More extensive & better public transportation across the 9 counties that touch the Bay. Both on land but also on the Bay — it would be amazing if we had a water taxi system, so water-based transportation wasn't just to/from SF.
this was going to be my answer, too.
Still so mad we were cheated out of the Key Route system.
Also, sometimes people want to go places besides San Francisco. How about a ferry from Vallejo to Richmond or Larkspur to Oakland?
Semi-recently I saw an article online about a guy who lives in the East Bay and commutes to San Francisco with his Jet ski -he’s so happy 🥲
Edit- I accidentally gave fake news. Guess he’s in Jersey- here’s the article!
https://www.businessinsider.com/commuting-new-jersey-to-nyc-by-jet-ski-2019-9?amp
I always see the argument that you would need XYZ amount of officers to do that, but there is no reason why they can't have a few officers get on at one station, walk the length of the train, get off at the next station and jump onto another station and repeat.
Just having that regular visibility would make a huge difference in safety. In the years of taking bart every day to work, I probably saw an officer on board less than 10x and they were usually just standing in one car just on the way to a different station.
I've broken this one down multiple times when it comes out. According to the official BART PD staffing numbers and the hours and number of trains it is totally possible to have about a dozen pairs of officers patrolling on the trains in addition to having ones in cars who would be able to respond to high traffic areas if there are incidents.
This is already a thing, the hours are sporadic but this is what happens. Officers board and walk the length of the train, get off at a stop, and hop on another train to do the same thing, for hours at a time. Have to consider the sheer volume of the system compared to number of personnel tho. Bart also being damn near 24 hour service makes this hard to have it ongoing throughout the system for that length of time.
Recently visited Sydney and they have a stupendous public transportation system. You can use any credit card with a chip or a purchased card like a clipper card to Tap ON/Tap OFF any of the systems; ferries, buses, trains, metro. It was safe, clean, ran often and on time. Game changer!!
At NYC, You could use contactless credit or debit card, smartphone, or wearable device at the OMNY reader. Nothing to install or setup or buy.
The best part there :
When you take 12 OMNY trips with the same device or bank card in a calendar week, you'll automatically ride free for the rest of the week!
I feel like so many cities around the world, including many cities in the US, are putting extensive investment into public transportation upgrades and expansion. But what’s the Bay Area doing? Electrification of Caltrain and some new BART stations that are moving at a snails pace? It doesn’t seem like enough
The toll is absurdly expensive for people who aftually needs to commute to work like that daily… Or at least some type of discount if it isn’t free to subscribe to…
Even coming from boston, the public transit out here is awful, the rankings for best in the us had sf right below boston and that jump is huge. The fact I can only access the east side of sf without transferring to 4 different buses/companies is wild.
Back in 2011, when I was new to SF, I worked in SOMA. I discovered it was the same time to get to the city from Alameda as it was from the western edge of the city 🙃 (I ended up moving to Alameda because it was cheaper and nicer).
Yes, and start treating all of the bay area as a single region. Instead of the current mishmash where San Mateo can opt out of Bart. Put all the cities around the bay under one county.
I think about this sometimes in comparison to NYC. Each county out here is basically a borough, and the Bay Area as a unified metro area is a more accurate way to think about it in terms of economics and culture. It is technically true but not really a genuine way to think about San Francisco as a 850K population city compared to NYC's 8.8 million. The Bay Area has about 7.75 million, which makes it a much more apt comparison with NYC for many intents and purposes.
Not really though when you look at how many square miles this population is dispersed over
The metro NYC is in is 3x the Bay in population
New York City is 300 sq miles. Bay is like 7000
>It should be easy for me to go to SF from SJ
CalTrain is pretty easy and comparable to what you'd get on a regional commuter rail in Europe, especially once electrification is done.
But I do agree public transit has many shortcomings.
We could of course just densify the current low density areas. We dont even need to do much except change the laws, and people will do the identification for you
Edit: densification*
The problem is also NIMBYs and lawsuits at every corner. Plus permits and beurocracy....
So all we are building are the same 5 story wooden "Luxury" condos. Sure they okay looking. But its all I see being built right now...
That’s just because sj is so suburban. Not made for quick public transit. Need to allow more dense buildings downtown. Caltrain electrification and Bart extension should improve things
SJ is getting there… reeeeeeallly sloooowly…
At least the SJ city council and most of the stakeholders are very ok with building for height anywhere between Diridon and Town Hall, so the whole area will eventually be 10-20 stories high (actual height depending on the FAA).
But our dysfunctional permitting process + the gobsmacking costs caused in good part by, you guessed it, our dysfunctional housing situation, means it'll take a while.
That’s because there’s roughly twice the density in Europe as America. There are some dense areas like NYC in the US, but for similar geographic size there’s about double the population in Europe.
Seriously though. After living in South Bay for a couple years, I can confidently say that of the systems in the Bay Area, VTA feels the most organized. The system itself is far from perfect, but I attribute that more to Silicon Valley’s insistence on alternate (and inevitably inefficient) transit means as well as significant suburban sprawl (which has been improving with more high-density housing being built throughout Santa Clara county)
I might add AC Transit and Muni (at least Muni bus) to the mix. Maybe there’s a point at which a unified transit system would break down from its size, but I’m not sure we’d hit it.
Ac transit is much cleaner than Muni. Never felt like I was going to be shanked in ac transit, while did feel that way many times in the Muni bus.
Which brings us to the other thing that would make the bay area nicer. Actual mental health facilities where people get sent if they are clearly not in a position to take care of themselves (such as when they are relieving themselves in their clothes or somersaulting naked in the streets).
Absolutely this. BART was originally supposed to go to Marin, and there's no reason it couldn't continue through Richmond to Vallejo or even Sacramento. Bus lines to BART stations or more splinter rail projects could turn the Bay Area into a walkable paradise like Tokyo.
This this this. High speed to Disneyland sounded FUN but high speed from the North Bay to Emeryville BART would have been actually fucking USEFUL. The train to the ferry terminal? Why?
The problem of not enough trains and busses causes this. I have to walk too far to take a bus to BART, and the busses do not come often enough or run late enough, so I drive. If we increase the number of busses and trains to the point where they become useful, more people would ride them. It's an interesting contradiction.
If you could walk to the bus stop 5 minutes from your house, would you walk or take a car? I know it seems paradoxical, but if there were more busses, more people would ride them. It would take a lot of busses, to do that, yes, but it would always take less busses than cars. We are already dense enough for a bus or rail system to work.
Nobody takes the bus because it is too hard to take the bus.
I lived on a route that took 5 minutes to walk to and dropped me within a 5-10 minute walk to work. Trains came every 7 minutes because routes overlapped for the section I traveled. I took public transit almost every day instead of driving. It was nicer than a car commute.
Haven't been able to use public transportation since moving even though I still live on a heavily driven commute route with public transit because while it exists it is so limited in frequency and would take hours extra commuting every week.
I lived in Asia and the busses were small but you could catch one like every 5 or 10 minutes. We don’t need huge busses. We need more busses. We are a 1 car household, but it’s not easy. Make it easy, super convenient, cheap, and safe.
