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Comment by lpolovets | Hacker News Reader

This feels so misguided to me. This is going to cost ~$35k/household and the govt is generally terrible at spending money.

It also dodges the real issue in the bay area, which is housing. Commutes are long because most people can't afford to live next to their jobs. If we stopped restricting new housing and taller building, then the number of cars on the road would decrease.

Furthermore, there are innovations coming that might shorten commuting (e.g. things like Hyperloop, although I have no idea if that's viable) and self-driving cars (which let you read/work/etc while commuting). The government is not going to be able to deploy $100b better over the next few decades than the private market.

Finally, the rise of remote work might mean a lot of professions commute less in the future. My prediction is this just going to be an exercise in setting $100b on fire.

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> Furthermore, there are innovations coming that might shorten commuting (e.g. things like Hyperloop, although I have no idea if that's viable)

It's not.

> and self-driving cars (which let you read/work/etc while commuting)

Self-driving cars won't make it better. Induced demand is a well-studied phenomenon and as I and others have pointed out, cars waste absurd amounts of space per person, whether moving or parked.

> The government is not going to be able to deploy $100b better over the next few decades than the private market.

There's a difference here between the well-studied problems of public choice and the well-studied problems of public goods. The former predicts that governments will face a constant battle not to become captured by special interests that drain away public funds. The latter predicts that private industry will never provide these things to a level that maximises net utility.

> Finally, the rise of remote work might mean a lot of professions commute less in the future. My prediction is this just going to be an exercise in setting $100b on fire.

A lot of work is not remote and won't be, plus a lot of folks greatly prefer to leave their homes so that it is only home and not some never-not-working hybrid. There's also the small problem that Star Trek style matter replicators don't exist and it remains necessary to deliver things to people, wherever they choose to be. And it remains necessary for those same people to sometimes go to other places to collect them.

> If we stopped restricting new housing and taller building, then the number of cars on the road would decrease.

Assuming that public transit could support the increased demand. I'm not an expert on Bay Area transit, but my sense is that there is not enough extra supply right now to support the extra density without modifications.

> Furthermore, there are innovations coming that might shorten commuting (e.g. things like Hyperloop, although I have no idea if that's viable) and self-driving cars (which let you read/work/etc while commuting).

Of all the arguments against transit, this is one of the shallowest and least effective. Large infrastructure projects takes years, perhaps as long as a decade, before construction starts--and it doesn't matter if they're public or private, because they have to go through the same mandatory delay processes. What you're proposing is that the government does absolutely nothing in the intervening times, in the hope that new technology comes out that makes things magically better. If the new technology miraculously comes out in time, you're going to have the exact same long delay before any benefits actually can be enjoyed, and indeed longer because new technology has inevitable teething problems. More likely, the new technology will turn out to not be worth the hype (PRT, monorail), or will be perpetually just over the horizon (self-driving cars).

There is nothing to be gained by waiting to solve problems that already exist today.

There doesn't need to be more transit for it to be true that shorter commutes mean fewer cars on the road, even for the same rate of car ownership / transit ridership.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

> What you're proposing is that the government does absolutely nothing in the intervening times.

I'm not quite proposing that, but actually you're not far off. I think the government is generally very bad at long-term planning, budgeting, and execution. So if the choice is them doing nothing or them collecting and figuring out how to spend an extra $100 billion, I would go for the former. What I would prefer is that they delegate as much as possible of budgeting and execution to private industry. For example instead of spending tens of billions on BART and Caltrain, what if they offered some fraction of that amount in tax incentives for either multi-family housing developers, or for companies that open offices in areas where most people have to commute out for work? Or even tax incentives for people who have a sub-X mile commute?

What makes me skeptical about government spending are things like the California rail project. It seems like a shit show that is going way over budget, and when it's built it's unlikely to even be competitive with alternative modes of transport.

Things like building restrictions are just hampering the free market. Maybe some developer wants to build a bunch of $2k/mo apartments in SF, and they can make the economics work out for themselves, but the city doesn't allow it, so residents of the city have to pay $3k/mo or commute long distances. Everyone loses.

