm for the upcoming expansions, in particular the line to
the Airport. The train is one of the big perks of living in Denver. It's
awesome and only getting better.

------
waterlesscloud
Autonomous vehicle networks are the best hope for changing this.

It would be ironic if the US is able to leapfrog other countries in autonomous
vehicle networks because it lags so badly in transit, but I bet that's what's
going to happen.

On another note, this is a solution that Silicon Valley is uniquely qualified
to implement for itself. Get on it.

------
bicknergseng
Problems with VTA:

It takes an hour to go from Mountain View to Downtown SJ. The same drive takes
~15 min with no traffic or about an hour in awful traffic.

The route from MV to SJ goes through no where. It parallels the sparsely
populated Tasman for much of it, though it will go near the upcoming 49ers
stadium.

It doesn't go to Valley Fair Mall or Santana Row, just about the only two
places worth going in SJ.

It doesn't go to Santa Clara University or the Airport.

In total, it's the world's slowest train to nowhere for nobody.

~~~
ChuckMcM
_In total, it's the world's slowest train to nowhere for nobody._

I largely agree with this, it does go to the Santa Clara convention center
which is nice. And some of the San Jose government facilities. But generally
it does _not_ go to places that a steady stream of people would want to go to.

------
redwood
A critical issue not mentioned here: is that Palo Alto, the heart of the
Silicon Valley, is unfortunately at the edge of two transit zones/counties:
SamTrans and ValleyTransit.

This means buses in Palo Alto coming from the north, terminate there. It means
buses coming from the south also terminate there!

And it means Palo Alto is not even reached by ValleyTransit's light rail,
while SamTrans has no light rail.

In other words the increasingly central node between San Jose and San
Francisco, is also one of the least centrally connected.

With SamTrans focused on how to bring commuters to San Francisco from San
Mateo county suburbia, and ValleyTransit focused on how to bring suburban
Santa Clara county residents to downtown San Jose: both systems lack an
overall peninsular focus that ought to recognize the increasing prominence the
peninsula has in terms of the job market! Too bad.

------
mikegreco
I live right off of El Camino Real, otherwise known as CA State RT 82. For
those that don't know, this road is Silicon Valley's equivalent to the Main
Line of Philadelphia or 57th street in NYC. The only way to travel it via
transit is either taking CalTrain or the VTA 22 bus. Caltrain could definitely
use work being it only runs every half hour at the best. VTA is an unmitigated
disaster. If the bus even shows up at all it certainly won't be on time, and
when they get to a stop early they absolutely won't wait for the scheduled
time to depart.

If you want to be green out here you have two options, learn to LOVE biking or
be prepared to leave hours ahead of when you need to in order to get anywhere
at all.

~~~
thrownaway2424
I think this is the first time anyone has tried to equate ECR to 57th St.
There are more points of interest on one block of 57th then there are on 30
miles of ECR. Unless you think drive-thru Arbys are points of interest.

~~~
binarycrusader
Downtown Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Stanford University, and Stanford Shopping
Center along El Camino Real aren't points of interest? What about Redwood
City, San Carlos, or Hillsdale?

I think you're exaggerating just a bit.

~~~
snogglethorpe
What's in Redwood city?

[I stayed there for a week or so once, and as best I could tell, it consisted
entirely of office parks and strip malls connected to housing developments by
enormous roads, everything well lathered with parking lots. We walked around
as best we could, but there seemed _nothing_ beautiful or nice there... just
endless vistas of office parks and pavement...]

~~~
binarycrusader
One of the best Beer Gardens you'll find in the Bay Area:
www.gourmethausstaudt.com

...among a downtown movie theater, several great restaurants, a college and
more.

------
rachelbythebay
This area had a great many rail options 70+ years ago. You used to be able to
ride from downtown Santa Clara (when it actually had a downtown) all the way
down The Alameda into downtown San Jose on a trolley. That "dip" under the
tracks by the HP Pavilion had trolley tracks on it all the way into the 1930s.
I figured this out by looking at old pictures.

The big kerfuffle now is whether they should close down a lane of El Camino
Real to make it "bus rapid transit". Some cities say yes, others say no, so
you wind up with this odd patchwork of half-implemented systems.

~~~
AllTheThings
The El Camino Real BRT proposal seems really interesting but VTA has such a
terrible track record of implementing transit options that I'm skeptical when
and if it will ever proceed.

