I've been involved in San Francisco transit planning in various capacities for 11 years now. I'm here to tell you, in my opinion, these plans will never happen for our generation.
San Francisco suffers from too many small town self-inflicted political wounds. While the Central Subway will open in a couple of years with it's new subway and light rail cars, it'll likely be the last one for us, perhaps even for our children. Political power brokers, such Willie Brown and the late-Rose Pak, only rolled in their power to give Chinatown a replacement for the Central Freeway that was torn down after the 89 quake.
Existing SFCTA members, which are also the Board of Supervisors, constantly squander transportation funds. Millions have been poured into funding pet political projects, such as free muni rides for youth and seniors, making Muni a system of handouts instead of pulling free ride funding from the Feds or the general fund. The latest axe swing was to delay the DTX, the Caltrain subway to the Transbay Tower, which the voters prioritized in 1999.
The existing anti-transit, anti-growth cabal of Kim, Peskin, Campos, Yee, Mar, and Avalos have been able to grab too much power, and will always vote to side with NIMBYs (Not in My Back Yard) over modern urban growth and planning. Even the next cohort of supervisors will hold the same values, because the voters will put similar people into power once they term out, cutting more into the city's progress as a metropolitan powerhouse.
My educated predictions on this chart are: We'll see Geary BRT, Geneva BRT, 19th Ave Rapid, and the M extension to Park Merced. Maybe some new signals and bike lanes. That's it.
The SFMTA's 20 year vision does not include any subway or rail extensions otherwise. I have asked Nick Josefowitz, who's district would include a theoretical BART extension under Geary, and he says BART is too far behind on maintenance to even consider such an idea.
"My educated predictions on this chart are: We'll see Geary BRT, Geneva BRT, 19th Ave Rapid, and the M extension to Park Merced. Maybe some new signals and bike lanes. That's it."
So sad ... so sad and lame. BRT is such a half-assed, half-cracked solution.[1]
What's even more lame is the fact that the one new subway built in 40 years is very short and doesn't extend to its obvious, natural limits - fisherman's wharf.
Billions of dollars and 40 years later, you can finally walk downstairs, buy a ticket, wait a few minutes, ride a train, walk back upstairs all to avoid walking 6 blocks.
[1] To be fair, I have seen it work in Boulder (hop/skip) and in the roaring fork valley (Aspen) but these are low density places where real public transit (subway and light rail) are not workable. Unlike San Francisco.
Respectfully, the Hop and Skip in Boulder (as well as the Flatiron Flyer) aren't BRT - they are just plain old busses. A crucial part of BRT is dedicated lanes.
Don't get me wrong. I think transit here in Denver/Boulder is pretty good, but we don't have BRT (despite what RTD tells us).
Yes, I suppose they do not have dedicated lanes but the "every ten minutes" model of frequent arrival (as opposed to running on a typical bus schedule) I think puts them more in the category of BRT ...
My other example - VelociRFTA in the Roaring Fork Valley (Glenwood to Aspen) also does not have dedicated lanes, but the state of CO and local agencies specifically refer to it as BRT ...
"Every 10 minutes" is a completely typical bus schedule, in the civilised world (greetings from London, or basically any European city of consequence). It's not BRT at all. There are Brazilian BRT lines which run vehicles every 60 seconds -- THAT is how BRT works.
If "running every 10 minutes" model makes you a BRT, then that makes practically all (somewhat-)working high-frequency buses BRTs. I can give around 50 examples from Istanbul alone
Yeah, but not in America, which is what we are talking about. I used to live in San Diego and took buses that ran once an hour. A high frequency bus was one that ran every 30 minutes.
The Central Subway has three underground stops: 4th & Folsom (Yerba Buena / Moscone) is the closest underground one to Caltrain. The tunnel emerges under the I-80 and has an above-ground station at Caltrain.
Caltrain's DTX (Downtown Rail Extension) doesn't connect to the Central Subway either.
I think there's supposed to be a pedestrian tunnel from the Caltrain Transit Center station to Market St. And that would be perfectly fine.
One of the reasons subways cost so much money is because stations are so expensive. And stations are so expensive because everybody nit-picks. In the the United States today large public works projects only happen after near unanimous consensus. The result is that when these projects do happen, they're incredibly expensive in order to satisfy each and every desire.
Just like the OP said--we'll never see another subway line in San Francisco for the foreseeable future because there's too much "community involvement". Everybody wants to criticize and nobody wants to compromise. It's a large problem in the US on the whole, and it's led to paralysis.
What can we do about it? I like Voteplz because it demonstrates that tech can solve political problems too (i.e. not enough young potential voters turn up to vote -> let's make it easier for them to vote). As someone who has a vested interest in SF's future as a tech hub, I'd really love to contribute to something that will actually work but I don't know enough about the problem.
We need to change how people think. The crux of the problem is that SF's voters still think they live in a sleepy town in Kansas when in reality many other cities look up to it as an example, "What is San Francisco doing? Let's copy them!"
I'm not going to pretend to have a solution other than education and community outreach. Get organized. Voting isn't enough -- that's not exactly how this city works under the hood. Researched, practiced, trained, and available citizens need to show up to city meetings and be as loud as possible. How can we do this if we are bootstrapping our startup and working 12 hour days? Who is going to show up while we are at home making dinner for the kids? Something to noodle over.
No argument -- you could post articles all day like this.
Things that other cities copy:
Our classic street car system.
Our bicycle network.
Our fire suppression network.
Our seawall system.
Our water treatment system.
How to get startups like San Francisco does!
Failings aside, setting an example for other US cities should be San Francisco's goal. We have a lot of smart people here, and have historically (the TV was invented on Green St! SF has a history in avionics, oddly enough too).
I've never heard of any city looking to San Francisco for any of these things. What city had built a street car system in recent memory? People look to places like Amsterdam for their bicycle networks. People look to places like New York City for their water treatment systems.
I was referring to US bicycle network and cities. SF implemented many bike lane programs, inspired by European cities, that have been replicated in other US cities.
The first electric streetcar in the U.S. was actually in Richmond, VA. Philly and Chicago built street car networks roughly contemporaneously with San Francisco. E.g SEPTA's current street cars date back to Philly's 19th century network). Between the 1880s and 1930s, it was Chicago's streetcar network that was the largest in the world.
As for bike lanes, nobody is looking to San Francisco to see how they implemented Amsterdam's bike lanes.
East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) is a subject of conversation nationally when looking at organic waste treatment, but I guess that's not technically San Francisco.
As someone who lived in Zurich, which serves >200M streetcar rides yearly: It is, just not for the reasons you think. Streetcar lines are largely built to have their osn reserved space along the roads in a space saving fashion. That means way less sensitivity to traffic situation. That means that, while slow, ETAs are quite reliable. That means you have something you can plan tight schedules with - and at the same time relax while driving. Couple that with efficient and abundant local trains and you have something way more comfortable and efficient than cars.
You'd think, but the H-street line (which is what the earlier poster was referring to) doesn't have its own dedicated space (the rails run over areas also used by cars) and often has collisions with traffic. As a non-driver who recently moved back to the DC area, I applaud the idea of new transit options, but the DC streetcar wasn't thought out well and has probably discredited the idea here.
Speaking as someone from another country involved in urban planning the key things i have heard SF mentioned for on a modern transport side are:
- technological uptake (uber, variety of sharing options eg scooter sharing, new developments proposing to pay ongoing uber rather than provide parking)
- using technology to measure and understand transit issues
- Your cycleways are also a good example of implemntation in a western country. One thing i particularly like is the categorisation system of cycleway quality.
- a little futher back the tearing down of the embarcadero freeway
Of course thats not to say there arent issues as well. Central SF seems far more progressive than other areas from a governance perspective.
My personal understanding is there is a lot of local politics at play. Here in Sydney Australia the state government has taken a lot of power away from local governments on these issues (with strategic gain but also ignoring real local issues). The uk 'city deals' model is another strategy aimed at the same issues
We do some things spectacularly right, and I adore the pants off this city, but it doesn't begin to mitigate the levels of auto-craniorectal impaction I see every day, public sector or private.
>> "What is San Francisco doing? Let's copy them!"
> I'd honestly be surprised if this has ever been uttered out loud in America.
I've witnessed one such instance: when I lived in Seattle (since moved to SF 5 years ago) I heard people there draw parallels between the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the Embarcadero Freeway, speaking favorably about what happened when the latter was torn down.
