Bay Area Traffic Up 70 Percent In 6 Years (Los Angeles, San Francisco: rent, live)

[WanderingFar]

Originally Posted by Netflix

The solution is for 1) Tech employers to move the jobs out of the region. That will solve the traffic, housing cost, & eviction problems. Absent that, 2) hundreds thousands of new housing units need to be built plus tens of billions pored into transportation infrastructure.

#1 is more practical than #2.

It may be more "practical" in the sense that it's easier to accomplish but it's wholly counter-intuitive for a region to say it doesn't want job growth. Job growth is a politician's wet dream. And these are actually good, high-paying jobs.

San Francisco is long overdue for an upgrade to its transportation infrastructure. And we need housing. One solution might be to make employers pay for it -- if you add more than x-number of jobs, you need to contribute to a housing/transportation fund. That would slow down the rate the growth or punt the ball back to large tech companies. It's not the craziest idea when you consider that many universities in high-cost of living cities like New York already provide faculty housing, often in buildings they own. Couldn't that model work in tech?

[jade408]

Originally Posted by 04kL4nD

70% isn't at all surprising. In fact, it seems like it's gotten more than twice as bad over the past 2-3 years.

Not shocked at all. This was my experience over one year working in San Mateo (living in Oakland).

Month 1: AM commute at 7:45-8:15 - 45-60 minutes; 8:30-8:45: 35-45 minutes
PM commute at 5-6: 50-60 minutes, 6:15 or later: 40-45 minutes

Month 12: AM commute: 8:30-8:45: 45-55 minutes
PM commute: 6: 75+ minutes, 6:45-7:15: 60-75 minutes, 7:30 or later 40-50 minutes

There was a point where I had 2 hours of stressful commuting. And that was when it was time for a new job. I couldn't wait long enough to miss traffic.

[jade408]

The solution is, the peninsula needs to take on its fair share of providing housing for the region. When cities have 2-4x more jobs than housing units, it is impossible to not have traffic.

[sas318]

Have more companies scattered throughout the bay area instead of them all lumped in SF, south bay, and Fremont? But I think businesses flock to those places BECAUSE of the business parks. But I know it's unrealistic because certain neighborhoods are purposed for businesses, just like certain neighborhoods are purposed for residential housing.

I heard someone on news radio say years ago that building more lanes on the freeway will not reduce congestion; it'll only cause MORE people to drive on the freeway!

[WizardOfRadical]

The average bay commuter spends a few minutes less a day than commuters in LA. Bay bridge is only low traffic during meth hours. Bottlenecks now have their own bottlenecks. They should put a tram on the bay bridge.

[ketch89]

The solution is simple. we need a state law that nullifies all zoning/height limits/setbacks/parking requirements, and provides development "by right" in any city with more than 2 jobs per housing unit. The market will take care of the imbalance in a decade or so.

http://reports.abag.ca.gov/sotr/2015...s-progress.php

(see table 4.8)

[alliance]

Originally Posted by 3rdGen SFan

It's silly that so many admit the job growth is the cause of the traffic growth but shift their focus onto "not enough housing being built" when the job growth is also what's responsible for the housing problems. Oh well, now, according to the local morning news, freeway expansion to include more lanes is the planned "solution", LOL! It might help a little temporarily, but if the local job growth rate keeps its pace, what's the next plan, to keep adding extra lanes to the freeways? To tear down buildings near freeways to continue expanding freeways?

Jerry Brown had a reasonable solution to traffic congestion many years ago--live where you work/work where you live. I think his idea was only promoting that idea without creating regulations, but, imo, there should be regulations based on the distances employees live from their workplace. Either require employers to only hire people who live within a specific distance from the workplace or adjust salaries based on where a person lives. For example, if a person works in Mountain View but lives in San Francisco, they should have a deduction in their salary or a tax on their salary calculated based on distance between their home and workplace, and the tax should go to funding solutions to the traffic problems.

Another solution could be to tax the companies that contribute to the traffic commute crisis (and housing crisis since they're connected) and to have the tax increase each year until the problem eases up.

Good god, do you people ever stop and actually listen to what you see and type????

[alliance]

Originally Posted by WanderingFar

It may be more "practical" in the sense that it's easier to accomplish but it's wholly counter-intuitive for a region to say it doesn't want job growth. Job growth is a politician's wet dream. And these are actually good, high-paying jobs.

San Francisco is long overdue for an upgrade to its transportation infrastructure. And we need housing.

Exactly. Saying that you want to kill job growth to solve a problem is absolutely idiotic.

[alliance]

"Hey boss, demand for our product is shooting upward at a fast pace and we don't have enough people to keep up. We need to hire more people."

"That's great! Get more people in asap!"

"Unfortunately, all the best people who want the jobs live outside the 10 mile hiring radius imposed on us by our amazing, awesome, all-knowing government. And i don't think they'd want that extra 10% commute tax they would have to pay."

"Well damn, i guess we should just cut production and accept stagnation."

[Netflix]

Originally Posted by alliance

Exactly. Saying that you want to kill job growth to solve a problem is absolutely idiotic.

Actually if the jobs were located someplace where no educated person wants to live, (pick any of the flyover states with a declining population), then you would have a point. But a highly desirable place to live, like the bay area, where the housing and traffic problems are due to having 600,000 jobs deposited in the area over a 6 year period, well then the solution is to reduce the number of jobs that CREATED the problem in the first place. If you have any critical thinking skills, and are capable of using them, then you'll see that more housing is not going to fix the "housing" crisis and is certainly going to make traffic MUCH, MUCH worse. More housing is not going to lower the cost of housing. MORE HOUSING MEANS MORE JOB GROWTH, and both of those means more traffic.

I can't over emphasis the following point. The existing numbers of jobs in the bay area is not fixed. The number of jobs today is not fixed anymore than the number of jobs in the bay area 10 years ago was fixed. So building more housing will make traffic worse and create the opportunity to accommodate more job growth. All of this happens for the simple reason that the bay area is a desirable place to live. You may not like it but that's how it works.