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Comment by cbhl | Hacker News Reader

One of the big challenges in increasing spending for public transit is homelessness.

For example, this 2013 article describes how the VTA 22 El Camino route becomes completely full of homeless people during the overnight hours: http://www.mercurynews.com/2013/10/31/homeless-turn-overnigh...

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> One of the big challenges in increasing spending for public transit is homelessness.

San Francisco might be the only place in the world where that is a big challenge in public transport.

(I am not saying that really isn't a problem in SF, but for whatever reasons, the problem doesn't exist elsewhere.)

If the concern is commuter traffic, then lines that only run during commuter hours makes this concern moot.

Having decent commuter hour service but no mobility for evenings and weekends is a common public transit system failure mode.

It hurts a lot more when you come for people's parking spaces if they still need cars for everything except commuting.

Even without creating new lines, simply increasing the frequency of the Caltrain would make a big difference.

The simple solution is to give the homeless homes.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This has been proven in several instances to be more cost effective than the "system" (such as it is) San Francisco and much of the US has in place.

e.g. Utah tried this and it seems to work on many levels:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/home-free

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