LOL. Nobody is saying "What is San Francisco doing? Let's copy them!" It's cute how much of a little bubble SF folks live in and how much Kool-aid that has been guzzled.
"Often criticized for having an overly involved building department with constricting permitting procedures, San Francisco is like looking into the crystal ball of Seattle’s future if measures aren’t taken."
I agree with the OP and have also seen it over the years. I had and ex that got her urban planning degree from Columbia and worked for NYC planning dept. I learned alot from her degree via osmosis.
There is an overarching theme here though that doesn't just permeate things like transportation, but frankly, many aspects of city residence: ivory tower power grabs. The political system here is broken in my mind and like the op said, controlled by these little groups of, really, anti-progress people. Look no further than transportation and education.
Not to change the subject, but we're going through the 'school lottery' now for our first child and it's fucking ridiculous. We're touring 15 schools and have talked to people that have said "you need at least 30 so they know you're serious..."! We live 3 blocks from one of the best schools in the city and probably won't get in. Hacks that people richer than us are doing? Move across town to increase your chances of getting into the school 3 blocks from us!
I first moved to SF in the 90's from southern california and it was amazing. Mostly because I came to a 'real' city. But, many things have not changed much. Homeless is worse than ever, I never knew how shitty the school situation was, transportation still sub-par, police brutality about the same but more documented.
I've also lived in NYC and Chicago, traveled all over the world and have seen how real big cities work. I've never seen a subway in Japan, the UK, Paris, Berlin, even India, that is like ours. Bart passengers deal with a lot of transient people in the cars directly, while muni has that plus some of the stations are so awful that you get close to puking because of the filth. Powell muni exit at 4th is fucked up.
Honestly, I have no idea what will fix any of this. Every mayor since I moved here has had a homeless program and it hasn't done much. I think rent control has backfired, permitting process and nimbyism are still a joke, edu system is ridiculous, etc. It seems like there are these 'educated' people that love experimenting with ideas that have no basis in reality.
I never used to really get why families would leave. "Who would leave the city?!" But, once you get trapped in any of these things, it's a grind. And nobody cares much.
There are a lot of great things about the city and I have a lot of history here, but it's only been in the last few years that I seriously thought about leaving. I have a good friend that's lived in the east bay for over a decade now (they bought their house when it was _only_ $700k). We would get into heated discussions about suburbia vs. the city and I'd always defend the virtues of the city. My spiky ideals have been ground down to nubs and now it's just like, get me past the everyday garbage to work and back home.
So now I ask myself, do I really want to raise a family in a place where high minded idealism rules over common sense and reality? Or do we flee like countless others?
On the topic of city meetings, there has to be a way to change this dynamic. Working people are just never going to be well represented at an weekday afternoon meeting and we end up with biased policy. There has to be another way that politicians can get feedback about the needs of their constituents, and earn votes for good work.
Being governed by those who can and will go to a weekday afternoon meeting to speak their mind doesn't feel that far from being ruled by YouTube commenters.
In general, there are community meetings that happen on weekends and after work hours. City staff show up to these after their workday.
These events, in general, are weak politically to voice opinions. Showing up to daytime meetings is very effective, but would probably require some sort of community organization to find people who can take the time off.
Register to vote by mail -- it takes three minutes and you don't need a California drivers license.
Then select one or more organizations that you trust, and when each election approaches, google their "slate cards", which will tell you how to vote.
Obviously, you should feel free to investigate the specifics of any ballot measure or candidate if you have the time to do so, but if you don't, you're better off going with the slate cards than not voting.
Great organization! Follow them on Twitter and listen to the podcast. More people in the tech industry should support this party in order to get some real change in this city
The more people get involved, the more chance they have. There are a ton of people here in that area. That group is a chance to do something about changing SF beyond griping on HN.
hmmm... already I don't like them because they recommend Scott Weiner. He's the jerkweed who sponsored the bill making it legal for police to steal homeless people's possessions. What a cold human trashbag.
Homeless or not, there should never be a law singling out a group of people and limiting their fundamental rights.
>The existing anti-transit, anti-growth cabal... have been able to grab too much power, and will always vote to side with NIMBYs over modern urban growth and planning. Even the next cohort of supervisors will hold the same values, because the voters will put similar people into power once they term out...
Seems like the people of SF are getting a board that represents their desires. Is that not an example of functioning government? Seems to me it would be far worse if the board consistently voted _against_ the wishes of the populous.
No matter how hard the people of San Francisco wish, the transit problems will continue to get worse into the foreseeable future. It's an interesting definition of the word "functioning" we have to assume.
They are responding to incentives. If they had to pay the property taxes that prop 13 protects them from, they would start to self-modulate and allow things to reduce their house assessment value.
> In Tokyo, being a 3 minute walk from a train/subway station easily adds a couple percent in housing value.
"Couple percent" ? More than that - from what I saw in most large cities, home value is pretty much directly proportional to distance from railbound mass transportation nodes.
This is completely correct. It's one more reason that the cure for our ills is not hoping for local governance to overcome NIMBYism but rather for reform in land-use policies which will achieve more fairness.
It is patently unfair that people who grew up in the bay area cannot afford to live here because of this anti-growth attitude. Democracy is not the freedom to step on other people, including dictating that others cannot build a multi-family dwelling on their own land. Real Estate NIMBY-ism is the antithesis of democracy, because it is a few entitled people saying they will control what other people do with their own private property.
An economic solution to nimbyism is bribe: as a developer give everyone within one block of your proposed site $200 per month, within 2 block $100 per month, etc, and see how many people vote against your development. Of course, you can structure it as property tax reduction for your friendly neighbors, and find a catchy name for it, like "externality tax abatement" (anyone interested in a kickstarter idea? just kiding)
I think there's merit in this, but when you expand it to the bigger problem of the landed and the landless, you see how it fails to scale: a Coasean solution to landlessness is equivalent to a Coasean solution to slavery-- but slaves can't exactly afford to buy themselves out of their situation...
If you buy a piece of property in a place that puts certain restrictions on what you can do with it that's all baked into the price.
I don't see that anyone has a right to live in any particular place, and much of what people like about the city is a result of "Real Estate NIMBY-ism". Also, it's hard to see how "a few entitled people" control what people are doing with their property, unless that's become new slang for "the majority of voters".
>Also, it's hard to see how "a few entitled people" control what people are doing with their property, unless that's become new slang for "the majority of voters".
In this case, that's exactly what it's slang for. The only people who can vote for these things are the ones already entitled enough to live in the city. Everyone else that was forced to the east bay and down south has no voice.
Well, okay. But the result of one group of people being governed by another is also war.
We have different levels of government for a reason.
EDIT: To other points occur to me: 1) I've never found Hobbes very compelling. And 2) If "these other people affect me" is your (not you you, but the general you) idea of a casus belli, you will perpetually be at war no matter how large or small your government.
Yes. Land has to belong to the wider population, not just the people who live there, because there is no practical way to make more and a limit to how much we can improve what exists.
Existing SFCTA members constantly squander transportation funds
When faced with 2 BART related measures on the ballot this year, this thought kept haunting me.
If they're asking for bonds to simply maintain the existing infrastructure, what are they doing with the operating capital? Bonds should be reserved for expansion.
There is no accounting issue. I review the SFMTA budget before it is approved by the mayor and board of supervisors every 2 years. In it, there are line items to fund the free Muni for Youth and low income seniors out of the SFMTA budget (iirc, $15m/yr).
What I am saying is the programs to help those in need (low income, teens, low income seniors) come out of the budget to run the transportation network, but it would make more sense to take the money out of social services and school district funds.
As an aside, the free Muni for youth program was paid for via a grant from Google for 2 years. After the grant expired, the SFMTA picked up the tab from their budget.
The makeup of the city is changing and as it does, options that appear impossible today will work in the future. We can all make it go faster by simply ignoring that NIMBYs exist and shooting for small wins. A series of small wins over 10 years could probably get us in place to finally start subway construction out to sunset etc.
The problem in SF is not that NIMBYs exist. They're everywhere.
The problem is that in the SF legal system, NIMBYs are given enormous power to stop changes. The system defaults to "let's not do anything, to be safe".
This. This whole study is actually based on the work of SF Supervisor Scott Wiener who is currently running for State Senate representing the Bay Area. If you want transit improvements in the Bay Area...vote for Scott Wiener.
Scott is the supervisor in my district and has been responsive to my citizen requests (broken benches, crime, etc). I support him for Senate.
