Bay Area Traffic Up 70 Percent In 6 Years

[rhys811]

I have lived in Mountain View for 6 years and worked in Menlo Park for 5. Last week it took me 90 minutes to drive home. I was in park for several minutes on Willow Rd. I'm trying to save up enough money to move away but it's hard when my rent goes up and my pay doesn't.

[WizardOfRadical]

Originally Posted by rhys811

I have lived in Mountain View for 6 years and worked in Menlo Park for 5. Last week it took me 90 minutes to drive home. I was in park for several minutes on Willow Rd. I'm trying to save up enough money to move away but it's hard when my rent goes up and my pay doesn't.

Bay Area, pay more and get less. But at least you can brag that Mark Zuckerberg lives in your area code. LOL!

Problem with tech bros and yupster clones is they are always late to what is fresh. Bay Area was played out 10 years ago, let alone now.

If you did not experience SF in the 90's you really are not missing anything, other than your next scheduled rent hike.

[CaliRestoration]

Originally Posted by TheseGoTo11

No sensible fix will ever happen here - same process exists throughout the region - city, Peninsula, all over.

Misguided hippies and city council members demand developers build affordable units among market rate ones. In turn, the developers build less, which in turn leads to lower inventory and higher prices. Repeat.

No one does more to sustain high housing costs than people who claim to be housing advocates.

Anyone who has paid attention to the "low cost housing" debates in San Francisco knows this to be true.

[HockeyMac18]

Related: Silicon Valley job boom produced 'shocking' commutes and housing crisis

This isn't necessarily saying that our traffic is worse than LA, but the commutes for megacimmuters might be worse...

One takeaway from the studies that stunned experts: The Silicon Valley “megacommute” — defined as a single motorist driving 90 minutes or longer one way to work — is actually worse here in the Bay Area than is the case even in traffic-choked Los Angeles County.

The commuting study, prepared by Jon Haveman, chief economist with San Rafael-based Marin Economic Consulting, determined that during 2015, 5.3 percent of solo drivers endured megacommutes. In Los Angeles County, the rate of motorists facing the same commuting grind was 4.6 percent.

And, pending a major downturn, it's likely not going away as the root cause (lack of housing near jobs) isn't improving fast enough:

Joint Venture did a second study that indicated housing development is further falling behind the pace of population and jobs growth in Santa Clara County, San Mateo County and San Francisco.

From 2007 to 2016, those counties added a combined 344,000 residents but gained just 69,500 housing units, according to a study prepared by Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

[Chuck5000]

The rapid worsening of traffic in the Bay Area is depressing. It diminishes a lot of the benefits of the region (i.e that great place by the coast or mountains is now a lot harder and more stressful to get to....)

We are headed for LA-levels of immobility. It's a matter of time, I'd say 10 years or less till we get to LA of the early 2000s.