I've never lived in the Bay Area but I've visited a bunch of times. I've considered what I would need to do to live there without a car and it's difficult. Here are some glaring problems:
1. Caltrain is dog slow, infrequent and doesn't tend to go to places you want. Santa Clara County actually runs what seems to be a fairly decent VTA light rail that will get you from, say, downtown Mountain View to tech companies east of Moffett Airfield (Lockheed Martin, Yahoo, some of Microsoft's buildings, etc) but sadly not to the Google campus (west of Moffett Airfield).
To take public transport from SF would require you going to South SF (say half an hour), 1h 20m to MTV and 15-20 minutes on a shuttle if one is running. It's 2 hours best case scenario or one hour (or slightly less) on the 101 on the shuttle busses.
2. Zoning is a disaster for commerce in the valley. Most land is reserved for ("zoned") single family residences on large blocks of land such that density is very low. Public transit just doesn't work at low population density;
3. New development is virtually nonexistent in SF. Rent control is, at this point, an unmitigated disaster to a city that's still clinging to some 60s idyll.
Personally I think NYC is far more attractive than the Bay Area in all ways but two: the weather and the inertia of existing tech companies. You can live 5 minutes walk from work in NYC. There are very few places you could do that (or would want to) in SF.
> Zoning is a disaster for commerce in the valley... New development is virtually nonexistent
What surprises me is that there is still no organization that adequately represents technology companies' and workers' interests on the peninsula and in the city. Most cities here seem to have public employees' associations that have a big say in how the city operates and develops. I think a PAC representing pro-density, pro-development, pro-infrastructure, pro-public transit interests that runs candidates for city councils and builds a track record of successful actions can become the prime political force on the peninsula. (At least if it manages to keep the public project costs from ballooning as they're prone to doing in CA.)
I really don't think public unions is really the blocker when it comes to development in SF - after all, why in the world would density be a chart-topping issue for, say, the teacher's union?
SF residents are their own worst enemy here. Everybody loves the rows of cutesy Victorians, and everybody has a death-grudge against high-rises, or even mid-density low-rises. Every time the issue of development is brought up, people scream foul and act as if the sky is falling. Everyone has a knee-jerk opposition to building things, even though their all-time favorite thing to moan about (rent) is their own damned fault.
Indeed, it makes no sense to blame this particular thing on unions and public employee's, and every sense to blame it on San Francisco's famously myopic citizenry (of which many are techies).
> I really don't think public unions is really the blocker
I agree with you, I don't think they are. What I said is that the tech workers are not represented as a class the way public employees are.
> and everybody has a death-grudge against high-rises, or even mid-density low-rises. Every time the issue of development is brought up, people scream foul and act as if the sky is falling
That's the thing: there's a huge segment of the population who really like high-rises and mid-density buildings, as evidenced by the wild popularity of that kind of housing. But there's a smaller, apparently more vocal segment who hate it (and perhaps have more time on their hands to make themselves heard). So the trick is to organize people who are OK with development to the point where we can repeal laws that preclude it, as well as make things like this possible: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nevius/article/1-dissenting-vo...
> there's a smaller, apparently more vocal segment who hate it (and perhaps have more time on their hands to make themselves heard).
This is a general problem in local governments all over America. The people who already own real estate wield more influence, and their self-interest is in keeping prices high.
There may be many more people who favor denser development and who would become residents / property owners if increased development made it affordable. But potential residents don't get to vote, only actual residents do.
While it's hard to prove, I would not be surprised if local zoning laws are one of the biggest impediments to social mobility. Part of the growing split between rich and poor in America is geographic. If you can make the leap into the richer places, there's much more opportunity.
> Public transit just doesn't work at low population density;
This is a poor excuse. The Bay Area has a population density many times larger than a long list of places with vastly better public transit. Both San Mateo and Santa Clara counties have populations that put them in the same ballpark as the metro area of Oslo for example, yet have population densities that are several times higher. Somehow it works well in places with substantially lower density than Oslo too.
> The Bay Area has a population density many times larger than a long list of places with vastly better public transit.
Well of course the distribution matters greatly too (indeed, maybe it's all that matters).
If the overall population density is the same, but the population is mainly clustered around specific nodes (towns, neighborhoods) and routes (streets), providing good transit will be vastly easier than if the population is evenly distributed as seems to be the goal of 1950s American suburbia.
The clustering of population, of course strongly follows the structure of the dominant transportation method, so such effects also tend to be self-perpetuating.
If anything, I think the Bay Area would be substantially easier to cover well than a lot of places I've lived or travelled.
Sure, the US car centric model isn't ideal for public transport, but the Bay Area does have substantial high density clusters by the standards of e.g. Norway where I'm from.