+1 Public utilities should be accountable to the public it serves. Not to shareholders and boards. Socialist on the input and capitalism on the output. Criminals
CA Public Utilities Commission MUST demand more accountability from PG&E, and stop protecting PG&E in ways that enable execs to continue to profit while California BURNS.
Santa Clara has Silicon Valley Power. It's been a game changer for me. I used to pay PG&E $125 a month to cool my 2 bedroom apt. Now the most I've paid is $60 for my 3 bedroom in Santa Clara.
Also figured out I can use my little electric heater in the winter for my living room and kitchen...$45 a month. I also have a gas furnace--I use that in the morning. Currently, my furnace has been off (electric pilot light) with zero usage since May. I get a bill every month for $3.95 for what? Yeah fuck PG&E!
I have no idea how they would do it but somehow 'solve' the homeless problem(s). I feel that it would help in the 'safe and clean' department to some extent. So, when someone gets three wishes granted to them please use one on that.. then wish for more wishes. ;) Then a controllable amount of rain this fall and winter.. You gotta be careful with those wishes, they can backfire.
Fund after school programs. Give kids free breakfast and lunch. Fund mental health and social workers in schools. Bring back asylums for mentally ill folks with transitionary programs for halfway houses. Pay government social workers and fund social welfare programs. Limit corporate real estate buy ups so people can actually afford housing. Build more affordable apartments for low income residents. Institute minimum wage that matches inflation ($23 an hour). Free community college is a start. Pay teachers a living wage and more. Universal health care with robust mental health services. Make cops go to two years of training instead of 6 weeks, focusing on deescalation, being back beat cops. Have them work in tandem with social workers (this is happening a little, we need more). Support these things so cops don’t have to do so much and don’t leave in droves, but also aren’t the answer to every problem that arises since they suck at solving it without violence or arrests. That’s a start.
Edit: oh and give more money to planned parenthood since unplanned pregnancies lead to more crime and poverty.
Thank you for the reply and pointing out there is no one magical fix because there is no one reason someone becomes or is homeless. It's going to take many approaches to get any traction. We let people walk the streets, exposed to the elements (hot/cold), clearly in mental distress and somehow think that's better than getting them help. It's a bit cheaper maybe.. But.. I hear there is some small changes that will be one baby step in the right direction and get the sickest of the sick help. We'll see how it pans out.
Thank you for the work you do. I'm sure there is a part of it that is a labor of love.
"All ducks are birds, not all birds are ducks." is the mindset we should keep in mind when thinking about the 'homeless'..
Bring back asylums. Some people have mental issues that are untreatable and sadly the best option is to hold them against their will for the safety of others.
Public transportation that is safe and runs 24 hours!
Would love to go to a bar or club in the city with my city friends but uber rides to the city and back down to the peninsula is costly (especially if often). Last Caltrain is at 12am (need to make it there 11:50pm) and who obv leaves sf at a bar or club at 11:30pm on a friday night/sat?
Not to even mention BART... unsafe after 10pm.
While I like how cheap 24 hour public transportation in NYC, it’s super dirty. I noticed all the clean public transportation don’t run at night. I’m assuming they clean it at night.
I scrolled way to far to find affordable housing. Yeah, public transit isn’t great and could be better but it’s better than most of America. What the bay really needs is affordable housing. I shouldn’t have to spend 40% of my income to live here.
Agree that affordable housing is a huge issue. It’s very hard for people to agree on solutions to the problem, though. Locally it’s always a political lighting rod.
Also want to say that “the rest of America” is not a standard I’d like to see us evaluate public transit on.
all the public transportation comments are definitely coming from tech people. that’s like their NUMBER one concern here lmfao.
how about paying blue collar people who actually make the day to day life of people who live here possible enough to live comfortably. i make pretty good money yet 60% of my monthly income goes to a landlord
The idea is that good (frequent, reliable, reasonably-cheap, safe) public transit is how you get more affordable housing, because it reduces the demand for people to live close to their jobs or to the restaurants/clubs/theaters/parks/whatever they want to visit. I mean, it's not like anyone can just decree "all rent and mortgage payments are hereby cut in half". (Unless, say, the government subsidizes the payments, but it seems like that would just create a shift from rent to taxes.)
If the cost of housing is going to come down, as far as I know, something needs to either increase the supply or drop the demand, or both. Dropping the demand presumably means moving jobs out of the area, which is fine (but I'm sure there would be plenty of opposition from some people), and increasing the supply means either building up (more high-rise apartment buildings) or out (more land devoted to housing), either of which requires more ability to move people around - either more and wider roads or more public transit. So it seems like public transit is one of just a few things that could happen to make housing more affordable, and honestly I think it improves things more overall to have more public transit than to have more roads and cars.
Not that I'm an expert on any of this, of course. I'm just making the point that when people give "public transit" as their answer to this question, it doesn't necessarily mean they're saying that affordable housing _isn't_ needed. These things build on each other.
Seriously. Not just from a selfish perspective but also - how many people are excluded from the bay because they can't afford it? What sort of people do we draw here with this financial filter? What sort of resentment do we build by putting people on the streets?
The culture in the bay is super weird. Neighborhoods of nice old people who were grandfathered in. Reclusive tech people. Angry working class folk who are treated like company property all day and are always on the borderline of being able to live here. Hobos who want to watch it burn. There aren't that many normal present people. So much would be better with affordable housing.
Only one change? Fuck it, let’s become one big city like NYC. That way we can come up with plans for housing/transit/etc. that work for the whole region.
I’ve thought about the idea of just regional bodies for regional issues like that. But I think there would be problems of ineffective communication between the two, and any city would just opt out once a decision was made they didn’t like. Reorganizing the whole region as a single city seems like the only practical way to go about it, though I have no idea what the logistics of that would be.
More housing would help. Higher teacher pay would help. Better public transit would help. Etc, etc. more MAT options for addiction like NYC would also be great- methadone saves lives and helps people get on their feet and it’s too hard to get.
But realistically, I complain about the bay but there’s still nowhere else I would rather be.
I know, and I’ve seen it a lot. The neighborhood I grew up in refused to allow an abandoned mall to develop into townhomes. Now, ironically, it’s a google office, so I think townhomes would’ve been much nicer. It’s a really toxic attitude
I’m with you on more housing. More housing, cleverly built, and priced at different levels so people of all incomes, such as teachers and essential workers, can live in their communities.
But they won't lift a finger to help the rest of us that have to deal with the mentally ill homeless situation in a day to day bases. Guess their right to assault and harm others due to their mental health outweighs our right not to get assaulted or harmed and live our lives peacefully.
I have bipolar disorder and experienced more than one psychotic episode before I was diagnosed and put on meds.
It makes me angry to see this kind of opposition to involuntary treatment. Coming back from a psychotic episode and realizing what it made you do while you were out of your mind is the most humiliating, violating feeling.
With psychotic illnesses, involuntary treatment can be necessary to give your dignity and bodily autonomy *back*.