As indicated earlier, Kim is not pro-transit. I have tried to collaborate with her on transportation advocacy and been unsuccessful. I'm not sure if that disqualifies her for Senate but it makes me unhappy.
Hey pdx6...feel free to give me an email if you need help pressing this issue with city hall. I'm already a member of SF Transit Riders and would love to get involved. My email is in my hn bio.
The thing is, government is slow, and we all know it takes time, but the fact that people can see a map and realize that a lot of people want what they want will help this move along. There likely won't be as many stops as people want and some neighborhoods will fight it. Ultimately it will be built and will allow easy access to the beach from downtown as well as to the financial district from peoples homes.
At least you're thinking about future residents of SF and not yourself, because no one here is going to see any of the proposed changes to drive transit progress for at least 20-30 years.
This idea is beyond my expertise, but I will say that SF gets a lot of money from the feds already for transportation projects. Applications are driven by SFMTA staff, and they have a lot of success (such as small starts grants) because the SFMTA matches many of the goals the Department of Transportation wants, such as reducing dependency on cars and reducing green house gasses.
As an aside, one grant that the SFMTA didn't get, but you might think is a shoe-in, was the Smart Cities grant (http://smartcitysf.com/). This would have created a program to increase cycling by innovating around car and bus automation. With the saved space from the eliminated parking, the city could convert those areas to housing, community centers and parks.
SF lost the grant and the funds went to Columbus, Ohio. The videos of the presentations are online if you search for them.
I don't get why the US (and it seems similar in other anglophone countries) has so many problems in building up public transit in cities. Even politically - aren't US cities rather left leaning, like in Europe? Doesn't that lead to a preference of public transit and work against NIMBY groups?
- Greater local control over government decision making. This cuts both ways, but there are a couple specific ways it makes transit projects hard to push through. First, it inserts lots of veto points into the process, which a determined minority can use to block the project. If the benefits are diffuse (a more transit accessible city), but the perceived costs are concentrated (they would tear up the street in front of my house, etc.), then it's hard to get the necessary political support to overcome all the vetoes. Second, the politicians making the decisions are accountable to the residents of that area, who aren't always the intended beneficiaries of the project. For example, a rail link that brings commuters to an area might be a huge benefit to the commuteers, but a net negative to the residents.
- Infrastructure decisions are path-dependent. It's hard, both technically and politically, to introduce transit to a community that hasn't been previously dependent on it. Neighborhoods built with cars in mind might not have enough density to support great service, and built-up, expensive neighborhoods (where the jobs are) are often prohibitively expensive to build in. Politically, it's tricky because neighborhoods and regions are going to be mostly full of people for whom the existing infrastructure is already good enough - they wouldn't be there otherwise. New projects are more likely to benefit new people - people who relocate because the new service opens up lifestyle/commuting possibilities that weren't possible before.
- High construction costs. There's ongoing debate about why this is (I won't get into it), but US cities generally have higher construction costs than other developed countries, even for similar projects. 2011 post with some concrete data: https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...
Holy crap... these numbers are absolutely nuts. 8.1 billion dollars for 2 kilometers of subway tunnel? What are they doing? Switzerland has just opened a 57km tunnel through the alps, some of the most difficult sediment to tunnel through, for ..... just over 10 billion. That's 175M/km or a factor of 23 less, in one of most high priced countries in the world.
London has just drilled 42km of tunnel, with a further 76km of surface track, and including stations along its length to serve 200 million passengers a year, trains and everything it will only cost £15Bn.
This is only a little over twice the SF figure, for an order of magnitude better result.
They have to play Tetris underground though, with the existing tunnels. In some places the new Crossrail tunnels are only meters away from other tunnels.
I assume so, but it's not all that clear to me why - if the tunneling vibrations are an issue, just dig deeper? The Gotthard base itself had massive problems with loose sediments - alpine sediments are vertical, so they change abruptly every few meters. You could also compare with the Durchmesser line in Zurich [1, 2, German]: ~2.1Bn USD, up from 1.9Bn projected at project start, 4.8km tunnel, 9.6km total length of new railway beneath, above and alongside urban housing, includes a new underground train station, 7 years to build from start to finish.
You can also compare it to Tokyo. 5-10x cheaper to build their metro lines while their GDP per capita is only 37% less than the US.
Digging under an existing city is hard. You have to thread your way through deep-driven building foundations, dodge or relocate underground pipes and cables, and maintain enough integrity to keep everything above from sinking while you do it.
And (please don't take this the wrong way) a lot of places outside the US have been easier to build in because, over the past century, those places had to be completely rebuilt anyway following the massive devastation of two world wars. The US escaped that devastation on its own soil, but is paying an ironic price in that now it's difficult or even impossible to retrofit more modern infrastructure into our cities, because we still have all the old infrastructure that never got destroyed.
Another example is the Malmö City Tunnel, drilled right under Sweden's third-largest city. $0.96 billion for 17 km (it even completed under time and under budget). Malmö as a city predates the European settlement of the United States, sustained no damage in WW2 and has many historical buildings. To be fair though, the geology in the area presents no special challenges.
California is particularly bad in terms of laws preventing development. Opponents of development, even for approved plans, can delay them by years by claiming various review processes, particularly environmental, which take a long time.
There are many processes in place to disapprove of something, but none to approve to counteract them.
I just keep wondering what it is in particular though. Here's why: I'm Swiss. We have a strong conservative party (~30%, the largest party actually) that closely aligns with the NIMBYs. We have direct democracy, a strong tool to shut down any new law if people don't like it, and basically the main tool of opposition (our local and national governments are pretty much all shared between all larger parties, so there isn't really an opposition in the form of a party, rather it's the people's referendums). We also have very strong neighbourhood protection laws that make it such that modestly large hobby groups can get together and shut down large projects. Example: A football stadium project in Zurich was shut down this way. We also have very strong protection of 'historical sites', that goes as far as protecting 19th century industrial buildings in places (one such was actually moved by 20m to make way for a train track recently... absolutely nuts).
So, in total, I don't really get how it could get any worse for large public projects. And yet Switzerland in general and Zurich in particular is opening up new tunnels, streetcar lines, local train lines, viaducts, you name it, every other year or so. Zurich's public transit network in particular is crazy dense. When I first saw SF main station I thought I must have gotten off by accident in some local backwater, that's how disparate the situation is. Honestly, my 10'000 people hometown's train station probably almost sees about as much foot traffic as SF main station. And that's not even talking about Japan, which is another level of crazy.
As an outsider to Switzerland, I'd say the Swiss see quality-of-life (including things like education, transportation) as a national security issue, as a way to remain competitive and relevant in a globalized world where most people can underbid them, and therefore they invest strongly in projects that promote an educated, happy, productive, globally competitive populace.
The Alpine tunnels and motorways are a part of this, as they ensure that Switzerland will remain an attractive option for cross-EU freight (instead of going around) but so are more local initiatives that improve conditions in the cities and cantons.
EDIT: In many ways, the same applies to Japan. Meanwhile SF feels no such pressure. Plenty of people (and companies) are all-too willing to move there regardless. If/when at some point SF experiences a decline, these skipped investments will begin to be sorely missed.
I think you may have a point, although as a resident for a combined ~25y I tend to have less rose tinted glasses about Swiss government. Here's my take on it though: Swiss people do have comparatively high trust in their government. Not because they like the people sitting there, not because they are deemed very competent (in fact Swiss governments are almost by-design boring and just cogs in a machine), but: We feel safe in knowing that if they go just moderately crazy they can be shut down by popular vote within months. The social safety net is another huge factor I think, and probably a bigger one than the citizen rights: There's lots of comfort in knowing that if all goes wrong, you still have a comfortable apartment, your medical bills are covered and you can still send your kids to be best schools in the country - basically all that happens is that you can't take any vacations abroad and you can't go and buy expensive toys you don't need. This makes people much more relaxed, which in turn is often necessary when working together on big projects - if everyone is just in constant ass-covering-defense-mode, things like these will just either never happen or the cost will go through the roof.
The thing is though, the US was by far the best nation at this just 50 years ago. The interstate system, the moon landing, Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, MIT... the US is still basically running on top of these efforts from back then. Was it just Reaganism that destroyed it, with later democratic presidents asleep at the wheel? (e.g. Bill Clinton pushed through and signed the money-for-work social program, destroying the old safety net)
...if everyone is just in constant ass-covering-defense-mode, things like these will just either never happen or the cost will go through the roof.