"They"? "Them"? The government is us.

But I agree with you about the building restrictions.

(1) 100 billion over 7 million people is 15k over say twenty years for roughly 750 dollars per year. If the outcome was effective, that sounds like a worthwhile investment.

(2) We definitely need increased housing, but that will only make the traffic problem worse. Can you imagine Tokyo or Paris (cities that have built density) without public transit?

(3) there will always be something new on the horizon - if you always wait for what is next (I.e. hyper loop) you will never improve infrastructure. Unless you think that hyperloop is the absolute end of public transit?

(4) I agree with your skepticism that our governments will spend the money wisely. Since this appears to be some sort of community effort, maybe they will find a way to turn it over to the free market.

With interest, that’s $1,200 per year for every man woman and child in the Bay Area.

... which is an argument for why this shouldn't be a regressive sales tax, but as something along the lines of a parcel or income tax, both of which tend to remove most of the burden from more financially vulnerable folks.

It's not at all an argument for not doing it.

If we stopped restricting new housing and taller building, then the number of cars on the road would decrease.

But didn't you hear? GDP was recently replaced with VMT (vehicle miles traveled) as the measure of a country's economic vitality. So anything that decreases the number of cars on the road, or how far they travel, is right out.

There is so much demand for more housing that a building boom would occur if restrictions were eased. Look at population charts of Texas cities like Austin, San Antonio and Houston where building is easier. Then compare to the relatively flat San Jose and San Francisco population charts.

Has there ever been a time in modern history where building new housing in a large city like SF or SEA has actually decreased housing prices with evidence that no other economic factors at the time played a role?

This doesn't directly answer your question, but here are a few links that discuss the estimated increase in housing costs due to regulated development.

https://www.cato.org/publications/research-briefs-economic-p...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer...

Tokyo?

Prices appear to have stalled/dropped in Portland

Yes, Tokyo.

That's only because Tokyo's long term population trend is negative, unlike most cities.

Uh, no. That's not it at all.

I agree. I do not trust $100B in the government's hands. But I do think housing will come naturally (especially if Gov gets out of the way).

> especially if Gov gets out of the way

Who exactly do you think the government is? The government is the people when it comes to things like this. The government will not get out of the way of housing in SF because the existing landowners -- regular people -- like it that way. And they currently hold a voting majority.

One key benefit that self-driving brings is the eliminating the need for curb-side parking. Your car can drop you off and go park itself in a hole somewhere. That opens up space for many more bike lanes where light motorized vehicles like Segways can also operate.

A lot of positive development can occur with the right regulations. That's what governments should focus on. As we've seen though with the fiasco that's the taxi market in US cities, public officials aren't too keen on doing their job proper.

Where, though? So do we now have to have dedicated self-driving-car parking farms? Where would you put one of those in SF such that it wouldn't increase wait times to 15-20 minutes?

Regardless, self-driving systems like this are at best decades away. Do we just sit here and do nothing in the meantime as the already-terrible situation continues to get worse?

> Commutes are long because most people can't afford to live next to their jobs.

I'd love to see studies by traffic coordinator. Highways in the outer suburbs are affected by this (101 south of Santa Clara, 580 east of Castro valley, 680, etc.), but not necessarily the inner core (e.g. 101 on Peninsula, 880 in the East Bay, etc.) which traverse similar priced markets.

Engineers that work in the South Bay aren't living in SF because they can't afford the South Bay.

you can’t just build more houses without infrastructure. And even with it, people already living here will and do oppose building more (and, alas, they have a right to their opinion)

We should not have job singularities like Bay Area or NY, we should have much (an order of magnitude) more centers like that and more remote work for professions where it makes sense.

We already have the infrastructure.

The Bay Area is so sparsely populated it makes me depressed. Honestly, someone told me a few months ago he didn't want any more building in Cupertino because it was "overcrowded already". I was speechless. The people here are absolutely nuts.

yes, it is overcrowded. I lived in European capital which is much more densely populated. I still remember people jams in subway during rush hours with horror

No, it's not. It's a complete ghost town.

I've lived in a European capital too. London? Where were you?

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