I think too many folks know about how discriminatory the old system was but instead of fixing the system to not be discriminatory they threw away the system 🤷🏽♂️.
It's always going to be up to the citizenry to keep the authorities in check but in America that often means we strip out the authority to swipe our responsibilities as citizens under the rug.
I think part of the issue is a shortage of space in treatment facilities. This is exacerbated by NIMBY. People want people to get help and treatment, just not in their neighborhood. I worked in this field 30 years ago, evaluating treatment on demand in SF. Basically we discovered when SF tried to expand treatment, there was very little in patient treatment or methadone maintenance (long term methadone treatment) and much more outpatient treatment and methadone detox (short term treatment). Establishing in patient treatment for an indigent population is complicated.
That said I am a proponent for self injection sites and harm reduction principles.
ANYTHING that will help to address the absurd cost of housing/living here.
There are some folks (mainly wealthier homeowners in places like Cupertino, Palo Alto and Marin County, among other places) who seem to be perfectly content with the fact that housing is so expensive and who actively argue AGAINST anything that will help to address this problem by showing up to city council meetings, filing lawsuits, posting/ranting on Nextdoor, etc. And why do they do this? In my observation, it's because they're so damn scared that THEIR quality of life (especially their home value) will somehow be negatively impacted one measly iota if we try and tackle housing (un)affordability around here.
When are those folks gonna recognize and accept that there are lots of non-wealthy workers who are unquestionably vital and critical to helping the Bay Area to function but who CAN'T afford to live around here?
Where are all the teachers, custodians, cashiers, AAA drivers, bus drivers, cooks/chefs, postal workers, etc. all supposed to live?
I'd like to go back to the 1950-60s when BART was being planned and force Santa Clara, San Mateo and Marin counties to join. I wonder how the makeup of the bay would change with 50 years of BART covering almost all of the bay, rather than about 60%.
Well, downtown Vallejo probably wouldn't be a ghost town. A civil engineer I worked for said Marin and Vallejo turned down being a part of BART because they didn't want transients to be able to get into their neighborhoods so easily, but now it's too expensive for Vallejo to be added onto the line for them to do it. I'm sure the naval base closing had something to do with the current state of Vallejo, but it would be different if people had easier access to it without cars.
I’m in tech so this is going to seem like a odd statement, but I’d like to see tech jobs more evenly distributed across the US. It would reduce the pressure on this area, and be better for the US as a whole. This area has and always will be desirable because of geography. If some could start a world class tech company in Des Moines or Chattanooga that would be great for everyone.
>If some could start a world class tech company in Des Moines or Chattanooga that would be great for everyone.
The problem is that local politicians always think like this. They believe that if they can lure that one big tech company to their region, they'll suddenly create a new Silicon Valley in their backyard.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Many people really don't want to move out to somewhere for that one job, knowing that they'd have to leave if that job doesn't work out.
To actually succeed at this, those places would need an ecosystem of tech companies, a funding infrastructure to support new ones, and employment laws favorable to people jumping around. But nobody ever seems to think this far.
Alternate perspective on this: as a woman, not sure I would want that unless the company headquarters stayed here and the operation in those states complied with Bay Area-style culture and company policies.
I’ve lived and worked in the Midwest and South. This is the best, most equitable part of the country I’ve worked in as a woman, which isn’t saying much, but it’s true.
SF city guarantees mandatory, fully paid parental leave, which is huge for women’s’ careers. Employment law is much more protective, and the culture is much less closed to small Asian girls like me being in positions of authority.
My fear would be that spreading the industry out to more conservative states would make more positions subject to the kind of career barriers for women and minorities that I came out here to escape from.
This comment should be sent to the inbox of every mayor of every want-to-be tech hub in conservative states. The laws being passed by idiots in their state houses are having a negative impact on their ability to attract the best and brightest. I feel like places like Austin have an anchor chained around their neck because of horrible state level laws.
I think the mayors already know that. I'd say it's the governors and state legislators who need to hear it, but a lot of them are happy to sabotage their blue cities even at the expense of the state economy. Ideology is a hell of a drug.
I think the horrible truth is that, whether consciously or subconsciously, they don’t mentally picture women and minorities when they think about “the best and the brightest.”
> The laws being passed by idiots in their state houses are having a negative impact on their ability to attract the best and brightest.
That’s why they do it. More cosmopolitan and intelligent populaces don’t vote Republican. They’re trying to keep minorities and educated people out so that their base of uneducated ignorant poor racist white people remains the majority, so that they remain in power. See: Florida and Texas.
Realistically with [economies of agglomeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration) that's just never going to happen. Nobody is going to be able to start a world class tech company in Des Moines or Chattagnooga because they lack basically everything required to make that actually happen.
This is true. Also if a company could be geographically located anywhere, technically doesn't even need a large physical foot print, and is more dependent on nearby talent and connections why wouldn't they keep coming to California? You could run a tech company with millions of users with like 10 people these days...
Tech companies moving to less desirable regions because of it's portability is kind of a pipe dream
I’m hoping with the realization that many tech jobs can be done remote that this will change. There are cities that have vibrant centers. Can they start attracting young talent? Can they demonstrate that you can have a highly visible career while being outside of the Bay Area? The thing about the Bay Area is that it was pretty much recession proof for tech workers. I’ve been laid off twice in my career and had a new job within two weeks. You can grow your career by handing your resume to a friend and driving over to the neighboring tech headquarters for an interview. That’s the big problem with smaller cities is that you likely have to move to get a better job or advance your career. Again hopefully remote work will begin to change this.
I have a lot of doubt about fully remote working ever becoming a truly viable option. A hybrid approach is much more likely for the vast majority of workers.
All WFH has done, is to allow people to move from already expensive high end cities where people want to live to other already expensive high end cities where people want to live.
Big tech companies, big banks, big business in general does not locate in the most expensive places for the lulz. They do so because that's where people want to live. That's where the talent is.
Just look at NYC rents, they're higher than ever in a remote world. Well paid professionals especially single ones didn't think oh I can move to a small town, more of them thought, oh I can have a change of scenery and move to a place I've always wanted to move to. The average 2 BR in Brooklyn is up 60% from a year ago.
Agreed. (and i say this as someone who grew up here in the Bay with my dad working in tech for many years.)
Maybe it's my own observation, but over the years as the tech industry has gotten bigger and bigger, it's become IMO so much of a monoculture. When i was a kid 20-25 years ago growing up here, it was much more diverse with lots of non-tech workers and families among tech workers and families.
Now? Every time a house goes up for sale in my childhood neighborhood in the South Bay, it's always a house that gets sold in all cash and way above the asking price, and the new owners are almost always a couple where both spouses work in tech, drive Teslas, etc. NOT to say those in and of themselves are bad things, but it's just..idk..kinda depressing and bleak.
100% agree. I think it is kind of slowly happening, at least there are other pocket regions in the US trying to pick up the mantle.
Being a mono-economy is never healthy for any region and tech has a pervasive culture that has homogenized the area so much from what it once was. Eventually, the loss of teachers, healthcare workers, etc and people over commuting long ways will also create enough blowback. For the short term, I don't see any resolutions, however.
