Correct.
And the best way to fix Bart overcrowding is to build apartments near where people work so they don't HAVE to commute.
And the best way to fix Bart overcrowding is to build apartments near where people work so they don't HAVE to commute.
Wikipedia says that current headways fall short of the original plan, which seems like it could be part of the problem:
> In the 1970s, BART had envisioned frequent local service, with headways as short as two minutes between trains and six minutes intra-line on the (quadruple-interlined) section in San Francisco. However, headways have fallen short of the original plans, presently three minutes between trains, and 15 minutes intra-line in San Francisco.
What is the reason for this? Do they not have enough trains? Is it a safety issue? Do they not have enough conductors/drivers/personal? Is it an engineering problem, a money problem, something else? Seems like increasing train frequency would alleviate a lot of the stress on the system and be relatively inexpensive.
Reading between the lines it sounds like there is a money problem constraining it, and then we get to the controversial issue of how they manage costs.
What ended up happening, though, is that as factories shuttered, the neighborhoods that were built around them started to collapse. The net result was pockets of localized decay, that eventually led to the entire urban area rotting as more people left. It's actually kind of stunning to see in person. (I live about 50 min South of Detroit). And oh, the riots of 1967 didn't help, either.
It's hard to imagine that happening the the metro-Bay area, but I remind myself that people once thought GM, Chrysler and Ford could never go under.
Lafayette, Louisiana is in a similar state, all this suburban infrastructure investment that is ultimately a giant waste: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
If a factory closes down, you are stuck with a specialized building that can't really be used for anything else.
If a company in an office building closes down, you can pretty easily replace it with either a different company, OR with simply more residential housing stock.
Unless the idea is social isolation, anyway. Sometimes the gleeful description of "progress" makes it sound like there's cheering on of the cyberpunk dystopia going down.
Why not build businesses where people live? Apple can spend 5 billion on its new campus in the middle of nowhere, but the public has to shoulder the cost for transit. 90 percent of Google's and Apple's domestic workforce could probably do at least 70 percent of their work from home. Apple prides itself on renewable energy usage, but it's perfectly OK for its employees to spend 3 hours idling in traffic?
For every millionaire that is price waring over NEW Apartments is one less millionaire that is gentrifying and kicking out a family living in the mission.
Planned development areas where you get a bunch of housing, businessplaces and transit built in the same place can work really well. But they need coordination and collaboration from the public side; there's only so much one business can do on its own.
I agree. Density should be the focuses. And zoning laws should be changed so BOTH companies and residential apartment companies are allowed to build more densely.