It’s Time for Greater San Francisco
palladiummag.com
palladiummag.com
Considering I can’t even go into BART and come out the same station moments later without being charged $6, which is non refundable unless I give my name and address, I have little hope for this idea.
I know one member of the relatively new Clipper software team, which was brought in with a mandate to consolidate and expand functionality, and it doesn’t sound like they are exceptionally skilled or productive.
https://www.seamlessbayarea.org/vision-map
I'd love to hear peoples' thoughts who actually live or have lived in the Bay Area.
Even though SF is the cultural capital of the region, the majority of the population and economy resides in Santa Clara County (San Jose, Apple, FB, Google, Stanford, SLAC), Contra Costa County (Cheveron, Toyota, ATT), Alameda County (UC Berkeley, LLNL, LBL, Port of Oakland), and San Mateo County (South San Francisco, the entire biotech industry).
All those counties are working with the State Govt to build a unified mass transit system connecting Sacramento, Modesto, East Bay, and South Bay into a single public transit region [0][1][2], especially because most of the labor class lives in the Sacramento region and the Modesto/San Joaquin Valley region.
Furthermore, the City and County of San Francisco often jeopardizes Bay Area unity by threatening to withhold funding to Caltrain or BART due to SF Supervisors internal conflicts. Given the (relative) lack of major private employers in San Francisco after the 2008 economic crisis, all the other counties prefer to make their own deals together and independent of SF. This is why Livermore pulled out of the BART Extension project which caused the entire system to teeter financially because Half a Billion dollars were reallocated to a separate project.
And honestly, even though I have lived in SF for a massive portion of my life, it could die and no one would care less in the Bay Area. San Jose has always been the primary engine for the Bay Area, especially after the Port of SF, the SF Financial Industry, and most non-tech companies left by 2010.
[0] - https://www.sjrrc.com/valley-rail/
The single public transit region sounds exciting; I had no idea there was such a project. I hope they can get it to completion and that it's functional (I'm so unimpressed with most transit in the U.S.).
The biggest transit things actually taking place locally are CA HSR(which is happening, and Caltrain is currently shovels-in-ground electrifying track which will improve speeds and frequencies in the next year or two) and the continued expansion of the ferry system, which was displaced by the Bay Bridge and BART and then rediscovered after 1989 as emergency transport following the Loma Prieta earthquake. WETA, the "Water Emergency Transportation Authority" has some exciting projects that they are able to deploy relatively quickly and cheaply.
The X-factor is the robotaxis. They are currently "just" taxi, and priced like one, but people are using them to get around the city successfully. Cutting down the price and scaling access, which Cruise is set on doing, will have dramatic effects on transport as a whole, and not necessarily in a bad way, because the profitability of a robotaxi system, unlike private auto sales and cab drivers, converges with transit's goals - energy use, vehicle size, availability, etc.
While SF city and county is now actively fighting against them, the potential is there for every city where they're being deployed.
What about noise pollution, congestion, pedestrian/cyclist safety?
My big worry with robots is is that just like Uber, they actually result in a lot more cars on the road.
The interesting part will be when parked cars start being removed as people give up car ownership. That will introduce much more space for interesting options like pedestrian streets and bike infrastructure.
You can have slow speed limits and low congestion.
I'm glad to hear the CA HSR is happening.
NYC in the 70s was a pretty bad tale. The cleaned it up nicely, I’m sure tourism had a lot to do, but NYC used to be affordable.
SF is so incomparable, the only shared qualities are increasing rent and young culture.
Everyone wants to move to sf but what couldn’t you find elsewhere?
I feel like all the problems mentioned have better solutions.
For the “single purchaser” efficiency argument, I would instead like to see collective bargaining agreements where the cities agree to participate and be bound to the agreement. That way it doesn’t even need to be limited to neighbors.
For things like managing transit, I think a regional transit authority needs to be established by the state that works with cities within some framework but cities have no power to otherwise interfere.
Housing is being solved through state level legislation that’s forcing cities to build a realistic plan for increasing residential capacity or lose zoning privileges alltogether.
I don’t think this is the case. Corruption seems to be far easier at smaller scales where there is insufficient scrutiny of the people running departments. Larger cities may at least be able to support a few reporters looking into local government business.
But I think the way government is organised makes a huge difference too. California seems to break things down into little fiefs of control which seems resistant to real scrutiny.
It is all trade offs, but I think there are better structural solutions that don’t create a quasi government covering the a good chunk of the Bay.
London reinstated metro level governance 20 years ago and transport is the bulk of its responsibility. It's hard to imagine improvements like the congestion charge and low emissions zone moving forward without that democratic mandate.
For example, one thing called out is policing. But the claimed problem of interop between departments feels superficial. It’s not like communication is prohibited and you’d still have jurisdictional precinct issues. The problems with policing are intrinsic with how it’s set up structurally in terms of unions, insurance, enforcement of rules within police etc. that doesn’t get better when you amalgamate. Indeed, Toronto’s police famously turned out to have an agreement after amalgamation (iirc) that they struck with gangs to avoid enforcement / prosecution as long as violence was kept in check. When that kind of stuff happens, it’s impact is much narrower when you have independently run departments.
The logical outcome would seemingly be to have one metropolitan county covering the whole Bay Area with responsibility for transport and other shared concerns then have the various cities (which are effectively boroughs) underneath that. Who knows, maybe they could organise integrated fares across the patchwork of different transport systems!