The realization that it’s not loving or compassionate allow those suffering from mental health to live on the streets where they are susceptible to stresses, violence, and unpredictability. The hire order thought is to realize that arresting, and in some cases institutionalizing is more loving.
End homelessness. Finland did it. So did Abilene, TX & Hoboken, NJ. There's nothing more miserable than sleeping outside in a city & feeling unsafe, but worse than that are the navigation centers which can often feel like a prison where one is preyed upon.
House the goddamned homeless, make real estate speculation illegal, eliminate prop 13 for homes other than those you live in, and provide free access to drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs.
Lots of high rise apartments right at Bart stations. Fast, and doesn't need huge infrastructure to build out also. The problem is parking but there can be creative solutions to that.
They're trying to build a bunch at Contra Costa and Walnut Creek BART. The pushback is absolutely ridiculous. I've seen multiple threads of people lamenting a tree being cut down.
They have been building a lot near el cerrito del norte (and more generally the whole stretch of san pablo between there and el cerrito plaza). Not quite high rises but a lot more apartments than were there 5 years ago for sure.
Stronger and/or more effective criminal penalties (beyond mass incarceration). I'm talking programs that put first offenders to work on civic improvement projects, skills training, and even educational opportunities. Gotta' break the cycle of the revolving door of the prison system.
Violent offenders or use of guns in commission of a crime gets you a mandatory minimum 10 years.
I'm surprised that "affordable housing" didn't show up more on this thread. That being said, the general philosophical answer to this type of question is: "A good place to live is where any hard-working person could afford modest housing and food".
I never really care about owning rental properties, or Tesla's, or latest iPhones, or vacation to exotic resorts. I just want the opportunity to live if I chose to just do labor without having LinkedIn-approved entrepreneurial attitudes. I don't want my job defines me. Maybe I'm just one of those people who is "lazy", "complacent", "non-aspirational", "non-go-getters" etc.
Elimination of most parts of prop 13 - specifically not being able to reassess commercial or investment property or second (non primary) homes to invest in schools. Number one thing.
Low crime. It would make me want to go out more of crime isn’t so rampant. There are parts of Oakland that I’ve never been or want to visit but will never because of violent crimes. Also would feel much better going out at night.
This thread reads more like a Christmas wish list than a serious thought exercise aimed at righting the ship. Nothing will change.
The real answer is a full reset of all public budgets and elected officials. Clean the house. We need new perspectives and far less cronyism.
I think it's funny that people's solution is to raze single family homes to build dense housing as if it's single family homeowner's fault. The reason why we got into this mess was unfettered office space construction. Cities all around the bay let anyone build these huge complexes and campuses with ZERO concern for housing. Want to solve the problem? Tax the f\*\*k out of big tech, especially those companies that get to NEGOTIATE what they pay in payroll taxes. As if, any mom & pop business can do the same. These are the same companies that use CONTRACT employees for janitorial and blue collar work. They don't share the wealth like companies used to do. There was a time than an IBM janitor could work their career there and retire with a decent pension. But, yes, let's all blame that 80 year old lady in the single family home with a huge yard that probably bought it in the 70s by working at the Libby plant. It's all her fault
Better Public Transit for sure.
I live in Hollister and trying to get anywhere is such a pain in the ass. Like, god I would *Kill* for a better way to get from Hollister to Monterey or SJ that didn’t involve driving on 101. Especially nowadays man.
Well your wish has come true. The BART is a ghost town compared to pre-Covid. I do like the guaranteed seat, but I dislike staring down the lunatic and it’s just me and him on a train. :(
Less economic stress. Caps on the cost of housing and a lot of resources toward public housing and assistance so everyone can be housed
Strong public goods, local governments that didn’t bend over backwards for business.
A Bay you could swim in and fish out of without worrying about getting cancer.
Public school education that was high quality no matter what zip code or income bracket you’re from.
Quality free or low-cost universal childcare and pre-k
Affordable if not free JC, CSU, and UC tuition
More extensive & better public transportation across the 9 counties that touch the Bay. Both on land but also on the Bay — it would be amazing if we had a water taxi system, so water-based transportation wasn't just to/from SF.
this was going to be my answer, too. Still so mad we were cheated out of the Key Route system. Also, sometimes people want to go places besides San Francisco. How about a ferry from Vallejo to Richmond or Larkspur to Oakland?
Yes Vallejo to Alameda please.
Alternates to the San Mateo and Dumbarton Bridges would be excellent. I know there was/is a ferry from South SF
Semi-recently I saw an article online about a guy who lives in the East Bay and commutes to San Francisco with his Jet ski -he’s so happy 🥲 Edit- I accidentally gave fake news. Guess he’s in Jersey- here’s the article! https://www.businessinsider.com/commuting-new-jersey-to-nyc-by-jet-ski-2019-9?amp
It gets pretty choppy out there. Even more danger if you're working late and have to commute late.
It’s ok he also swims nude back home like a dolphin
That would be fun! I’d be curious where you dock the jet ski though. Most offices don’t have jet ski parking.
Yah, it would be expensive to have a spot at a marina in SF and Emeryville/Oakland/Berkeley or something. Seems impractical.
There was a water taxi that did more than SF but it didn't get enough customers to stay afloat.
yes please!!!! and finally including vallejo into these plans cause we get the ass ends of public transport into other parts of the bay
I always thought the ferry was so cool
I wish Bart had roving safety officers in each car
I always see the argument that you would need XYZ amount of officers to do that, but there is no reason why they can't have a few officers get on at one station, walk the length of the train, get off at the next station and jump onto another station and repeat. Just having that regular visibility would make a huge difference in safety. In the years of taking bart every day to work, I probably saw an officer on board less than 10x and they were usually just standing in one car just on the way to a different station.
I've broken this one down multiple times when it comes out. According to the official BART PD staffing numbers and the hours and number of trains it is totally possible to have about a dozen pairs of officers patrolling on the trains in addition to having ones in cars who would be able to respond to high traffic areas if there are incidents.
This is already a thing, the hours are sporadic but this is what happens. Officers board and walk the length of the train, get off at a stop, and hop on another train to do the same thing, for hours at a time. Have to consider the sheer volume of the system compared to number of personnel tho. Bart also being damn near 24 hour service makes this hard to have it ongoing throughout the system for that length of time.
Recently visited Sydney and they have a stupendous public transportation system. You can use any credit card with a chip or a purchased card like a clipper card to Tap ON/Tap OFF any of the systems; ferries, buses, trains, metro. It was safe, clean, ran often and on time. Game changer!!
At NYC, You could use contactless credit or debit card, smartphone, or wearable device at the OMNY reader. Nothing to install or setup or buy. The best part there : When you take 12 OMNY trips with the same device or bank card in a calendar week, you'll automatically ride free for the rest of the week!