This is basically every USA public project, and it forms a vicious circle. Because some highway was built some time with an inadequately-compacted roadbed, highway inspectors have to sign off on the compaction of every quarter-mile of roadbed. Because highway inspectors can never be fired, they all eventually succumb to the "inspect from the pickup truck" method. Because inspectors are nominally responsible for quality control, no road builder can ever be held accountable for inadequately compacted roadbed.
The result is that vehicles with inadequate dampening often leave the road surface entirely at e.g. each end of every interstate bridge.
The thing is though, the US was by far the best nation at this just 50 years ago. The interstate system, the moon landing, Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, MIT... the US is still basically running on top of these efforts from back then.
These projects were completed by the Greatest generation, managed without pity by the Lost generation. When we again have generations so well prepared by their formative experiences to work as they did, perhaps we'll have more successful giant centralizing projects like that. If world wars are the price of such abilities, one might rather we did without.
NIMBYs are not constrained to conservative people at all here. I know very liberal people in SF that constantly vote against any improvements to the city because they 'don't want the feel to change'.
What does liberal even mean in the US then? If it's neither pushing personal liberties nor corporate liberties nor progressiveness ... it's just another form of conservative thinking. So you got a two party system with two conservative parties. No wonder, really.
Many liberals in the US are skeptical of "growth" or "development" plans because they're seen as inevitably gentrifying neighborhoods (making areas where poor people could afford to live suddenly unaffordable) and transferring all the direct financial benefits to large chain/franchise corporations instead of to local residents who need the help.
To be fair, where I am in the UK, that's actually the case with my council's development plans. The goal is almost always to bring in more national chains and multinational businesses, not to promote local business or do anything to improve the quality of life of local people.
It's path dependent. Many things happened in the SF Bay area that led to this. Here are factors in a rough order of importance.
1) Most people's savings are in housing. I do not know if this is the case in Switzerland, but in Anglo countries, the majority of most people's money lies in housing. So right there is an enormous incentive to not increase the supply of housing. This is also heavily influenced by the fact that American schools are funded by local property taxes, so not only does the value of your home determine your savings, but also the quality of your child's education. I think this is the fundamental issue, but not the only one.
2) Strong property rights, etc. covered above. It seems like you have this in Switzerland
3) Now, historical reasons. In the 1950s - 70s there was major development of American "inner cities", which mostly consisted of destroying minority neighborhoods and replacing them with freeways. This was a legacy of the fact that at the time the only urban planners where all transportation engineers, and viscous racism. This is important as it led to minority groups deciding that most "development plans" are actually plans to evict them (historically, not that far off). That things were handled so badly led to the first anti-development movement [1]. See the Fillmore District for such an example, although they didn't build a highway through it. See also [2].
4) The next thing to think about is prop 13. Prop 13 basically limited the amount that property taxes on residential areas to roughly 1~2% no matter what. This also brings up an important distinction between Switzerland and California: to my understanding you have citizen initiatives, but they are consulted on and shaped by the legislator. California's are... not. They are often poorly designed. This had many knock on effects, the most important of which for our story is that now cities have little incentive to build more residential housing, since corporate property tax rates are not so capped.
5) In the '60s and '70s, as alluded the anti-growth movement began. This movement reacted to justifiable worries about the destruction of communities, environmental, and historical damage by demanding little growth.
6) Both the anti-growth movement and Prop 13. came about in the '70s, when rent control was also passed in SF. Rent Control means that there is little incentive to invest in an already owned property, and it means that if a new building is built, it likely won't be affordable for low income people who are on rent control.
7) Racism. This is touchy, but in the 1950s and 1960s, many many white Americans left the cities to live in new suburbs, so called "White Flight", with government loan help which blacks could not receive. This was coupled with laws passed against obvious housing discrimination (such as so called "compacts" which made it illegal to sell to non-whites), so moving to a suburb with high housing prices meant that mostly poorer blacks could not buy houses there. It's difficult to say how much this plays out today, but it had a really strong founder effect in most outlying communities, leading to a culture opposed to mass transit ("it'll bring those people here") and multi-person housing ("I love my community of single family homes. It's not my problem if people can't afford housing here. We're full").
So basically everyone is opposed to more building. Minorities are convinced that more building will price them out (true) and that development is likely biased against them, preservation activists don't want new things built, suburban communities don't want to become any denser, municipalities prefer business over homes for tax reasons, and everyone who owns land has no desire to build more.
I just want to note the real killer about prop 13 is not the property tax rate limit being at %1-%2, but that property tax assessments cannot grow beyond %2 per year. It's rent control for property owners. It takes 35 years for a $100'000 house to become assessed for almost $200'000.
This causes long term property owners to pay very minimal property tax bills compared to recent owners and create effective property tax rates of %0.2 or less. Prop 13 also incentives owners to never sell, which causes supply problems and increases the price even more.
There are many US states that have property tax rates lower than california, but do not have the "prop 13" problem. King county in seattle is one example.
Thank you for the write-up - much of this I haven't really considered yet, although I've seen the information in other contexts before. So it's kind of throwing out the baby with the bathwater: Because previous projects were racist and anti-poor in motivation, the solution is to block all future projects. Well, I guess software/work from home/VR is going to be the saving grace. I just hope it's not going to be a Black Mirror like dystopia.
So to be clear here, your reasons why these things will never happen are your opinion as well.
Or to put it another way - in what capacity have you been involved in transit planning (as a lobbyist perhaps) and why should I treat your lengthy comment as anything more than heavily biased opinion?
Impressive. The OP gives a well thought-out comment and you basically respond with an accusation of being a shill because he/she wants more public transit.
The only reason BART exists is because of the NIMBYs:
"Lost in the story of the Freeway Revolt is the role it played in helping BART get institutional support. After the 1959 Supervisorial defeat of freeway plans, BART advocates got surplus Bay Bridge tolls allocated to the proposed transbay tube. After the 1961 vote against the Western Freeway, Mayor George Christopher and the influential Bay Area Council both endorsed the proposed BART system."
The Geary line would be something akin to Boston's Big Dig in complexity and scale.
The freeway revolts had nothing to do with NIMBYism. NIMBYs say, "I agree that people need a place to live -- they just shouldn't live near me" or "I agree that we need prisons -- just not near me."
The freeway protesters believed that freeways shouldn't cut through any municipality. Not just theirs -- nobody's.
If you think something shouldn't exist at all, you're not a NIMBY.
This is why the term NIMBY doesn't really capture what's happening now. The modern NIMBYs oppose city-oriented development in cities. They, too, seem not to be saying "not near me," but, rather, "not anywhere." It's a conservative impulse against any change.
IMHO, there's no more self-destructive tendencies than those that oppose cities being cities.
More people want to live in cities than there is space in the cities. Given that high-density living is more environmentally friendly than low-density sprawl, it's particularly bad for those in cities to not allow more people to live there.
But there's two things that everybody hates in city planning: sprawl and density.
More people want to live in specific cities than there is space in those cities. There are plenty of cities with available real estate at reasonable prices.
Taking SF as an example, there is a huge amount of space left. Paris has about 20k /sq. km, whereas San Francisco is about a third of that. And Paris' skyline is not dominated by highrises.
There's more than enough room in SF proper, and there's absolutely tons of room down the peninsula. It just happens that current residents don't want their city to be more like a city, and don't want to improve the infrastructure so that more people move in.
That would seem to be their choice to make, rightly or wrongly. And, to my point, there's plenty of space for people around the US and even in cities--just not in some specific places today as they're currently built out and provisioned for infrastructure.
That would seem to be their choice to make, rightly or wrongly.
My position on this is undoubtedly going to seem absurd to anyone hearing it for the first time, but it's that, no, in fact, San Francisco does not belong to the people who happen to live there already. The most good could be done for the most people by opening it up to -- unsurprisingly, almost tautologically -- more people.
Well, it would be their choice to make if it was their property. But is it their choice to stop any development anywhere?
That's the reality that many California cities live with: people who moved there a decade or more ago want their place to not change at all from the moment they moved in, not realizing that their own arrival also disturbed those who were there before.
Because the problem isn't so much people not building stuff on their own property, it's a small number of highly motivated people that can stop any change at all, or interfere with others use of their land to the extent that they can not build, even within existing permitted use.
>But is it their choice to stop any development anywhere?
Any development. Anywhere? No. But they can vote to influence the type of development allowed in the community where they're a voter. This isn't unlimited. Other property owners have rights based on the rules that were in place when they bought.
