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And on top of this, the Bay Area has awful public transportation, so relocated people equals more drivers on already crowded roads.

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Whenever someone says this, I can't help but feel they don't know what truly awful public transport looks like.

Yeah, try anywhere in southern CA.

LA's made quite a bit of improvement over the past 20 years. It's not particularly great, but I'm not sure it qualifies as worse than the Bay Area anymore. Depends to some extent on where you are within each metro area and what kind of commute you have. Some LA maps (metro and commuter rail):

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spring-2012-LACMTA-M...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Metrolink_system_dia...

The extension of the Expo Line (light blue on the first map) out to Santa Monica, scheduled to open next year, should improve things further. The Purple Line extension even more, but that's unfortunately some years out.

The bus network is also crazy-extensive, and used by a large portion of the city: http://media.metro.net/riding_metro/maps/images/system_map.g...

Sure, there are plenty of places with worse public transit, even just within the state of California. That doesn't change the fact that the Bay Area has an awful public transportation system that fails to provide services to the majority of commuters.

I guess I don't have enough experience. From what I've seen of San Francisco, buses are frequent and timely.

My friend out there checks her phone, leaves the house accordingly, and catches it every time. To me, that seems like excellent service.

SF is just one part of the Bay Area.

> Muni is the slowest major transit system in America—and among the least reliable and most overcrowded.

http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2010-02-01/learning...

Visit a second day and see if your opinion remains. Muni is the worst major-city public transit system in the nation.

Well the silicon valley is based over here so you would expect better.

Not sure what that means. Where is here?

Wow, completely misunderstood that. Not sure how.

It is always relative for public transport. You get people in New York and London whinging about having to wait 6 minutes for the next train, because they just missed one. Coming from an area where we would have buses every hour if you were lucky, this seemed ludicrous, but I started to feel the same way after 6 months.

Part of the reason is because people in New York treat public transit differently: at least in Manhattan, it's assumed that public transit is "just there", i.e. I don't have to time when I leave for the subway. This means I don't bother checking when the train is leaving, or planning my day around the subway, at all. I just assume, given I want to go somewhere, that how long it's going to take me is about the longest it's ever taken me so far.

In contrast, in Providence or Phoenix (or even when taking the train in NY), when using public transit, I make sure to time everything as well as possible, so that I minimize my wait times. Which means it's a lot more of a big deal when there are delays, because there aren't enough buses/trains to just take the next one available, and I end up waiting for the entire time of the delay.

I grew up in Toronto, Canada. And when everyone is complaining about Bart or Muni or Caltrain. And complain again when Bart is on strike. I just laugh at them.

Any fellow TTC haters would agree here.

By the way, do you call Tracy as part of Bay Area?

I am amazed how well the TTC works in the snow.

ha, I'm a Toronto guy myself.

I've lived in Toronto. And San Francisco. The TTC is a thousand times better than either BART or MUNI.

You can actually sit on your seats (see: BART). There aren't giant shit-stains on the carpet (who the fuck puts carpet in a public transit vehicle?!). The trains run on time for the most part (see: MUNI). The stations don't literally smell like shit and piss (see: BART). Oh, and it takes 23 mins to travel 7 mi, instead of 55min (York Mills - Union station, compare with Ocean Beach - Embarcadero).

The BART and MUNI are horrific transit agencies. The TTC ain't perfect, but it is strictly better in every single way. You Torontonians have easily the second- or third-best mass transit system on this continent. Nothing in the SF Bay Area even comes into the same league.

Bart is very punctual, didn't see that from TTC. Covers more areas, actually building new stations to SF. Connected with 2 international airports....

Really?

Nope, disagree. The TTC is excellent. SF transit is... ehhhhhhn. The Bay area's geography doesn't make it easy I imagine.

I find the Caltrain to be roughly 100000x better than NJ Transit.

The seats are better on NJ Transit, but I never had to take it as a commuting platform (only on the weekends into NYC or to EWR), but I found Caltrain to be so unreliable as to make driving 40 minutes up I280 to a BART station to be a better option.

Also their ticketing is messed up unless you're a regular with a clipper card, and even then it's easy to forget to sign on / off.

Not sure if trolling. I use NJTransit on a daily 2 hour commute. The main problem with NJTransit is that the ride home is almost never on time. 90% of the time, it's 5-10 mins late. But I can count on one hand how many times the morning ride has been delayed over the past 2 years, most of which had to do with atrocious winter weather affecting all the trains. If Caltrain had to deal with Northeast winter weather it would be 10x worse than NJT.

You are so right on this. I realized at a young age, if you want a life and you live in the Bay Area(except S.F.); you need a reliable vehicle--preferably a vehicle you can repair youself. If you are reading and poor--buy a old Toyota. The 22r engine is almost indestructible.

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