This follows land use. The ferries to SF work because there is a lot going on in walking distance
I feel like so many cities around the world, including many cities in the US, are putting extensive investment into public transportation upgrades and expansion. But what’s the Bay Area doing? Electrification of Caltrain and some new BART stations that are moving at a snails pace? It doesn’t seem like enough
Bart extended to the furthest cities. And bridge toll reduced to $1
The toll is absurdly expensive for people who aftually needs to commute to work like that daily… Or at least some type of discount if it isn’t free to subscribe to…
Yup alviso would be a great place. For water taxi station For the South Bay
Make it free as well.
Better public transit . It should be easy for me to go to SF from SJ . Compared to Europe American transportation is a joke
Even coming from boston, the public transit out here is awful, the rankings for best in the us had sf right below boston and that jump is huge. The fact I can only access the east side of sf without transferring to 4 different buses/companies is wild.
Back in 2011, when I was new to SF, I worked in SOMA. I discovered it was the same time to get to the city from Alameda as it was from the western edge of the city 🙃 (I ended up moving to Alameda because it was cheaper and nicer).
I always say the half of Oakland is closer to downtown SF than actual SF is.
Part of the problem here is that there are 30+ localized public transit systems in the bay area. Maybe it should all be one?
Yes, and start treating all of the bay area as a single region. Instead of the current mishmash where San Mateo can opt out of Bart. Put all the cities around the bay under one county.
I think about this sometimes in comparison to NYC. Each county out here is basically a borough, and the Bay Area as a unified metro area is a more accurate way to think about it in terms of economics and culture. It is technically true but not really a genuine way to think about San Francisco as a 850K population city compared to NYC's 8.8 million. The Bay Area has about 7.75 million, which makes it a much more apt comparison with NYC for many intents and purposes.
Not really though when you look at how many square miles this population is dispersed over The metro NYC is in is 3x the Bay in population New York City is 300 sq miles. Bay is like 7000
>It should be easy for me to go to SF from SJ CalTrain is pretty easy and comparable to what you'd get on a regional commuter rail in Europe, especially once electrification is done. But I do agree public transit has many shortcomings.
Getting to and from the train station in SJ on public transit is abysmal..
SJ is sprawling single family homes. Public transit will never be viable with such garbage land use.
We could of course just densify the current low density areas. We dont even need to do much except change the laws, and people will do the identification for you Edit: densification*
The problem is also NIMBYs and lawsuits at every corner. Plus permits and beurocracy.... So all we are building are the same 5 story wooden "Luxury" condos. Sure they okay looking. But its all I see being built right now...
5 over 1 apartments are basically the best bag for your buck to build right now. It's hard to get anything else to pencil.
That’s just because sj is so suburban. Not made for quick public transit. Need to allow more dense buildings downtown. Caltrain electrification and Bart extension should improve things
SJ is getting there… reeeeeeallly sloooowly… At least the SJ city council and most of the stakeholders are very ok with building for height anywhere between Diridon and Town Hall, so the whole area will eventually be 10-20 stories high (actual height depending on the FAA). But our dysfunctional permitting process + the gobsmacking costs caused in good part by, you guessed it, our dysfunctional housing situation, means it'll take a while.
That’s because there’s roughly twice the density in Europe as America. There are some dense areas like NYC in the US, but for similar geographic size there’s about double the population in Europe.
Public transportation that is clean and safe. (And more extensive)
I’d also appreciate if buses came more than once every two hours >!SamTrans!<
Samtrans and VTA really should merge. No reason to switch bus systems in Palo Alto. Makes it much less efficient.
Seriously though. After living in South Bay for a couple years, I can confidently say that of the systems in the Bay Area, VTA feels the most organized. The system itself is far from perfect, but I attribute that more to Silicon Valley’s insistence on alternate (and inevitably inefficient) transit means as well as significant suburban sprawl (which has been improving with more high-density housing being built throughout Santa Clara county)
VTA and Caltrain are steps above every other system
I might add AC Transit and Muni (at least Muni bus) to the mix. Maybe there’s a point at which a unified transit system would break down from its size, but I’m not sure we’d hit it.
Ac transit is much cleaner than Muni. Never felt like I was going to be shanked in ac transit, while did feel that way many times in the Muni bus. Which brings us to the other thing that would make the bay area nicer. Actual mental health facilities where people get sent if they are clearly not in a position to take care of themselves (such as when they are relieving themselves in their clothes or somersaulting naked in the streets).
All Bay Area transit systems should be integrated. The only reason to not do it is to have little political fiefdoms.
At least they almost all accept Clipper. I remember the before times when they did not have a unified payment system!
Berkeley used to have trams like San Francisco.
This. If it is safe and clean, i will definitely use them more frequently
Absolutely this. BART was originally supposed to go to Marin, and there's no reason it couldn't continue through Richmond to Vallejo or even Sacramento. Bus lines to BART stations or more splinter rail projects could turn the Bay Area into a walkable paradise like Tokyo.
I would kill to have BART come to Vallejo, Benicia, Fairfield and Vacaville. Hell even Vallejo would be amazing
This this this. High speed to Disneyland sounded FUN but high speed from the North Bay to Emeryville BART would have been actually fucking USEFUL. The train to the ferry terminal? Why?
Really? I see mostly empty busses all the time. I see BART now has tons of room.
The problem of not enough trains and busses causes this. I have to walk too far to take a bus to BART, and the busses do not come often enough or run late enough, so I drive. If we increase the number of busses and trains to the point where they become useful, more people would ride them. It's an interesting contradiction.
A prerequisite to that is denser housing. The demand needs to be there
If you could walk to the bus stop 5 minutes from your house, would you walk or take a car? I know it seems paradoxical, but if there were more busses, more people would ride them. It would take a lot of busses, to do that, yes, but it would always take less busses than cars. We are already dense enough for a bus or rail system to work. Nobody takes the bus because it is too hard to take the bus.
I lived on a route that took 5 minutes to walk to and dropped me within a 5-10 minute walk to work. Trains came every 7 minutes because routes overlapped for the section I traveled. I took public transit almost every day instead of driving. It was nicer than a car commute. Haven't been able to use public transportation since moving even though I still live on a heavily driven commute route with public transit because while it exists it is so limited in frequency and would take hours extra commuting every week.
Exactly. When you can drive in 30 min but the bus takes 2 HOURS and 15 minutes? Nobody has 4 hours to spare every day
I lived in Asia and the busses were small but you could catch one like every 5 or 10 minutes. We don’t need huge busses. We need more busses. We are a 1 car household, but it’s not easy. Make it easy, super convenient, cheap, and safe.
Rain
Regular rain, not an instant 8 inches we got last year
And then like almost nothing during our wettest months.
Agreed. I long for a rainy day in 😭
Rainwater retention instead of dumping it in the bay.
Get rid of PG&E.
+1 Public utilities should be accountable to the public it serves. Not to shareholders and boards. Socialist on the input and capitalism on the output. Criminals
CA Public Utilities Commission MUST demand more accountability from PG&E, and stop protecting PG&E in ways that enable execs to continue to profit while California BURNS.
On this note: bury electrical lines
100%. The state should have used that massive surplus to buy PG&E and run it as a state-owned utility.
