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Comment by mertd | Hacker News Reader

You might have it backwards. Traffic is increasing because we're adding offices but no housing nearby. Therefore people need to pour in from further out. With higher density, alternate transportation options become viable and attractive.

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Your argument does not account for people currently outside the Bay Area moving into the Bay Area because of cheaper housing. While people currently residing in far flung places would move closer to their work, the people living in other parts of the country aspiring to live in Silicon Valley would now move to Morgan Hill and Gilroy. Eventually, we will end up with the same housing crunch, except with twice the number of cars on the road.

If you look at the data for SF, 95% of brand new units are first occupied by people who have lived here for a at least a few years. New housing serves people who are already here.

What causes people to migrate to the bay is the office creation, not the housing creation.

That logic doesn't work. 95% of new units going to existing residents doesn't mean that if I built 100 new units, I only get 5 new houses. Those 95% who move to new units leave their old local places open, which in turn go to god knows where.

There is a natural population growth in the bay area from people having and raising children here. Our housing growth rate is slower than the rate of children coming of age. The unoccupied units that current residents are moving into can theoretically be occupied by the children of the current residents as they come of age.

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