There's no need to become Manhattan or Hong Kong. Just invest in infrastructure.
Most cities are denser than Switzerland. My undergrad town of 25K is over 20 times denser than Switzerland.
Switzerland has excellent public transit. Therefore, if there is a density threshold to offering good public transit, an area would need to be at least less dense than Switzerland in order to argue that it isn't possible.
The SF Bay Area is denser than Switzerland. Therefore, the reasons for not having good transit are not to do with density, but with something else (politics, zoning, public support, etc.). But density is not the issue.
You're not getting the basic point with transit infrastructure: it requires density.
Transit systems are only viable with enough people living and working at walking distance from the stations.
Increasing density decreases traffic, increases transit effectiveness, and reduces environmental impact. It's simple geometry.
That works very, very well for public transportation. The issue with transit and density is not about distances, is actually about the number of people living and working within walking distance of a transit stop.
If you increase density by 5X, that number increases by 5X.
So two cities with the same density, one spread out evenly and the other in high-density islands surrounded by low density seas, have very different viabilities for public transit.
I lived in Switzerland for 9 months last year. They have arguably the best transit infrastructure in the world, with a passenger rail system that is 100% electric.
According to Wikipedia, the density of Zurich is ~4600 people/km^2. The density of San Francisco is ~7170 people/km^2. So what excuse does SF have for being so very, very much worse?
Take a look at the referendums over the past few years: universal basic income? No. More vacation days? No. Forbid speculation on food products? No. Define marriage as man/woman? No. Build a new tunnel across the Alps? Hell yeah!
But it isn't just about density. You can have mid to low average density, but still have a viable transit system.
Public transit doesn't just depend on the overall average density, but on the density of the area surrounding the transit stops.
Switzerland has reasonably dense cities and towns, with very-low-density areas in between. The SFBA has evenly-distributed low density (except for a few areas).
Increasing the distance between dense cores doesn't have as much negative impact on transit viability as spreading people out has.
The SFBA could easily solve this by changing the zoning laws around Bart, Caltrain, VTA and Muni stations.
I totally agree with you here. This is the crux of my argument.
Your statement about Switzerland having reasonably dense cities and towns compared with the Bay Area I'm interested in learning more about - can you cite your source? Having lived in Switzerland for almost a year and in the Bay Area for almost 4, this doesn't ring true to me, but I don't have a heat map of population density to check against; if I get more time at some point I'll try to find more data.
Regardless, we do have some areas of sufficient population density that it would make sense to connect efficiently and we don't. That's the choice I'm talking about. At the very least, it should be easy to get between Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose without needing a car. Within San Francisco, you should be able to go from the east side to the west side without using a system that suffers from being delayed at least 50% of the time.
Also - regarding more vacation days? The government already mandates 4 weeks of vacation (5 if you're under 20) and you are supposed to take at least two of those weeks in a row.
I had some Swiss friends and we were on a train once that was delayed by 15-20 minutes. They were all complaining because this happens once in a blue moon. They mentioned that if the train is delayed by more than 3 minutes it has to be posted on signage and if it's delayed more than 6 minutes or would cause someone to miss a connection it results in fines to the operator. I haven't been able to find a written source to back this up but personally I almost never experienced delays on Swiss transit.
https://qz.com/166186/the-swiss-are-scandalized-by-trains-th...
Swiss media are abuzz with the news of the country’s faltering rail system. Last year, the state-run rail operator missed its target for punctuality; only 87.5% of trains arrived within three minutes of their scheduled arrival.
A national transit system runs like clockwork, every single gear must be turning in sync for the system to work.