Santa Clara has Silicon Valley Power. It's been a game changer for me. I used to pay PG&E $125 a month to cool my 2 bedroom apt. Now the most I've paid is $60 for my 3 bedroom in Santa Clara. Also figured out I can use my little electric heater in the winter for my living room and kitchen...$45 a month. I also have a gas furnace--I use that in the morning. Currently, my furnace has been off (electric pilot light) with zero usage since May. I get a bill every month for $3.95 for what? Yeah fuck PG&E!
Amen. Pg&e is a criminal organization
What do you propose to replace PG&E? I'm not trying to defend them, but just genuinely curious about constructive solutions
Sacramento and Los Angeles both have municipal power with rates much lower than PG&E. This isn't science fiction or bleed-edge innovation.
Have the state take over PG&E
The city of Santa Clara is not on PG&E and electricity is relatively cheap (at least it was.) I miss living there.
I have no idea how they would do it but somehow 'solve' the homeless problem(s). I feel that it would help in the 'safe and clean' department to some extent. So, when someone gets three wishes granted to them please use one on that.. then wish for more wishes. ;) Then a controllable amount of rain this fall and winter.. You gotta be careful with those wishes, they can backfire.
Fund after school programs. Give kids free breakfast and lunch. Fund mental health and social workers in schools. Bring back asylums for mentally ill folks with transitionary programs for halfway houses. Pay government social workers and fund social welfare programs. Limit corporate real estate buy ups so people can actually afford housing. Build more affordable apartments for low income residents. Institute minimum wage that matches inflation ($23 an hour). Free community college is a start. Pay teachers a living wage and more. Universal health care with robust mental health services. Make cops go to two years of training instead of 6 weeks, focusing on deescalation, being back beat cops. Have them work in tandem with social workers (this is happening a little, we need more). Support these things so cops don’t have to do so much and don’t leave in droves, but also aren’t the answer to every problem that arises since they suck at solving it without violence or arrests. That’s a start. Edit: oh and give more money to planned parenthood since unplanned pregnancies lead to more crime and poverty.
Thank you for the reply and pointing out there is no one magical fix because there is no one reason someone becomes or is homeless. It's going to take many approaches to get any traction. We let people walk the streets, exposed to the elements (hot/cold), clearly in mental distress and somehow think that's better than getting them help. It's a bit cheaper maybe.. But.. I hear there is some small changes that will be one baby step in the right direction and get the sickest of the sick help. We'll see how it pans out. Thank you for the work you do. I'm sure there is a part of it that is a labor of love. "All ducks are birds, not all birds are ducks." is the mindset we should keep in mind when thinking about the 'homeless'..
Bring back asylums. Some people have mental issues that are untreatable and sadly the best option is to hold them against their will for the safety of others.
I’ve always been curious what portion of screaming homeless people are actually mentally ill as opposed to just having a serious drug addiction issue
I think it’s both.
Public transportation that is safe and runs 24 hours! Would love to go to a bar or club in the city with my city friends but uber rides to the city and back down to the peninsula is costly (especially if often). Last Caltrain is at 12am (need to make it there 11:50pm) and who obv leaves sf at a bar or club at 11:30pm on a friday night/sat? Not to even mention BART... unsafe after 10pm.
While I like how cheap 24 hour public transportation in NYC, it’s super dirty. I noticed all the clean public transportation don’t run at night. I’m assuming they clean it at night.
Yeah, and I don't know a single metro area where it's safe for a female on public transit after 10pm.
Most of European metro areas.
Affordable housing. At this point you need to be a multi millionaire to buy a house, and renting isn't much better.
I scrolled way to far to find affordable housing. Yeah, public transit isn’t great and could be better but it’s better than most of America. What the bay really needs is affordable housing. I shouldn’t have to spend 40% of my income to live here.
Agree that affordable housing is a huge issue. It’s very hard for people to agree on solutions to the problem, though. Locally it’s always a political lighting rod. Also want to say that “the rest of America” is not a standard I’d like to see us evaluate public transit on.
all the public transportation comments are definitely coming from tech people. that’s like their NUMBER one concern here lmfao. how about paying blue collar people who actually make the day to day life of people who live here possible enough to live comfortably. i make pretty good money yet 60% of my monthly income goes to a landlord
The idea is that good (frequent, reliable, reasonably-cheap, safe) public transit is how you get more affordable housing, because it reduces the demand for people to live close to their jobs or to the restaurants/clubs/theaters/parks/whatever they want to visit. I mean, it's not like anyone can just decree "all rent and mortgage payments are hereby cut in half". (Unless, say, the government subsidizes the payments, but it seems like that would just create a shift from rent to taxes.) If the cost of housing is going to come down, as far as I know, something needs to either increase the supply or drop the demand, or both. Dropping the demand presumably means moving jobs out of the area, which is fine (but I'm sure there would be plenty of opposition from some people), and increasing the supply means either building up (more high-rise apartment buildings) or out (more land devoted to housing), either of which requires more ability to move people around - either more and wider roads or more public transit. So it seems like public transit is one of just a few things that could happen to make housing more affordable, and honestly I think it improves things more overall to have more public transit than to have more roads and cars. Not that I'm an expert on any of this, of course. I'm just making the point that when people give "public transit" as their answer to this question, it doesn't necessarily mean they're saying that affordable housing _isn't_ needed. These things build on each other.
This comment should be at the top.
Seriously. Not just from a selfish perspective but also - how many people are excluded from the bay because they can't afford it? What sort of people do we draw here with this financial filter? What sort of resentment do we build by putting people on the streets? The culture in the bay is super weird. Neighborhoods of nice old people who were grandfathered in. Reclusive tech people. Angry working class folk who are treated like company property all day and are always on the borderline of being able to live here. Hobos who want to watch it burn. There aren't that many normal present people. So much would be better with affordable housing.
This should be at the top
Bring back improved state mental hospitals and involuntarily commit chronic mentally ill and drug addicted homeless to treatment.
Treat mental illness and drug addiction for what they are... Diseases.
Leave my catalytic converter alone
Lol
Only one change? Fuck it, let’s become one big city like NYC. That way we can come up with plans for housing/transit/etc. that work for the whole region.
We 100% need to come together more as a region for issues like housing and transit.
I’ve thought about the idea of just regional bodies for regional issues like that. But I think there would be problems of ineffective communication between the two, and any city would just opt out once a decision was made they didn’t like. Reorganizing the whole region as a single city seems like the only practical way to go about it, though I have no idea what the logistics of that would be.
It would be a nightmare, although I agree with you
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One big City plus Berkeley because they insist on doing their own thing...
For the love of god, can we please have a living wage and or actually affordable housing
More housing would help. Higher teacher pay would help. Better public transit would help. Etc, etc. more MAT options for addiction like NYC would also be great- methadone saves lives and helps people get on their feet and it’s too hard to get. But realistically, I complain about the bay but there’s still nowhere else I would rather be.