>interfere with others use of their land to the extent that they can not build, even within existing permitted us
> Given that high-density living is more environmentally friendly
> than low-density sprawl […]
Depends. Solar is close to the point where a typical suburban home can be energy-neutral; that can't happen when you have many more homes per roof.
Silly Valley's housing and commuting nightmare is a consequence of tech companies' management decisions to cram everyone into the same physical space. It doesn't have to be that way; moving bits is far cheaper (in money and energy) than moving bodies.
The problem is in SF people have so much invested in real estate anything that could potentially lower the value of their properties will be fought pretty rigorously. Anything that would block a view, or increase traffic, or create noise, or change the "special character" of the neighborhood.
And then Marin and San Mateo counties effectively killed it as a reasonable method of getting around the Bay Area. BART is only really useful to get to or from SF to or from parts of the East Bay and Millbrae/SSF/Daly City. It could have been much more.
One of the other problems is the Feds gave up on Subways after WWII in preference to building freeways. I can't vouch for this but I've read one to two places that the Feds generally won't fund a transportation project unless it makes it faster to get from point A to point B.
Great article, surprised I missed that one from Hoodline.
HANC is still around actively blocks housing projects in the Haight. For example, the Whole Foods on Stanyan and Haight was to be mixed use, but HANC (lead by Calvin Welsh) fought to block it. See: http://www.socketsite.com/archives/tag/690-stanyan
I agree that NIMBYism is a double edged sword, and this is where changing how people think about transportation and growth comes together, not changing who people are.
The downvotes are pretty hilarious. I guess many people don't realize that "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" is not an internally consistent political stance.
I suppose if you feel like your downvotes are for sophisticated reasons, it saves you from having to confront the possibility that your post isn't very interesting.
Either that or many people realize how stupid that tweet was and downvoted it so nobody else wastes their time on drivel drawing equalities between unrelated things.
"I can see why they switched. Above ground, busses are better than rail transit for a number of reasons"
There is nothing worse than buses.
I, and many others, will do almost anything to avoid riding a bus.
There is very little I can think of in our built, urban environment that is more aesthetically terrible and ill mannered than big, dumb (and in most cities, black exhaust spewing) buses bonking their way around city streets.
The same attitude is common in England, where buses are often infrequent, inconvenient, uncomfortable, and used mainly by the poor.
Interestingly, it's not true of London, where just about anyone will get the bus, especially for journeys where the tube and rail connections are difficult. The buses are extraordinarily frequent in the centre, serve a wide network, and are full of a wide range of citizens.
For all I'm a big fan of rail, bus service can be both excellent and popular. It normally isn't, though.
Having a bunch of taxis (or Lyft/Uber) is worse than busses. They're definitely less efficient and cause more congestion. Yes, for the riders of the cabs, it's a more pleasant experience, but at the cost of the collective whole.
And which city does not utilize a bus system? Tokyo is the only one where the busses don't stand out in my memory, but I'm sure they still have busses. It's impossible for a city to be served completely by rail.
I agree that the bus experience in general is substandard to rail, but the reality is that when transit planners need to service a new area, they can just route a bus in a few months as opposed to building out a rail line.
"And which city does not utilize a bus system? Tokyo is the only one where the busses don't stand out in my memory, but I'm sure they still have busses. It's impossible for a city to be served completely by rail."
Zurich comes to mind. While there are indeed buses in Zurich, they're somewhat superfluous and only used in (rare) edge cases. Contrary to your assumption, Zurich is almost entirely served by rail.
If I understood your original argument correctly, you believe that if transit planners have to resort to using busses, they've failed ("blew it").
In the case of Zürich, how did they not fail your metric? If the busses are truly superfluous, then why doesn't the transit agency discontinue those lines? I'd like to think they're there for a reason other than paying bus drivers and lining some pockets.
The reality is that cities, because they're changing, will always need busses alongside rail. As new areas become popular and need access, it's far quicker and cheaper to route a new bus line there. Today's bus route might become tomorrow's rail.
Really, your main argument is that it's ugly? At least address the design concerns outlined by your parent post.
Also, I believe SF buses are generally electric except to cover excess load.
In any case, how do you expect people in the suburbs to get to the light rail? It's just not realistic to entirely discard busses on aesthetic(!!) bases.
Also, I'm not sure why you're quoting Steve Jobs that way. I'm enjoying using a stylus with my iPad now. It is a perfect example of pragmatism clearly displacing... whatever it was that irked Jobs about a stylus.
Most buses in San Francisco are diesel. Some of them are diesel-electric hybrid, but they still noisily rev up their diesel motors when accelerating. Especially uphill.
Besides the noise right outside my window at midnight, from an empty bus, that regulations require to have the hydraulics to kneel and to pick up wheelchairs; I don’t like navigating around buses because they block the road with their bulk and their dangerous mass. I prefer to ride my bike to the train station.
There are many bus lines in the city, and a number of regional bus lines with Transbay Terminal service that are packed full of downtown office workers. I would much rather ride a transbay bus than take the train during rush hour. Also, many busses in SF are zero-emission and i think all of them are low-emission.
Worse in regards to travel time, for one individual.
Its still better for that one individual in terms of effort, and in terms of ability to do something besides driving (read, watch tv, etc.)
And each person taking the bus is on average ~1 less car on the road to cause traffic.
Yes, as is the case with San Francisco's N-Judah. However, when it comes to proposals, if you told residents "hey, you can no longer drive/park on the street in front of your house" they'd probably oppose the new rail line.
That'd be nice, but Geary is not really a multi-lane road until you go west of Van Ness, and the main areas of congestion seem to be downtown, east of Van Ness.
The way the current metro light-rail is laid out is a good idea on paper: underground for the dense urban areas, and above ground where you can have space for a dedicated lane. If a potential Geary Metro was underground from Embarcadero to Japantown (Laguna or Webster), then above ground the rest of the way, I can see see a light-rail system working. Now let's find a politician with the clout to have Geary under construction for 5-7 years (optimistically).
East of Van Ness, Geary and O'Farrell form a one-way pair. But yes, there's not much space, and the area dense so running underground would make sense.
As others have pointed out, there is in fact a BRT project in progress to bring a separated, dedicated-lane busway to Geary [1].
Biggest problem: personal cars are built for safe freeway travel at 60-80mph. So they're heavy as hell (often 4000+ lbs), and physically large.
But incredibly wasteful in the city, on 0-35mph urban roads clogged with bikes and peds.
Low speed/neighborhood electric vehicles might point the way.
Where are you seeing all this "free" on-street parking? Out in the Sunset, maybe, but nowhere remotely commercial. Meters are creeping all the way to Dogpatch.
Congestion pricing still on the table, the problem is that San Mateo county wants a cut since they are not as landlocked as SF and would lose out on 101/280 drivers hitting local roads.
The infrastructure investment is not worth it at all if you remain with low density along these lines. A land tax surcharge should be assessed on all properties that will benefit from this infrastructure.
Absolutely! The Gold Coast region in Australia has some studies about how they used Land Value Tax to fund infrastructure development. Namely the land value increases around new transit stops that were built could be captured by the city rather than going into the pockets of private owners. This idea is called "Value Capture".
Funny you mention Australia as I wanted to mention the use of the land value tax on Sydney's north shore to fund the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but ended up leaving it off my post.
Letting this value flow from taxpayers to landowners freely is nothing short of injustice.
"Value Capture" is an unfortunate term, if you like the idea.
For me at least, it conjures the image of a patent troll explaining why they deserve millions of dollars for doing nothing, or a PHB explaining how he plans to fleece grandmothers around the country of their pensions.
Fascinating! I just moved to SF so I didn't know that. I assume you're referring to Prop 13? My understanding is that it's about property taxes, not land taxes. Possibly there is some legal wiggle room in there? Anyway, looks like there are other forms of value capture that may not run afoul of Prop 13! Thanks for pointing that out I learned something new today. :)
LVT are a form of property tax on real property; they differ from traditional ad valorem real property taxes in that they do not apply to the value of improvements, but were one to try to implement them in California, the Constitutional limits on real property taxation (Prop 13) would apply to them in the same way as it does to other real property taxes.
Not quite entirely. A public entity could just buy up surrounding land outright and then lease it out to private operators, capturing value in the rents.
It's only illegal to do it the reasonable way that makes sense.
The city has already imposed various 'fees' for permitting which penalize high density development, and also uses zoning to keep density down. Now you want it to tax low density as well? An even more complex web of permits, taxes, and regulations only serves to drive the cost of housing higher than it already is. Why not just remove the barriers to high density development?
