It goes beyond that. Transit enables density that car dependent infrastructure cannot. Now that job security is a thing of the past, people need to live near a high density of jobs so they don't have to uproot themselves and their families when it's time to change gigs.
Moving out to far flung areas with only a handful of big employers makes that tough. Changing jobs might mean adding a half hour or an hour to your already long commute. Jobs in transit-rich areas, however, give you a lot more opportunity without having to substantially alter your non-work life to match.
(It's also, I believe, a factor in why people move less often around the country now; it's hard to find two optimal jobs in any potential destination.)
The advantage is that I have never had to suffer from expensive housing or a long commute. My worst commute was 20 minutes by car, and my current one is 3 minutes unless I walk. For people making this choice, housing is cheaper by a factor of 5 to 10, not even counting the extra land we get.
Even if I insisted on staying in one area though, I really don't need the density of jobs found in a megacity. If you fit the local industry well, there are usually several employers doing roughly the same thing.
My parents did 1500 miles twice while having 3 kids. My brother did 350 miles with 2 kids. I did 1300 miles with 3 kids, and then 120 miles with 5 kids.
Being willing to move means that we get short commutes, cost-effective (high goodness per dollar) houses, and plenty of good employment choices. You're giving up a lot if you are unwilling to move.
The logistics of moving aren't the issue. It's the social disruption of uprooting yourself, having to make decisions about what your spouse will do about their job, having to transfer your kids to a new school when they're still learning how to socialize and form bonds with people, leaving your friends and community behind, etc.
School: homeschool
If learning how to socialize and form bonds with people is a major goal, then being uprooted is good practice.
If 101 were as free flowing as it was in the mid 90s ...
context clues are strong today
It doesn't really take me 20 minutes to go 22 miles in the heart of Silicon Valley at rush hour?
okay then.
In fact, the traffic is the deciding factor for me in ruling out regularly working in the Peninsula.
Where do you start, and at what time of day, to get 20-minute drive times? I'd love to know the secret.
eastbound bridge traffic being wide open in the mornings
There is definitely a reverse commute.
The chokepoints being by some bridges and particular exits
The only way I'm driving fast down 101 south is if I'm there at 11 am. Which counts as morning, but is also unreasonably late even for salaried workers in a relaxed company.
I was trying to come up with analogous commutes in other areas, but even Everett to Seattle is "only" 34 miles.
I wouldn't recommend a >40mi car commute in any populated area, frankly. If you're not coming from a busy area or going to a busy area, you're at least traversing a busy area, and in this case you're talking about all 3. I'm not sure what you're expecting out of that kind of distance. Even at 2am you're probably talking at least 45 minutes by the time you get out of the city and get off the freeway into your destination.
When I think "bad traffic", I think of low average speeds, not just long commutes with a few bottlenecks.
101 South backs up from around Mountain View in the morning, in my experience. Not as bad as 101 North during those hours, but the 101-S traffic had a large effect on my last job search.
believe the speeds we manage
arteries like 280, 101 in the SF bay area... are perennially clogged
Go back to 4 all-purpose lanes and 1 true carpool lane (2+ licensed drivers) and throughput would be way better.
I don't mind driving for personal errands or vacations, but for daily commuting transit is much better in so many ways. I find the California car culture obsession to be one of the most idiotic things about this place. It's got some of the nicest weather in the country, so if anything this should be where you want to be walking and outside not crammed into a car huffing exhaust. It's so unbelievably ridiculous.
Now I'm commuting via car to an office just outside I95, it takes less time, is much less stressful, costs $150 less per month and is far more reliable.
Are you considering the $.50 average cost per mile from car travel -- gasoline, maintenance, insurance?
How is that different from "talent wants transit"?
I've mostly lived and worked in Chicago. I live in the city, and commute by CTA. My colleagues who live much further out in the suburbs, and commute by Metra, often spend about the same amount of time in transit as I do.
If there's a story here, it's that the halcyon days when people could efficiently get around a megalopolis on highways are gone, and most the value proposition of those giant self-contained office parks out in the suburbs is gone with it.
Which isn't to say that it doesn't make sense to build offices out in the suburbs, just that they better still be reasonable to access from a train station. And that doesn't even necessarily mean "close" - many people in Chicago still have the better part of a mile left to walk after they get off the train. But they have the benefit of infrastructure to support walking -- a mile walk in the city itself is a much less daunting proposition than a mile walk in Naperville.
Chicago has some of the best commutes there are.
If the Bay Area was more like Chicago (regional rail, roads), we wouldn't have as much hand-wringing as on this thread.
Chicago's car infrastructure is more or less commensurate with its size. Seattle on the other hand was not designed for the population it currently has, and traffic there seems worse.
They will almost all get licenses when they get to a point in their life where the cost/benefit makes sense.
[1]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/30/millennials-like-buying-cars...
"“Millennials have a lower rate of car ownership than previous generations at their age.” [2]
"We find that today's young adults do own fewer cars than previous generations did when they were young." [3]
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09670...
[2] http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/demographic-shift...
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308021126_Millennia...
Millennials don't own as many cars because they are poorer than their parents were at the same age. Of the millennials that are financially independent from their parents, car ownership is steady or higher (relative to previous generations).
Its unlikely the gaslighting would ever work in, for example, rural Ohio.
My employer pays for my bus pas, but even if it didn't, I'd only be spending ~$1,200/year on it. I also dropped $300 on a really nice pair of noise-cancelling headphones, and $20 on a new umbrella.
But, sure, the explanation for that must be gaslighting.
[1] Insurance: ~$1,200
[2] Depreciation: ~$1,000
[3] Registration: ~$300
[4] Parking spot: $1,800
[5] Tolls: ~$1,400
[6] Gas: ~$400
[7] Maintenance: ~$200
By analogy, consider if I cut my legs off, how much money I'd save on shoes, all the cool kids are doing it, my anecdote applies to everyone's situation, and my employer would pay the medical insurance so I'm not sure why non-cool people are walking around with legs.
> The desire is mostly from intense gaslighting in small population areas of the country relatively speaking.
I assure you, my desire to save money did not come from gaslighting. I understand why other people make other choices, but please don't tell me why I run my life the way I do.
You insist that the reason some people are ditching cars is because of irrational gaslighting. I give a single, logical reason for why I have ditched my car. You point at my explanation, and claim that it goes to prove your point.
I'm not saying that my dad, who lives 20 miles out of town, and moved ~100 tonnes of cargo in the past two years should ditch his pickup truck. I am saying that there are good reasons for why many urbanites are ditching theirs.