Why can't more housing be built in West San Mateo County? (Los Angeles: homes, buying)

[fluffythewondercat]

I always find it amusing that what people think is a sea of redwoods and Douglas fir next to 280 is actually a town. You just can't see the houses. By design.

Los Altos Hills was less clever in that respect.

There is no housing crisis. There are, however, an awful lot of people who want to buy homes cheaply, watch the values soar and net a million or two. Spoiler alert: The Chinese beat you to it.

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by fluffythewondercat

There is no housing crisis.

Dont be absurd. In the same time period the Bay Area created 750,000 new jobs, the region only built 100,000 new housing units.

So you tell me, how is 7:1 jobs to housing ratio sustainable???

[18Montclair]

But don't you NIMBYs worry your pretty little heads, the state is coming to help the people who need housing that you apparently could care less about.


https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayareah...w-13834033.php

[RationalExpectations]

There is nothing wrong with the bay area that about 3 million fewer people wouldn't cure.

Rather than building, policy should focus on ways to get people to move somewhere else. Like, maybe, Arkansas.

[RationalExpectations]

Transportation arteries are saturated and clogged. City streets are saturated and clogged.

It doesn't matter if new housing construction occurs either in current open space or in so-called infill. In either case, it adds cars, and adding cars is a bad thing - unless the state, county & cities add more throughput capacity. Start with, say, double-decker freeways and expressways and go from there.

[arnavvr]

Originally Posted by RationalExpectations

Transportation arteries are saturated and clogged. City streets are saturated and clogged.

It doesn't matter if new housing construction occurs either in current open space or in so-called infill. In either case, it adds cars, and adding cars is a bad thing - unless the state, county & cities add more throughput capacity. Start with, say, double-decker freeways and expressways and go from there.

Double Decker Freeways collapsed in the Loma Prieta Earthquake. It probably isn’t a smart idea to build more.

[ketch89]

Anyone that thinks the Bay Area is "crowded" hasn't traveled outside the country much. San Francisco is less than half as dense as Paris, and no one thinks Paris is a bad city. We have too little mass transit, not too many people.

[RationalExpectations]

Originally Posted by arnavvr

Double Decker Freeways collapsed in the Loma Prieta Earthquake. It probably isn’t a smart idea to build more.

Structural Engineering. It's a thing.

[ketch89]

Originally Posted by RationalExpectations

Structural Engineering. It's a thing.

The problem with roads is that building more of them causes more traffic.

Induced demand. It's a thing....

https://www.citylab.com/transportati...demand/569455/

http://www.vtpi.org/gentraf.pdf

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/05/...nduced-demand/

[RationalExpectations]

I take it from your reply switching topics to Induced Demand that you concede double decker freeways can be made structurally safe and sound.

While induced demand is a thing, it exists because not enough throughput capacity was added in the first place. Adding a little throughput capacity results in people coming off the painful side streets, thereby filling the just-added-capacity to the breaking point.

Add 2x or 5x or 10x or 100x capacity, and ID occurs, of course. The trick is to add sufficient throughput capacity such that even the newly added ID vehicles do not swamp the capacity.

Network queuing theory. It's also a thing.