------
michael_miller
Most of the US has terrible public transit. The reason is simple: America is
not densely populated. NYC is one of the few cities where public transit
works, because it is so dense. Manhattan has ~70k people / sq mile. Compare
this to SF: a measly ~17k people / sq mile [1] [2]. That's more than 4x as
dense! The Valley is even worse, with sprawling suburbia.

Honestly, Caltrain is not that terrible. It compares fairly well to Metro-
North in NYC when you consider the population density. There's a train every
hour to take you up to the city (or back) in an hour. Most cities don't have a
direct train you can feasibly take in from the suburbs to the city. Yeah, it
sucks that it stops at midnight, but public transit generally doesn't run late
anywhere. Even in NYC, transit out to the suburbs stops at ~2:30a.

It's a little annoying to see people commenting here that this is entirely due
to politicians and bureaucracy. It isn't. It's just not economically feasible
to offer public transit comparable to NYC to the bay area.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan> [2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco>

~~~
mongol
I checked the same figures for the two largest cities in my country. Stockholm
and Göteborg have between 7000-12000 / sq mile. That is less than SF,
appearently. But the public transit is just like the rest of Europe - much
better than the US. I think population density is not the real explanation, it
just appears so when you compare between US cities.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm> [2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6teborg>

------
ultimoo
As someone who rides the VTA LRT and Buses daily since I don't have a car, I'd
also like to point out how filthy the vehicles are. The back of most buses and
the centers of most train cars smells like urine. Sometimes, your shoe gets
stuck to sticky residue on the seat floors and many seats routinely have
stains on them. Speed of transit is one thing, but maintaining a standard of
hygiene across all vehicles seems like a much lower hanging fruit for the VTA.

~~~
hkmurakami
I was in NYC last week for the first time in a good number of years and
noticed how the seats in the subway lines were all made of plastic. Caltrain
and BART have cloth covered padded seats. While padded seats are in theory
more comfortable, the plastic seats probably makes keeping a sanitary riding
environment much more simple and attainable.

~~~
jfb
The worst is the carpeted BART cars. Yes, 1960s BART people, in the Mysterious
Future we will all take nutrition pills and ride THX-1138 style Electric
Trains to our jobs at the jetpack factories.

God Almighty, it makes my feet itch just thinking about it.

~~~
theatrus2
The carpeting was complete fail for a high volume system such as BART. Also,
the lack of maintenance in general.

Carpeting works fine on "higher end" lower-volume rail, such as commuter
Amtrak lines.

------
smsm42
The situation with mass transit in the Valley really sucks. I would gladly use
any public transit available to commute to work - this way I also could use
transit time for reading or doing something instead of staring into the sea of
taillights for an hour every day. But instead my family has 3 cars - because
this is the only way one can get anywhere. Local governments change quite
hefty taxes - both state tax and sales tax and property taxes are AFAIK among
the highest everywhere - but I don't see any return for this money, the
service that I would gladly want to use every day is just not available for
me. Most routes either don't go to proper locations or are too rare to to use,
or require 3 hour commute with 2 transfers for the route that I do in 20
minutes by car. Maybe my case is unique, but it looks like everybody I talked
to about it here feels pretty much the same - would be glad to use public
transit but you can't get anywhere with it, at least not if when you get there
has any importance for you.

------
pixie_
Coming from NYC, the Valley is the suburbs, and suburbs with public
transportation don't go together well. People are so spread out, which means
the public transport is spread out, which means the utilization rate is lower
and not very cost effective like it is in dense urban areas. The valley would
have to re-designed.. but yea that isn't happening.

~~~
thrownaway2424
SV is suburbs by any standards. It's completely unservable for mass transit,
so it's no surprise that there is little of that. Only SF, Oakland, Berkeley,
and SJ have the urban density and mix of housing, commerce, and industry that
makes mass transit work. Cupertino is never, ever going to have effective mass
transit unless they bulldoze the place and start over.

~~~
potatolicious
You're absolutely right, but it's not just about density or suburbs - it is
perfectly possible to construct suburbs that can be serviced by transit.

The problem entirely lies in the subdivision format of suburbs in much of the
US - full of twists, turns, cul de sacs, and in general trying as hard as they
can to inhibit movement. Getting to the nearest arterial road becomes an
exercise in futility where you'd find yourself walking along un-sidewalked
road for a whole mile before doubling back onto another street just to end up
at a bus stop.