It probably wouldn't have been if your population density had been comparable. But the Oslo metro region for example, outside of a tiny city core, consists largely of tiny little towns with mostly single or dual residency houses, terraces and a few low apartment buildings. Larger apartment blocks are found some places too, but most commonly in the centre of Oslo. There are large stretches of pretty much empty space - forest or farms. Density for the region as a whole is driven up substantially by the city of Oslo itself.
The Bay Area on the other hand, at least has most of the population clustered around a handful of major transport links, even though the towns spread out more than a similarly sized city usually would in Europe. Increasing frequency of Caltrain, running it later, and adding a handful of extensions to Caltrain and Bart, coupled with a properly unified bus network, would make all the difference, I think.
The bullet trains make it ~40 min SF->PA, ~45 to mountain view. There's lots of companies in downtown PA and MTV, making it just a 5 minute walk on that end. You also might have an easier time if you live near BART (say, in the Mission) and thus can take that to Millbrae instead of taking a slow bus to 4th/King.
So you're probably still looking at an hour and a half, but maybe not quite as bad as you describe.
Of course, this isn't a problem if you just work in SF too, and there's more and more great companies in the city. As awful as Muni is, it should offer you a <= half hour commute in most cases.
I'd love to move to SF, but I don't think I can swing it. (2) and (3) are deal breakers for me. There is a sickening amount of wasted space in the Valley and in SF proper. I can deal with Manhattan rents for Manhattan (world class city, very limited land), but not when it's so terribly self-inflicated as it is in the Bay Area.
>Personally I think NYC is far more attractive than the Bay Area in all ways but two: the weather and the inertia of existing tech companies. You can live 5 minutes walk from work in NYC. There are very few places you could do that (or would want to) in SF.
Interesting. Can you tell me what kind of cycling routes compare to what's available in the bay area in NYC? As someone who's lived in both places, there's no comparison, but since those are the only two things you can think of...
who has, amongst other things, closed off Times Square to traffic and added bike lanes to 8th (and other) avenues.
I'm not an avid cyclist but I have done some limited cycling in the Valley and it's frigging dangerous. I simply won't go on anything other than back roads and even there you're in constant danger of being wiped out by a car pulling out of a parking lot of a car turning right at a red light (worst road rule ever; it's illegal in the the five boroughs but some people are ignorant of this).
I know someone who bikes in most days from Brooklyn but I think you need to be attentive. Then again, as a cyclist on roads, I think that is universally true.
In Norcal you can probably bike almost year round. In NYC less so. In winter you do get issues with snow and ice. Overall it probably rains more in NYC than in the Bay Area but I'm just guessing there.
Lived in SF, currently in NYC. I don't think the biking situation is comparable. SF drivers are vicious, but biking is so prevalent that in many parts of the city you own the streets.
Manhattan on the other hand is just one gigantic traffic clusterfuck - and that's for cars. The risk of taking a bicycle through the streets of Midtown is IMO many, many times of doing the same in downtown SF.
Sure, Manhattan has a great selection of bike trails (better than SF, IMO), but cycling as a commuting or general transportation option? No fucking way.
I think you're being your own worst enemy here. I also live in NYC and find the cycling situation to be fine. There's a lot of traffic in midtown but there's plenty of space for cyclists.
There's no cycling routes because within Manhattan it's far easier to just take the subway or bus. Cycling has largely arisen in the Bay because public transit is so god awful.
A large part of the problem with transit for long distance commutes in the Bay Area is the lack of intra-agency cooperation. Because every county has its own transit agency, a trip that spans multiple counties requires either taking BART or Caltrain, or transferring buses each time you cross a county line. And of course, for trips to SV BART isn't an option, so your choice is Caltrain which runs infrequently (even during commute hours the frequency is pretty low) or a terrible set of bus routes. Consolidating all of the transit agencies (under the auspices of the MTC or something else) would be an excellent step towards building a more useful transit network.
1. Caltrain is dog slow, infrequent and doesn't tend to go to places you want. Santa Clara County actually runs what seems to be a fairly decent VTA light rail that will get you from, say, downtown Mountain View to tech companies east of Moffett Airfield (Lockheed Martin, Yahoo, some of Microsoft's buildings, etc) but sadly not to the Google campus (west of Moffett Airfield).
To take public transport from SF would require you going to South SF (say half an hour), 1h 20m to MTV and 15-20 minutes on a shuttle if one is running. It's 2 hours best case scenario or one hour (or slightly less) on the 101 on the shuttle busses.
2. Zoning is a disaster for commerce in the valley. Most land is reserved for ("zoned") single family residences on large blocks of land such that density is very low. Public transit just doesn't work at low population density;
3. New development is virtually nonexistent in SF. Rent control is, at this point, an unmitigated disaster to a city that's still clinging to some 60s idyll.
Personally I think NYC is far more attractive than the Bay Area in all ways but two: the weather and the inertia of existing tech companies. You can live 5 minutes walk from work in NYC. There are very few places you could do that (or would want to) in SF.