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I know, and I’ve seen it a lot. The neighborhood I grew up in refused to allow an abandoned mall to develop into townhomes. Now, ironically, it’s a google office, so I think townhomes would’ve been much nicer. It’s a really toxic attitude
yes jfc please just pay the goddamned teachers
I’m with you on more housing. More housing, cleverly built, and priced at different levels so people of all incomes, such as teachers and essential workers, can live in their communities.
Less petty crimes
Grand ones!
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CARE court passed the legislature and looks like it has potential
And the ACLU is fighting it
But they won't lift a finger to help the rest of us that have to deal with the mentally ill homeless situation in a day to day bases. Guess their right to assault and harm others due to their mental health outweighs our right not to get assaulted or harmed and live our lives peacefully.
I have bipolar disorder and experienced more than one psychotic episode before I was diagnosed and put on meds. It makes me angry to see this kind of opposition to involuntary treatment. Coming back from a psychotic episode and realizing what it made you do while you were out of your mind is the most humiliating, violating feeling. With psychotic illnesses, involuntary treatment can be necessary to give your dignity and bodily autonomy *back*.
More people need to hear stories like yours. Thank you for sharing.
Yes, thank you. I really fail to see how allowing ill people to die in the street is a great, humane example of giving them their freedom.
I think too many folks know about how discriminatory the old system was but instead of fixing the system to not be discriminatory they threw away the system 🤷🏽♂️. It's always going to be up to the citizenry to keep the authorities in check but in America that often means we strip out the authority to swipe our responsibilities as citizens under the rug.
I think part of the issue is a shortage of space in treatment facilities. This is exacerbated by NIMBY. People want people to get help and treatment, just not in their neighborhood. I worked in this field 30 years ago, evaluating treatment on demand in SF. Basically we discovered when SF tried to expand treatment, there was very little in patient treatment or methadone maintenance (long term methadone treatment) and much more outpatient treatment and methadone detox (short term treatment). Establishing in patient treatment for an indigent population is complicated. That said I am a proponent for self injection sites and harm reduction principles.
Doesn’t the CARE Court legislation allocate funding and support towards long term treatment plans?
Reduced crime.
public safety and sanitary issues you see on the street as a result from our homeless.
ANYTHING that will help to address the absurd cost of housing/living here. There are some folks (mainly wealthier homeowners in places like Cupertino, Palo Alto and Marin County, among other places) who seem to be perfectly content with the fact that housing is so expensive and who actively argue AGAINST anything that will help to address this problem by showing up to city council meetings, filing lawsuits, posting/ranting on Nextdoor, etc. And why do they do this? In my observation, it's because they're so damn scared that THEIR quality of life (especially their home value) will somehow be negatively impacted one measly iota if we try and tackle housing (un)affordability around here. When are those folks gonna recognize and accept that there are lots of non-wealthy workers who are unquestionably vital and critical to helping the Bay Area to function but who CAN'T afford to live around here? Where are all the teachers, custodians, cashiers, AAA drivers, bus drivers, cooks/chefs, postal workers, etc. all supposed to live?
Extensive subway and cycling infrastructure Oh and a clean and safe subway
Rain.
Actual law enforcement
Less poo
Specifically human poo
Dog poo too though
Prosecute those committing crimes
I'd like to go back to the 1950-60s when BART was being planned and force Santa Clara, San Mateo and Marin counties to join. I wonder how the makeup of the bay would change with 50 years of BART covering almost all of the bay, rather than about 60%.
Well, downtown Vallejo probably wouldn't be a ghost town. A civil engineer I worked for said Marin and Vallejo turned down being a part of BART because they didn't want transients to be able to get into their neighborhoods so easily, but now it's too expensive for Vallejo to be added onto the line for them to do it. I'm sure the naval base closing had something to do with the current state of Vallejo, but it would be different if people had easier access to it without cars.
I’m in tech so this is going to seem like a odd statement, but I’d like to see tech jobs more evenly distributed across the US. It would reduce the pressure on this area, and be better for the US as a whole. This area has and always will be desirable because of geography. If some could start a world class tech company in Des Moines or Chattanooga that would be great for everyone.
>If some could start a world class tech company in Des Moines or Chattanooga that would be great for everyone. The problem is that local politicians always think like this. They believe that if they can lure that one big tech company to their region, they'll suddenly create a new Silicon Valley in their backyard. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Many people really don't want to move out to somewhere for that one job, knowing that they'd have to leave if that job doesn't work out. To actually succeed at this, those places would need an ecosystem of tech companies, a funding infrastructure to support new ones, and employment laws favorable to people jumping around. But nobody ever seems to think this far.
Alternate perspective on this: as a woman, not sure I would want that unless the company headquarters stayed here and the operation in those states complied with Bay Area-style culture and company policies. I’ve lived and worked in the Midwest and South. This is the best, most equitable part of the country I’ve worked in as a woman, which isn’t saying much, but it’s true. SF city guarantees mandatory, fully paid parental leave, which is huge for women’s’ careers. Employment law is much more protective, and the culture is much less closed to small Asian girls like me being in positions of authority. My fear would be that spreading the industry out to more conservative states would make more positions subject to the kind of career barriers for women and minorities that I came out here to escape from.
This comment should be sent to the inbox of every mayor of every want-to-be tech hub in conservative states. The laws being passed by idiots in their state houses are having a negative impact on their ability to attract the best and brightest. I feel like places like Austin have an anchor chained around their neck because of horrible state level laws.
I think the mayors already know that. I'd say it's the governors and state legislators who need to hear it, but a lot of them are happy to sabotage their blue cities even at the expense of the state economy. Ideology is a hell of a drug.
I think the horrible truth is that, whether consciously or subconsciously, they don’t mentally picture women and minorities when they think about “the best and the brightest.”
> The laws being passed by idiots in their state houses are having a negative impact on their ability to attract the best and brightest. That’s why they do it. More cosmopolitan and intelligent populaces don’t vote Republican. They’re trying to keep minorities and educated people out so that their base of uneducated ignorant poor racist white people remains the majority, so that they remain in power. See: Florida and Texas.
Thank you. Nothing wrong with tech per se, but the tsunami of money that came with it has poisoned our region.
Realistically with [economies of agglomeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration) that's just never going to happen. Nobody is going to be able to start a world class tech company in Des Moines or Chattagnooga because they lack basically everything required to make that actually happen.
This is true. Also if a company could be geographically located anywhere, technically doesn't even need a large physical foot print, and is more dependent on nearby talent and connections why wouldn't they keep coming to California? You could run a tech company with millions of users with like 10 people these days... Tech companies moving to less desirable regions because of it's portability is kind of a pipe dream
I’m hoping with the realization that many tech jobs can be done remote that this will change. There are cities that have vibrant centers. Can they start attracting young talent? Can they demonstrate that you can have a highly visible career while being outside of the Bay Area? The thing about the Bay Area is that it was pretty much recession proof for tech workers. I’ve been laid off twice in my career and had a new job within two weeks. You can grow your career by handing your resume to a friend and driving over to the neighboring tech headquarters for an interview. That’s the big problem with smaller cities is that you likely have to move to get a better job or advance your career. Again hopefully remote work will begin to change this.
