Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajiang | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered why more people don't live in Oakland or Berkeley, which are both a relatively short commute to downtown SF. The housing prices are significantly cheaper, and especially in Berkeley, there seems to be a strong tech community.

Without going into all of my guesses as to why this hasn't happened in droves, I think one of the larger reasons is the access to cheap transportation back to those areas at night. BART stops too early, so for the younger crowd that likes to stay out, it's too expensive to constantly take a $40-60 ride out of SF. Without the advent of additionally public transportation, would it be economically viable to provide a paid shuttle service to and from SF / Berkeley / Oakland?

View on HN

Traditionally its because an East Bay to Silicon Valley commute hasn't really worked. Not until Twitter/Zynga/Square/AirBnb started the large SF startup presence has the East Bay really started to benefit from the tech scene.

(note I bought in Berkeley a few years ago, and looking to move to Oakland)

I've never considered Easy Bay because of its much higher crime rate. There is a reason it's cheaper. Maybe things are different now, but I wouldn't know, because I've never considered it.

That's some very poor circular logic. You've never considered it because of the crime rate that you don't know because you've never considered it.

It was high enough to demotivate me from checking again.

You say that like San Francisco is crime free while the whole Easy Bay has a high crime rate...

Uh, yeah.

SF may have crime but its nowhere near the danger level of oakland. IIRC, SF isnt even on the "top 100 most dangerous cities" list, but oakland usually is in the top 5.

So, yes- Big difference. 10x higher chance to get murdered in oakland than SF.

As others have said, painting an entire city with a single brush is doing nothing but tormenting you with a false sense of fear of Oakland and tricking you with a false sense of security in San Francisco.

It's far wiser I think to use sites like http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Oakland-California/crime/ to evaluate on a more granular level.

As you can see, there are areas of high crime density on both sides of the bay.

How is that danger distributed through Oakland? Baltimore and Philly are both typically in the top 25 of those lists, but from personal experience I can say the actual danger presented to any particular person depends very heavily on which neighborhood in the city you choose (compared to Seattle, where as far as I can tell there are no genuinely dangerous neighborhoods). I have even heard similar claims about Detroit from Detroit natives, though I must admit I am a little skeptical in that case.

I guess my point is that a city having a high crime rate does not necessarily put it off limits; it may just mean that particular neighborhoods are off limits.

Once you get used to the nuances of a place then you start to internalize its dangers in this way. I heard and experienced the same logic about threats while in the West Bank. The danger is really overblown, as long you don't drive that road over there...

Isn't it true? "Oakland is fine, just don't go to [bad neighborhood in Oakland]" is just a more localized form of "The Bay Area is safe, just don't go to Oakland" (a premise that most people here seem to accept).

"PA is safe, just don't go to Philly", "Philly is safe, just don't go to North Philly", "North Philly is safe, just don't leave Temple's campus"... etc. It's all just a matter of scale. You could break it down by block if you wanted to.

Well, at some point you're down to the addresses of known murderers, at which point I don't think you'd want to sub-divide any further. "Franky's house is fine, just don't go in the basement".

Right, but Oakland != "The East Bay".

Yea, there's always Hayward if you want safety...

The Tri-Valley is quite nice, but don't tell or everyone will want to move here.

> SF may have crime but its nowhere near the danger level of oakland.

Oakland is not the whole East Bay.

Oakland, Emeryville, Richmond, and San Pablo have high crime rates, sure.

The rest of the East Bay, not so much.

(And, of course, the East Bay isn't the only place one can commute into San Francisco from -- the Peninsula exists, too.)

Where I live in the East Bay crime is lower than SF. It all depends on where you go.

"Would it be economically viable to provide a paid shuttle service to and from SF / Berkeley / Oakland?"

Perhaps Uber should move from providing premium taxi-like service, and instead offer a 24-hour bus-like service? For partygoers on the weekend, at least?

shameless plug

this is literally the startup I am working on

I describe it here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6428246

You can signup for the interest list here

http://driveless.co/

I'll be updating and launching new things this week.

I think you could definitely be selective in the routes and hours you would operate - I like the idea of charging $20 per person and transporting 50-100 people at a time from major downtown centers (e.g. Civic Center to Downtown Berkeley)

40-60 ride out of SF? AC Transit Lines 800–899 are All Nighter lines, operating from 1 a.m. – 5 a.m. daily. Some may operate somewhat earlier or later (especially on weekends).

That sounds great. How come they don't service the Peninsula to South Bay? :(

They do, but it's hilariously slow. It's so slow that it's often actually faster to wait for the next morning's Caltrain.

SamTrans runs all-night bus service from SF to Palo Alto, route 397. Once per hour, and the ride takes 2 hours, 15 minutes (!). From there you can switch to the all-night VTA route 22, which goes Palo Alto to San Jose. That's also approximately once per hour, and the trip takes about 1 hour, 15 minutes. With the connection time, you can make the overall trip in about 4 hours.

This does happen in droves, but it's more when kids reach elementary school age. SF is a pretty difficult city when it comes to ensuring your kid gets into a decent elementary school, so that's one point at which many people leave. Not to mention that you don't have to go far in any direction (north to Marin, east to Berkeley, south to Palo Alto) and you have fantastic public schools.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com