Low-density cities that are laid in a (saner, and less classist) grid are on
the other hand generally well served by transit. This is no coincidence.

Mass transit and density need not be at odds with each other, though it's a
sad fact that most suburbs will never be adaptable to sane transit.

------
kickingvegas
Dare to dream BIG. What BART could have been. What it still could be.
[http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/2011/10/27/the-
bart-s...](http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/2011/10/27/the-bart-system-
that-never-was/)

------
isalmon
The topic is misleading. "Light rail" != "Transit".

Light rail sucks, no argue about that. Buses are pretty good. Caltrain is
decent. But in such a low density area it's hard to expect something good out
of public transportation.

~~~
rayiner
The density isn't the problem in the way you're thinking. There is definitely
enough people per square mile in the Valley to at least support good commuter
rail (I don't think it's any less dense than the suburban areas around Chicago
or NYC). The problem is density around the train lines. In Westchester County,
NY, every Metro North is the hub of a small urbanized area. I live 20+ miles
from Manhattan, but in a 40-story high-rise from which I can walk to the train
station in under 5 minutes. Have you seen what's around the Cal Train
stations? Nothing!

Here is the area around a Palo Alto Cal Train station:
[http://maps.google.com/maps?q=palo+alto+cal+train+station...](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=palo+alto+cal+train+station&hl=en&ll=37.428149,-122.140589&spn=0.013274,0.01929&sll=40.697488,-73.979681&sspn=0.811072,1.234589&hq=cal+train+station&hnear=Palo+Alto,+Santa+Clara,+California&t=m&fll=37.429172,-122.141876&fspn=0.026548,0.038581&z=16&layer=c&cbll=37.429711,-122.142168&panoid=xCIsasP76kTnMjmNZFxTeQ&cbp=12,48.62,,0,-4.61)

Here is the area around a Westchester Metro North station:
[http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Station+Plaza+N,+New+Rochelle,...](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Station+Plaza+N,+New+Rochelle,+Westchester,+New+York+10801&hl=en&ll=40.910805,-73.810766&spn=0.012632,0.01929&sll=37.429717,-122.142177&sspn=0.013342,0.01929&geocode=FaBFcAIdnCOa-w&hnear=Station+Plaza+N,+New+Rochelle,+Westchester,+New+York+10801&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=40.910849,-73.810914&panoid=7Y8jCyPi2euvvw6zpY9zzA&cbp=12,307.34,,0,-2.4)

~~~
isalmon
> to at least support good commuter rail

I personally don't see any problem with Caltrain. It's relatively reliable and
goes often enough. The only thing that's missing is free wi-fi, but I think
they plan to put it in there eventually.

~~~
rayiner
The problem is nobody uses it. Metro North serves a region with maybe 2-3
million people (depending on how many people in Connecticut you consider part
of the service area), and has a ridership of 300,000 per day. Cal Train serves
a region that's at least as large, but has 40,000 riders a day.

------
jayferd
And since Silicon Valley is slowly moving up to San Francisco, it's worth
noting that BART never runs enough trains to meet demand. It's pretty
infuriating for those of us who live in Berkeley/Oakland.

~~~
mapgrep
This seems to be due to the sudden combination of 1. budget cuts and 2. a big
tech boom. So there were suddenly significantly more riders just as service
was taking a hit. Bad combo.

Last year I started commuting into SF again from the East Bay after a 4 year
break and am still surprised at how full the trains are. As recently as
2007/early 2008 it was much easier for me to get a seat.

(This is partly down to the fact that BART is funded out of so many different
pots of money, including federal, that it can't just expand and contract in
perfect sync with the local economy.)

------
kevinburke
The VTA is one of the worst public transit agencies in the USA. They're
continuing to push for more money for expanded routes, in spite of the
projected low ridership.

More coverage of this topic, dating back a few years:

<http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=289> <http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=475>

------
Thrymr
Love the map of SV private commuter bus lines linked there:
<http://content.stamen.com/zero1>

------
raldi
So if you were elected Benevolent Dictator of the SF Bay Area, how would you
fix the problem?

------
wilfra
>>I thought it then to be weird at best for a city to run light rail on a
sidewalk where pedestrians normally are

It works this way in Amsterdam. Bicycles, pedestrians (many of them stoned
tourists), cars and trains all mixing together peacefully and efficiently.
Europe in general makes the US look like a complete joke where trains are
concerned.

