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Comment by coding123 | Hacker News Reader

And the freeways can support this how?

Several ways, including congestion taxes and more public transportation options, like it's been pointed out.

But, also, a 50% increase in housing supply means higher density of population, with higher buildings instead of single family homes and therefore more comercial space in large populated areas, meaning more jobs will be at walking/biking/short-bus-ride distance.

Sorry but you are totally naive if you think a 50% increase is possible in that time frame. You just can’t, or don’t want to do the math. What you are suggesting amounts to jail cells with no infrastructure.

Jail cells? It's not polite to put rude words in others' mouths.

There are limitations on current build rates though; we'll have to massively increase the construction work force to do anything like this, as it's already not quite able to meet demand here.

You’re suggesting these people won’t drive anywhere. There’s no way to support that growth given the limitations in our roadways. Traffic is already terrible, imagine 4 or 5 hours to get from oakland to San Francisco.

This is a big change of topic. I had a different topic about allowing people to live without cars, if you'd like to talk about that, let's do it on that other comment thread.

I don't think wklauss was expressing an opinion either way on whether a 50% increase is feasible, only what the effects would be with respect to transit.

He said the freeways can support 50% growth over 20 years. That’s lunacy. Look at the history of our freeway system. Ok, if you want to insist that flying cars will come in the next 10 years maybe. But to say congestion pricing is to say, roads for rich people, everyone else stays in their cubicle like happy inmates. Just unreal to see putatively intelligent people engage in such a discussion.

Buses could easily do it.

26 years and 100% in Shanghai https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/08/26-years-of-growth...

Congestion taxes are a terrible idea, as they usually hit those who are least likely to be able to change the time they have to commute at, and are usually the ones least likely to afford it.

Most people I know in San Francisco don't own cars and certainly don't make use of freeways as part of their commute. With high-density cities and good public transit, you really have much less need for cars.

Also, given that cars are inherently dangerous, cause environmental harm, and take up a lot of space, it seems like it's in the public interest to discourage car ownership/use.

San Francisco is just one part of the problem, the other part is Silicon Valley. In SV, housing is even more expensive than SF, and public transportation is dismal at best. Rush hour in the San Jose area rivals that of LA, NY, etc.

Most people I know in San Francisco don't own cars

You must not know a big cross section of people then. Maybe in the downtown core, but a trip across the city will show very little available street parking and most houses with garages filled with cars.

It's a small minority of the city that don't have cars.

Yeah, I certainly don't claim that the people I interact with are representative of San Francisco as a whole. From some article I found from a few years ago[1], the vast majority of new residents don't have cars, but overall about 30% of total residents don't have cars. Most of my coworkers don't live downtown, and they get to work using BART, Muni, bus, or bike. When they need to get somewhere not on public transit, they use Lyft or Uber. In both of the two places I've lived in SF so far, I roomed with two other people, and none of us wanted the parking space, so we rented it out to someone else.

My point is that in many cases, there exists a reasonable city design and style of living where car ownership feels unnecessary and is better seen as a luxury than a right. Certainly there are many situations where car ownership makes sense, but I worry that people are sometimes too attached to the idea of car ownership and either incorrectly view it as a necessity or assume that everyone else needs a car as well.

[1] https://sf.streetsblog.org/2014/08/15/car-free-households-ar...

"Between 2000 and 2012, the city has seen a net increase of 11,139 households, and 88 percent of them have been car-free."

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2014/08/15/car-free-households-are...

"Census: 95% of New SF Commuters Since 2006 Don’t Drive Solo"

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2015/09/25/census-95-of-new-sf-com...

We're not talking about people recently moving to SF.

You can build more trains and use more buses, and use congestion pricing to keep down the number of cars instead of subsidizing their use.

This is a solved problem.

They can't. Build better public transit.

https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ebt-l... - and that's only the most urgently needed stuff. There are many more rail rights of way and tunnel sites that are easy to build on, like the Permanente Quarry branch line.

The history of Bart expansion just called and would like a word with you.

We really need to stop assuming that people are going to make heavy freeway use, and permit more scalable transit.

Run BART the short way between SF and SJ, build many clusters of high density along heavy transit routes. Let the current freeway dependent population continue to use them, but build housing so that people can get to jobs without using single-occupancy passenger cars.

They need to assume people will use transit and also roads, and increase the capacty of both. The capacity of the bay area road network has been systematically decreased over the last ten years, even as the population has grown.

Also, compared to most other places, traffic laws out here are ridiculously inefficient. For example, light cycles that include a “yield on left turn” step and then skip the left arrow if the lane has cleared are incredibly rare. Also, instead of “left lane fast, right lane slow”, the law is “use whatever lane you’re comfortable in”.

Simply ripping out the “improvements” made in the last decade and bringing traffic laws in line with the rest of the US would increase road capacity by double digit percentages.

(The lack of progress on public transit is also embarrassing, especially given the tax and income levels around here)

I agree, and my phrasing was imprecise; we do need to assume that roads will be used to some degree, but we also need to allow for types of living that don't use freeways, or even perhaps allow living without a car.

Right now local regulations require large amounts of parking, which means large amounts of the most valuable space devoted just to cars, and forcing people to pay for the car. If you're forced to pay an additional 10% in rent to cover the space used for parking, then you're probably going to get a car.

If people were allowed to make the decision to not have cars and reap the financial benefits, we'd see a bigger shift.

As it is, car use is regulated into the way that we build things.

The capacity of the road network cannot be increased forever. The Bay already has some damn big freeways, and Texas has already shown that "wider" does not mean "uncongested", with their 26-lane Katy Freeway, one of the most congested in the country...

"We really need to stop assuming that people are going to make heavy freeway use, and permit more scalable transit."

I don't think we can stop that assumption until we have much better public transit. Cause if the trains aren't running where I need to go, when I need to get there, I have to drive.

>Run BART the short way between SF and SJ

That sounds miserable. Caltrain has much more reasonable rolling stock (i.e. with seats) for that trip.

Congestion pricing

You expand those too! Is the solution to put up walls around the bay area so nobody moves here?

Are we going to make the Midwest pay for it?

Or the sewer or water systems, or our hospitals, parks public transit. Or the air we breath or ...

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