I agree that they are not mutually exclusive, but would generally prefer a simpler policy to a more complicated one. In addition, governments are prone to create increasingly complex rules which they use to help certain preferred groups (such as neighborhoods or campaign contributors). Reducing the barriers to high density development would encourage densification without increasing corruption; if this is insufficient, more active measures could be implemented soon.
A parcel tax is a very imperfect cousin of a Land Value Tax-- assessing all parcels the same regardless of land value is extremely inefficient and inegalitarian.
How much of SF nimby psychology comes from the over leverage this city forces on you? Even with 200k down and a 200k salary an $800k mortgage can turn you fairly conservative I think.
IMO, it's rational economic thinking (if perhaps a little selfish): 90% of your net worth is in a single asset (either due to poor financial planning on your part, or because one asset has ballooned in value), so you will use your municipal voting power to protect that asset.
Unfortunately this is a negative feedback loop. Essentially you are saying that because housing prices are expensive and people are over-leveraged, they will vote for any legislation that will protect and increase housing prices. This legislation increases prices further, which means even more over-leveraged housing owners.
We need something to break out of this negative feedback loop.
This comes up a lot. Here's the thing - if you own a SFH in San Francisco, and suddenly you had the right to tear it down and a build a 3 unit apartment building, would that increase or decrease the value of your property?
I'm not sure, but I lean toward increase, because you do own the land beneath your house. If you were the only one who did this, then I'd say yes, almost certainly. However, if everyone did this, supply would increase, so the question is, would that result in a decrease in prices, offsetting the value of converting a single family residence into three units?
Personally, I doubt it. In my neighborhood in SF, nice 3br flats sell for about 85% of the cost of a 3br house. There's a lot of slack here to make up for the reduction in prices that could result from more units, and honestly, I'm not eve sure that increasing density in SF would lower prices in the first place.
I know that last one may seem counter-intuitive, but keep in mind, Manhattan generally has housing costs than SF, so greater density certainly doesn't necessarily mean lower housing costs. A lot of people have pointed out that SF's high housing prices may be impeding further economic growth in the region. It's entirely possible that greater density would attract even more high paying workers to the region, with even greater economies of scale, higher levels of economic activity, and so forth. It's not out of the question that greater density could result in higher, not lower, housing costs.
I'm not convinced that SF nimby-ism is driven by a desire to maximize the dollar value of real estate assets. I'm also not really convinced that it's unique to San Francisco. My guess is that most medium-density neighborhoods that have been in a steady-state for 75+ years are resistant to change, regardless of whether they're located in SF or elsewhere.
The break out should be that, in terms of metrics of the physical world, SF is a horrible city to establish a business in. There are plenty of bubbles going around, but the "Bay Area or Bust" in tech is certainly one of them. The cost of living is so preposterously high, and the infrastructure so bad, in a rational world businesses would be throwing money at moving thousands of people out of the area to much cheaper cities instead of sucking up the ludicrous costs.
But what about the second cohort of people (those who's houses have ballooned in price) who aren't over-leveraged (because they've owned it for a very long time) and have every reason in the world to vote to block things that may cause their greatest asset to lose value? To them, I would think there is no negative feedback loop.
A rational but liberal approach would be "I need to protect my home value by ensuring the largest risks to continued success of SFBA economy are handled responsibly."
Both are rational (if selfish), but there is definitely a prevailing economic conservatism. I've felt it myself since levering up a few years ago (at what was then the top).
Another similar rational but liberal approach would be "I want my non-homeowning friends and co-workers to continue to be able to afford the Bay Area, rather than get priced out over time."
As a young SF homeowner, that's more important to my quality of life than the price of my home going up.
I really hope ST3 passes in Seattle and we avoid being San Fran. I love this city and would hate to see it devolve into NIMBY power plays and endless traffic jams. Things are bad enough here as it is.
Isn't asking people where they would like a new subway line a case of asking people what they think the solution is rather than what problem they would like to have solved? Wouldn't a survey of what journeys people want to make be better? Sure, processing the results is hard, but in the grand scheme of building new transportation in SF it's trivial.
I totally agree with the Geary line, although I'd prefer an alternative line: one that goes all the way from downtown to ocean beach under Golden Gate Park, with stops at the major museums and other tourist attractions in the park. From the middle of the park, you can reach both Irving/Judah (major Sunset street) and Geary (although Geary is a hike from the center of the park).
I think it makes a lot more sense for the Geary line to terminate in GG Park or somewhere in the inner Richmond. The density in the area around Ocean Beach does not justify a 3 mile extension from inner Richmond to the beach. A 1 mile subway line from Chinatown to the Marina would serve almost the same amount of people.
Then build a subway to Hunters Point it that's your logic. Ocean Beach is entrenched in hard line Nimbyism and any sort of high density vision for the area is nothing short of a pipe dream. Paying billions for a subway all the way to ocean beach is very low priority based on where jobs and housing are being built.
interestingly, the N always filled up completely within a few blocks of Ocean Beach (inbound). There is a huge demand for ridership there that is being underserved. I know they put in some improvements (back when I rode it, the biggest improvement was when they had "watchers" who made sure the drivers didn't spend half an hour in the bathroom before starting their return drive.
There is already a line that runs on Irving/Judah - it's the N line. Goes from Van Ness through Cole Valley and then tracks through UCSF and the sunset. Switches from Irving to Judah on 9th ave.
That'll be a huge amount of capital. The sunset is not very dense, so surface-level transit could work fine. The real trick is keeping cars out of the way of the N, via dedicated right-of-way and transit signal priority.
What about an elevated line? Less initial capital but similar benefits to an underground line, though I doubt it'd fly in the current political environment.
Did you hear about residents protesting that a 100% affordable housing projected blocked their view? Some San Franciscans have an entitled view that their basic rights include the right to have a nice view from their house (to the detriment of any other social issue).
Seems like if they wanted to assure themselves of a permanently-good view, they shoulhd have bought up all the air rights between their windows and the ocean.
The N line is the most dysfunctional and crowded lines. I used to depend on it, and it was terrible- you can count on it not showing for 45 minutes (outbound @ parnassus) and then stop/turn around at 19th or 37th without another train for 45 minutes. And, as mentioned, it gets horribly slowed by traffic in the busy corridors.
The point of this line would be serve the park and Richmond and Sunset, without the delays of the Irving line.
That makes me wonder - would routing it under the park make it easier or harder to build? Lots of factors - property ownership, construction costs, land use restrictions...
"Expect it to be built, along with that line running under the Golden Gate Bridge, almost certainly not in your lifetime."
Los Angeles has a very bullish agenda for subway/metro expansion, with some lines already under construction. Even those currently being built, the timelines are extremely long. Purple line extension is due to be finished, if everything goes to place, by 2035.
Chicken and egg. Subways enable density. Right now if you greatly increased the density of many SF neighborhoods, you'd overwhelm the transportation infrastructure. (Obviously there are neighborhoods with transit that could already support increased density).
Hilariously, I wrote my highschool senior thesis on this exact topic. It was a case study on Seattle, Houston, and New York and how density changed before/after transit was added. You can see the pattern pretty clearly, transit leads to density and not the other way around. Which makes sense, right? Because density can be increased one building at a time, but generally subways need a huge investment to put in an entire line at once and benefit from having an extensive network.
Is it really a Chicken and egg situation?
SF prices in the last years have skyrocketed, through out the city. The financial incentive to build is there. But there isn't massive building of new housing. That isn't because of the lack of subways. It's because of zoning laws and building regulations.
Thousands of new homes/condos are being built every year in SF, for the last few years. There is a massive amount of building going on, precisely because prices have skyrocketed.
However, more housing would be built, if the zoning laws and building regulations were less onerous.
I went to a private school. It was pretty non-traditional in many respects, and it wouldn't surprise me if writing a thesis wasn't common at other schools.
San Francisco[0] proper has a higher density than London[1], and slightly lower density than Paris[2] — two cities that have thriving subway + commuter rail systems.
I think you mixed up imperial and metric systems --- San Francisco has 18,451 people/sq mi. Paris has 55,000 people/sq mi. It's almost three times as much.
There's got to be a more useful metric than average city density; the 2010 US Census [0] places the 5 densest cities in the US as having a population under 70,000 (yes, I'm quoting Wikipedia). City planners must have a unit more like person-acres or something to get an idea of the actual spread of the density.
