If that's the point, why does Switzerland have a lower density than the SF Bay Area but a transit system that is orders of magnitude better?
I lived in Switzerland for 9 months last year. They have arguably the best transit infrastructure in the world, with a passenger rail system that is 100% electric.
According to Wikipedia, the density of Zurich is ~4600 people/km^2. The density of San Francisco is ~7170 people/km^2. So what excuse does SF have for being so very, very much worse?
First, there's just the willingness to invest in infrastructure, which is nearly non-existent in the US. Swiss people LOVE infrastructure, they are proud of their tunnels, railroads, bridges, dams, etc.
Take a look at the referendums over the past few years: universal basic income? No. More vacation days? No. Forbid speculation on food products? No. Define marriage as man/woman? No. Build a new tunnel across the Alps? Hell yeah!
But it isn't just about density. You can have mid to low average density, but still have a viable transit system.
Public transit doesn't just depend on the overall average density, but on the density of the area surrounding the transit stops.
Switzerland has reasonably dense cities and towns, with very-low-density areas in between. The SFBA has evenly-distributed low density (except for a few areas).
Increasing the distance between dense cores doesn't have as much negative impact on transit viability as spreading people out has.
The SFBA could easily solve this by changing the zoning laws around Bart, Caltrain, VTA and Muni stations.
> First, there's just the willingness to invest in infrastructure, which is nearly non-existent in the US. Swiss people LOVE infrastructure, they are proud of their tunnels, railroads, bridges, dams, etc.
I totally agree with you here. This is the crux of my argument.
Your statement about Switzerland having reasonably dense cities and towns compared with the Bay Area I'm interested in learning more about - can you cite your source? Having lived in Switzerland for almost a year and in the Bay Area for almost 4, this doesn't ring true to me, but I don't have a heat map of population density to check against; if I get more time at some point I'll try to find more data.
Regardless, we do have some areas of sufficient population density that it would make sense to connect efficiently and we don't. That's the choice I'm talking about. At the very least, it should be easy to get between Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose without needing a car. Within San Francisco, you should be able to go from the east side to the west side without using a system that suffers from being delayed at least 50% of the time.
Also - regarding more vacation days? The government already mandates 4 weeks of vacation (5 if you're under 20) and you are supposed to take at least two of those weeks in a row.
I lived in Switzerland for 9 months last year. They have arguably the best transit infrastructure in the world, with a passenger rail system that is 100% electric.
According to Wikipedia, the density of Zurich is ~4600 people/km^2. The density of San Francisco is ~7170 people/km^2. So what excuse does SF have for being so very, very much worse?