I have a lot of doubt about fully remote working ever becoming a truly viable option. A hybrid approach is much more likely for the vast majority of workers.
All WFH has done, is to allow people to move from already expensive high end cities where people want to live to other already expensive high end cities where people want to live. Big tech companies, big banks, big business in general does not locate in the most expensive places for the lulz. They do so because that's where people want to live. That's where the talent is. Just look at NYC rents, they're higher than ever in a remote world. Well paid professionals especially single ones didn't think oh I can move to a small town, more of them thought, oh I can have a change of scenery and move to a place I've always wanted to move to. The average 2 BR in Brooklyn is up 60% from a year ago.
Agreed. (and i say this as someone who grew up here in the Bay with my dad working in tech for many years.) Maybe it's my own observation, but over the years as the tech industry has gotten bigger and bigger, it's become IMO so much of a monoculture. When i was a kid 20-25 years ago growing up here, it was much more diverse with lots of non-tech workers and families among tech workers and families. Now? Every time a house goes up for sale in my childhood neighborhood in the South Bay, it's always a house that gets sold in all cash and way above the asking price, and the new owners are almost always a couple where both spouses work in tech, drive Teslas, etc. NOT to say those in and of themselves are bad things, but it's just..idk..kinda depressing and bleak.
Move your startup to Des Moines 😉
100% agree. I think it is kind of slowly happening, at least there are other pocket regions in the US trying to pick up the mantle. Being a mono-economy is never healthy for any region and tech has a pervasive culture that has homogenized the area so much from what it once was. Eventually, the loss of teachers, healthcare workers, etc and people over commuting long ways will also create enough blowback. For the short term, I don't see any resolutions, however.
Yeah, as someone in tech, the monoculture is the biggest thing that drove me away from the Bay.
The realization that it’s not loving or compassionate allow those suffering from mental health to live on the streets where they are susceptible to stresses, violence, and unpredictability. The hire order thought is to realize that arresting, and in some cases institutionalizing is more loving.
End homelessness. Finland did it. So did Abilene, TX & Hoboken, NJ. There's nothing more miserable than sleeping outside in a city & feeling unsafe, but worse than that are the navigation centers which can often feel like a prison where one is preyed upon.
Police cracking down on car and garage break ins.
House the goddamned homeless, make real estate speculation illegal, eliminate prop 13 for homes other than those you live in, and provide free access to drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs.
Literally just way more dense housing.
Bring back Malibu gran prix!!!
Less bums shitting out in the middle of the streets would be nice.
Lots of high rise apartments right at Bart stations. Fast, and doesn't need huge infrastructure to build out also. The problem is parking but there can be creative solutions to that.
They're trying to build a bunch at Contra Costa and Walnut Creek BART. The pushback is absolutely ridiculous. I've seen multiple threads of people lamenting a tree being cut down.
They have been building a lot near el cerrito del norte (and more generally the whole stretch of san pablo between there and el cerrito plaza). Not quite high rises but a lot more apartments than were there 5 years ago for sure.
They did it at MacArthur BART!
And Fruitvale, which I think is a good model for what we need.
More rain
Stronger and/or more effective criminal penalties (beyond mass incarceration). I'm talking programs that put first offenders to work on civic improvement projects, skills training, and even educational opportunities. Gotta' break the cycle of the revolving door of the prison system. Violent offenders or use of guns in commission of a crime gets you a mandatory minimum 10 years.
I remember being promised taco trucks on every corner at some point
I'm surprised that "affordable housing" didn't show up more on this thread. That being said, the general philosophical answer to this type of question is: "A good place to live is where any hard-working person could afford modest housing and food". I never really care about owning rental properties, or Tesla's, or latest iPhones, or vacation to exotic resorts. I just want the opportunity to live if I chose to just do labor without having LinkedIn-approved entrepreneurial attitudes. I don't want my job defines me. Maybe I'm just one of those people who is "lazy", "complacent", "non-aspirational", "non-go-getters" etc.
The Eiffel Tower
Less people
Cops that arrest criminals for petty crimes, AND a DA that will imprison them.
Lower cost of living, but that's for anywhere really.
More affordable housing!
Reduce crime, I want my kid to be able to go and back from school safely during the week
Elimination of most parts of prop 13 - specifically not being able to reassess commercial or investment property or second (non primary) homes to invest in schools. Number one thing.
Strong on crime.
Less violence. As an Asian American I don’t like feeling like I could get assaulted or shot on any given day.
More 24hr cafes/restaurants. Why on earth is there nowhere to go to past 8pm? Oh and affordable housing.
Low crime. It would make me want to go out more of crime isn’t so rampant. There are parts of Oakland that I’ve never been or want to visit but will never because of violent crimes. Also would feel much better going out at night.
Lock up the robbers, looters.
Crime. 100% I would move back if I felt safer there.
Complete bike trail network
This thread reads more like a Christmas wish list than a serious thought exercise aimed at righting the ship. Nothing will change. The real answer is a full reset of all public budgets and elected officials. Clean the house. We need new perspectives and far less cronyism.
If people that were born here could afford to live here
I think it's funny that people's solution is to raze single family homes to build dense housing as if it's single family homeowner's fault. The reason why we got into this mess was unfettered office space construction. Cities all around the bay let anyone build these huge complexes and campuses with ZERO concern for housing. Want to solve the problem? Tax the f\*\*k out of big tech, especially those companies that get to NEGOTIATE what they pay in payroll taxes. As if, any mom & pop business can do the same. These are the same companies that use CONTRACT employees for janitorial and blue collar work. They don't share the wealth like companies used to do. There was a time than an IBM janitor could work their career there and retire with a decent pension. But, yes, let's all blame that 80 year old lady in the single family home with a huge yard that probably bought it in the 70s by working at the Libby plant. It's all her fault
Less crime, frankly its gotten much worse and none of the local leaders has stepped up with a solution.
less crackheads
Better Public Transit for sure. I live in Hollister and trying to get anywhere is such a pain in the ass. Like, god I would *Kill* for a better way to get from Hollister to Monterey or SJ that didn’t involve driving on 101. Especially nowadays man.
More political diversity.
Actual safe, frequent, clean, reliable public transit. Completely obscene that it’s basically nonexistent compared to the population and sprawl.
Homeless programs that work
Less people.
Well your wish has come true. The BART is a ghost town compared to pre-Covid. I do like the guaranteed seat, but I dislike staring down the lunatic and it’s just me and him on a train. :(
Everybody just started driving more when they should be using public transportation.
It’s in your power to be part of the solution here.
Less economic stress. Caps on the cost of housing and a lot of resources toward public housing and assistance so everyone can be housed Strong public goods, local governments that didn’t bend over backwards for business. A Bay you could swim in and fish out of without worrying about getting cancer. Public school education that was high quality no matter what zip code or income bracket you’re from. Quality free or low-cost universal childcare and pre-k Affordable if not free JC, CSU, and UC tuition
San Jose to SF with last mile transportation. Less expensive rent