Standard density quotes for cities can be pretty misleading as it often reflects fairly arbitrary divisions. For example while Paris is indeed reasonably dense the oft quoted number is for a fairly small parcel of central Paris.
Moraga/Lafayette/Orinda is my favorite example of this in the Bay Area. I sympathize with the complaint that they aren't building enough, but I think the SFBARF/Lafayette lawsuit is stupid. Building more in those places wouldn't help us, because the transit capacity doesn't exist. Have you taken BART, or the Bay Bridge, or the Caldecott tunnel at rush hour? If 20,000 people move from the city to Lafayette, how do they get here for work?
But you can even find this in the city. Yeah, it'd be great to increase density in the Sunset. But have you actually commuted from the Sunset to downtown? It's a disaster. Muni is at capacity, and driving isn't an answer. You can cycle to work (I used to from 48th Ave), but that's a 7+ mile ride with a few hundred feet of elevation: it's not an easy casual ride for most people.
The idea that SF doesn't have the density to justify this stuff is... it's just not true.
San Francisco has a population density of 18,451/sq mi (7,124/km2)[1]. In the Unites States, That is denser than just about any place other than Manhattan. At peak times, busses are crowded and traffic sucks. Personally speaking as an SF resident, having more efficient public transit options would be awesome. I'll let others crunch the numbers of the feasibility of building & paying for it.
> In the Unites States, That is denser than just about any place other than Manhattan.
I think that depends on your definition of "just about." Every borough in NYC aside from Staten Island is much denser than San Francisco. Additionally, many parts of where I'm from – northern NJ – are even more so: Hoboken, West New York, Union City (the densest city in the country), Guttenberg (the densest township in the country), and more.
If you're talking about cities larger than a certain size, then perhaps, but even then, I personally think it's a bit misleading to single out just Manhattan.
It is not a matter of feasibility. Infrastructure transit produces tremendous returns in productivity. Even insanely overbudget projects like the Big Dig in Boston are already breaking even after only a decade, because of how much room for growth they produce.
This is why having fast rail, uncongested highways, and always expanding to meet demand are always worth the cost. Unless you can accurately forecast a downturn in regional economic growth irrespective of whether or not you meet transit demands, it is never rational from the perspective of long term city planning for maximum economic throughput to not grow the system and increase density.
Even as someone who lived on the periphery of Boston for much of the Big Dig, it's good that it was done--in spite of all the well-publicized problems. Of course, the fact that Tip O'Neill managed to funnel $10 billion or so of federal money to the city for the project doesn't hurt.
NYC has subways that extend out to less dense / borderline suburban neighborhoods. Though ridership to these terminals is much lower than in manhattan and northern brooklyn and queens, they're still an important way for some people to get to work.
I agree, however, that SF needs to build at a higher density (outside of FiDi and downtown) regardless of future subway infrastructure.
SF is the second highest density city in the US. I agree that as long as the NIMBYs prevent building housing, then SF won't really reap the benefits of improved transportation, but SF has pathetically bad public transport for the existing density. I live in much lower density Oakland/Berkeley, and I can get around by BART better than most city dwellers.
City-to-city comparisons suffer from all sorts of problems, not the least of which is that cities are defined according to their own historical, arbitrary borders that are practically meaningless when talking about actual issues.
Consider that NYC covers 302.6 sq/mi to SF's 46.69, which means that NYC isn't merely double the density, it's double the density over a much, much larger area.
This is why most serious comparisons are conducted at the level of the MSA (which would fold every one of the cities you're putting ahead of SF in density into a larger metro). Often, when laypeople compare cities, they're thinking about the MSA while quoting numbers they've found for cities-proper. That's why nobody in this conversation is thinking about Guttenberg, NY (and why mentioning it is almost a non sequitur).
I totally agree with you re: meaningless comparisons. However, I think the MSA comparison is pretty flawed as well.
For example, the Los Angeles metro area has a higher density than both NYC's and SF's (which is higher than NYC's), but it's obvious – to me at least – that in reality, considering only areas that most people would agree are remotely close to being in/near "the city," the density order of these three would be more like: 1) NYC 2) SF 3) LA.
But yeah, at the end of the day, I'm mostly being pedantic :)
Now guess which ones are central cities in their respective MSAs. Excluding those, guess which ones aren't part of the NYC or LA areas. Let's do ourselves a favor and exclude Poplar Hills, Kentucky (362). There's one city left, it's part of the Boston area (which is the next densest large city after SF), and you guessed it, Somerville has a subway with a separate light rail extension under construction. The only outlier is Sunny Isles Beach, FL (20,832), in the Miami area. And Miami? It's just after Philly, all known dense cities.
So yea, it's NYC, then SF, minus a couple pockets of LA. And these are all dense places that need subways. It takes a special sort of something to claim, as the top comment did, that SF is not dense enough to warrant a subway, let alone massive large-scale investment in all modes of mass transit as NYC has.
Commuting from my place on Geary/Broderick to Chinatown on a bus takes around 30 to 40 minutes and costs $2.25 one way.
Taking an Uber pool takes 15 min for $4.50.
SF is riddled with Uber and Lift drivers for this very reason. I bet at any given moment, 80% of the cars downtown are rides for hire. The city should just subsidize with a few billion a ride as a service platform and stop wasting time and money on something that will always be sub par.
It's sort of pathetic how bad the US has become at public infrastructure projects over the past 40-50 years. Take a clue from cities with 1000+ years of history: you still have to keep upgrading your infrastructure, even if it means bringing in the archaeologists to sort out what you find every time.
"In 10 years" is a bit misleading, because that's just the construction time. You need to also take into account the time it took to go from "this would be a good idea" to actually starting to dig, because that's where the SF situation is currently bogged down.
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/route/crossrail-from-its-early-be... says the idea was first seriously proposed in 1974, and was then raised, dropped and batted around at various levels of politics for another 25 years before getting to "serious funded detailed feasibility study" in 2002, which didn't get the final go-ahead until 2008 (with the construction phase then being the 10 years after that and ending 2018).
One trick, shared by many rich Middle Eastern countries is Singapore's willingness to engage in labour arbitrage: they are happy to offer, say, Indians and Pakistani labourers a decent job in return for getting good infrastructure on the cheap.
Funny, I've been to SF twice in my life, but I could've guessed which line is probably the most obvious public transport line missing in this city.
I couldn't name Geary Boulevard, but I would've been able to point it out on a map.
Who cares where people are drawing their lines, use the transit data to see where they're actually going and derrive them. Better yet come up with a good way to find their actual destination, not destination stop and draw those lines. like pay a % of them to let you sample their locations via their smart phones or "trick" them into it with a transit app.
Does it make sense to make a large capital bet on mass transit at this time? Yesterday, Telsa released a video of their new car self-driving, including dropping a passenger off and getting into a parking lot.
It strikes me that a personal rapid transit system - think something like Uber, operating on lanes dedicated to self-driving cars - could provide much of the functionality of this, and be ready a lot sooner.
I don't have time to dig up the studies or articles at the moment, but even optimistic-case self-driving car systems aren't going to more than double or triple existing road capacity. Good rail systems already, today, have about 5 – 10x the capacity of road systems. Self-driving cars and medium- to long-distance urban transit system are actually likely to be complements, not substitutes, especially if/when cities continue to get denser.
One of the challenges with things like rail is getting to and from the station, and parking. If you could step out your door, ride to the train, get dropped off, get on the train, get off, and ride to your office- rail could become dramatically more compelling for people who are not very close to the stations.
In short self-driving cars could improve rail's "last-mile" challenge
What about shared self driving cars + dedicated express bus lanes? The idea being we tax cars for usage of the road and the buses become effectively free (and faster) while self driving shared ubers are $2/ride.
Making roads better and taxing them right (so we can do dynamic pricing) seems so much better than huge chunky capital costs of digging tunnels and installing subway infrastructure.
We already have roads, people get to go door to door, and deploying a usage based tax model on roads is just software. Seems so much better than decade long projects.
There's a lot of added value for the community in mass transport. It costs less per fare than car systems you can think about (even ridesharing & co), consume/pollute less, but more importantl it allows lower-class and middle-class citizen to move around the city. All the cleaning personel, food, assistance personel can afford coming to the city to provide for high-value-added workers. All high-value-added can afford to live farther away along the lines, in better appartments than the constricted downtown space. And the new density created by gathering more people in the same place during the day allow the collaboration of more people.
There seems to be unlimited appetite for high-rise apartments at luxury to extreme luxury prices. Particularly from people who will never live in them.
Is there any evidence that high rise apartments (say more than 10 stories) affordable at middle incomes can exist or ever have existed?
I wonder about this a lot in major cities -- whether the seemingly massive number of apartments in luxury high-rises are actually occupied full-time by those with high incomes, or are they actually more affordable than I suspect? Or are most of them empty, and just used to park monetary value?
>In a three-block stretch of Midtown, from East 56th Street to East 59th Street, between Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue, 57 percent, or 285 of 496 apartments, including co-ops and condos, are vacant at least 10 months a year. From East 59th Street to East 63rd Street, 628 of 1,261 homes, or almost 50 percent, are vacant the majority of the time, according to data from the Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey. [0]
I'm going with "used to park value."
It's been mentioned elsewhere that real estate is the last place you can easily park a literal suitcase full of cash without being subject to any KYC rules.
Doesn't really matter which end of spectrum you build housing at---any housing built is good: if you don't build luxury housing, the rich will just bid up less glamorous units.
To avoid empty apartments, a land value tax works fairly well.
I'm imagining buses that go down major arteries like Geary. They'd come often and there would be a lot of them and they'd have dedicated lanes. Seems so much more flexible than fixed infrastructure.
Public transit doesn't need to be flexible though. Individuals might change their routines every day but when you average the traffic for the whole city the throughtput of the major arteries is very predictable. The biggest priority in these situations is making the transport be cheap and efficient and make it scale to demand.
And just because a mode of transportation is on wheels doesn't mean it flexible. If you look at a Bus Repid Transit system[1] you would notice that the buses are specialized for driving in separate lanes that go in a straight line and the bus stops are custom built (and are less frequent than a regular bus).
>Good rail systems already, today, have about 5 – 10x the capacity of road systems
Do they have that capacity in seats or in hands on the overhead rails with backpacks held in hands and zero personal space? If the latter, that's a fairly disingenuous comparison.
Banning air conditioners in the South would be great for energy efficiency. It's just comfort, not survival.
Forcing people out of cars (or previously available train seats) onto standing room only trains because "you still get from A to B" would be roughly the same.
Everything is "more efficient" if people simply accept worse outcomes. That's not an accomplishment. Contrast with actual improvements over status quo like more effiently packed passenger cars, self driving cars, rail service with enough seats, etc.
Upward change is good. Lateral change is fine. Reaching into people's lives and making them worse because "you didn't really need that, and my values are more important than yours" is disturbingly fashionable in these threads.
I agree, but the context of my comment was jseliger comment further up about capacity alone.
No need to force people out of cars. But often the limiting factor for road transport happens to be congestion: when people are in effect running an auction with their time, and persons most willing to set in traffic are the highest bidder and `win the road'; then it is economically more efficient to make people pay with money instead of time and introduce a congestion charge or an Certificate of Entitlement system like in Singapore.
The road still gets rationed by an auction, but instead of bidding by wasting your time, you bid with actual money that can be re-used for other things. (And time is, of course, money.)
I hope you forgive me what seems like a digression: what looks like `forcing people out of their cars' might actually just be replacing wasteful time-bidding with money-bidding.
There’s no way that autonomous vehicles running on surface streets gets you the level of capacity that grade-separated high-capacity transit gets you. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone argue that it will. E.g. a 10-car BART train with 119 passengers per traincar running at 24 trains/hour today and 28/hour in the future with ATCS upgrades.
You seem to be getting down-voted, but autonomous public transportation is a good thought exercise, and yes it already exists on (small) rubber tire fleets. There are some unresolved problems here, such as where do all the SDCs go when empty? Are they leased? Do we have parking garages with empty cars going in and out of them all day? How do we charge for that? How does this impact green house gas emissions? Even dedicated SDC lanes would have a maximum hourly capacity.
SDCs are a good last mile solution, particularly in mid density areas and for the disabled. Conventional trains make more sense to delivering large amounts of people to or from a city center as well general regional transportation.
Unless that's a self-driving clown car, it's not a substitute -- it can't have the person density or be protected from having to yield to other traffic like a subway can.
Everyone who is discounting this criticism is assuming that it's either self-driving cars occupied by a single person each, or mass fixed-rail transit. That's a bogus assumption. Self-driving uberpool-like services, self-driving buses, etc. will also play a role.
Building fixed-line transit at this point is a massive waste of money. But construction is where the action is in local corruption, so they'll keep doing it.
Sim City subways did nothing. I heard it from one of the developers.
That said, if it's people that need to move around, let's make fast moving sidewalks high above the city streets. Or tram type of technology like the zoo, but without imprisoning animals.
Question: Is it possible that self-driving cars will make this kind of infrastructure less important? I've thought about this a bit, and I wonder if, outside of high-speed rail and airplanes (where you can go faster than a car can drive), self-driving cars may make mass transit outmoded. I'm curious what people think.
No, they're far less person-dense than rail transport on dedicated lines. Having a human operator is not the bottleneck to the scale-up; the high space requirement is. (Also, the need to yield to all the other traffic.)
They can, however, supplement rail infra, by covering last-mile in the suburbs for commuter lines, or off-hour transport when it's too noisy or unprofitable to run the lines.
Mass transit is about architecture, not transportation. What we're really talking about here is where we can make dense neighborhoods that can be served by subways. Cars can't serve dense neighborhoods because they are too big for the number of people carried, and there's nowhere to store them when they are empty. On the flip side, sparse neighborhoods can't be served by mass transit because there aren't enough people who can reach the system, and it takes to long to go anywhere.
So the question really is what kind of architecture do you want? After that question is answered you can talk about whether cars or trains make more sense for that place.
Cars can serve dense neighborhoods if they are more self contained. If you can architect things so that people mostly walk or bike to everything then the car is only for special trips. In such a world public transit is only necessary for major arterial commuting. Self driving cabs can also transfer people between these arteries to maximize throughout. But milk route busses and subways stopping every other block will be unnecessary.
Getting to this world would require much more communal space and stronger neighborhoods with more of a cultural center of gravity so you didn't have people flitting all over the city in rabdom directions in desperate attempts to find a place to fit in socially and professionally.
Imagine small towns, packed as densely as a big city. An arterial subway like San Francisco's is adequate for that.
No. Self-driving car will be more space-efficient than non autonomous cars, but it's especially true on highways and for parking. It's still an order of magnitude less efficient at transporting a vast number of people in the minimum amount of space than mass transit. Not enough for dense urban environments.
Self-driving rideshare will be great for suburbs, not so much for dense cities.
The responses to you are assuming some dichotomy between fixed-line transit and automated cars carrying average one person each. That's a very bogus assumption. There would clearly be automated uberpool-like services, and everything else from single-rider to buses.
It is indefensible to pour billions of dollars into fixed-line transit at this point. But construction is where the action is in local corruption, so they'll keep doing it.
Not really. Transport problems don't go away with self-driving vehicles. In fact they just end up having the same issues (they're a form of mass transit if they end up shared).
San Francisco suffers from too many small town self-inflicted political wounds. While the Central Subway will open in a couple of years with it's new subway and light rail cars, it'll likely be the last one for us, perhaps even for our children. Political power brokers, such Willie Brown and the late-Rose Pak, only rolled in their power to give Chinatown a replacement for the Central Freeway that was torn down after the 89 quake.
Existing SFCTA members, which are also the Board of Supervisors, constantly squander transportation funds. Millions have been poured into funding pet political projects, such as free muni rides for youth and seniors, making Muni a system of handouts instead of pulling free ride funding from the Feds or the general fund. The latest axe swing was to delay the DTX, the Caltrain subway to the Transbay Tower, which the voters prioritized in 1999.
The existing anti-transit, anti-growth cabal of Kim, Peskin, Campos, Yee, Mar, and Avalos have been able to grab too much power, and will always vote to side with NIMBYs (Not in My Back Yard) over modern urban growth and planning. Even the next cohort of supervisors will hold the same values, because the voters will put similar people into power once they term out, cutting more into the city's progress as a metropolitan powerhouse.
My educated predictions on this chart are: We'll see Geary BRT, Geneva BRT, 19th Ave Rapid, and the M extension to Park Merced. Maybe some new signals and bike lanes. That's it.
The SFMTA's 20 year vision does not include any subway or rail extensions otherwise. I have asked Nick Josefowitz, who's district would include a theoretical BART extension under Geary, and he says BART is too far behind on maintenance to even consider such an idea.