A basic car is practically free compared to basic housing. It's not necessary to divorce employees from needing cars, any more than it's necessary to divorce them from needing housing.

It is necessary to divorce employees from trying to drive (mostly) the same routes at the same times, because there is no solution to car transportation at scale without traffic jams. The "solutions" (congestion pricing, less parking, etc) are to reduce the scale. It is necessary to divorce employees from competing with each other for such tiny slices of the city where the commute is reasonable, because paying an extra $2000/mo just for land value is such a soul-crushing waste of effort and resources. It is necessary to aggressively migrate the fleet of cars to electrics.

Rush hour traffic in small town or city is still going 60mph, and living "downtown" isn't nearly so expensive because there's less competition, and little drastically wealthier competition. (Good look competing with tech workers for nicely located apartments in SF, or bankers for nicely located apartments in Manhattan, if you aren't one).

See: SF opposition to tech shuttles, Muni expansion, Caltrain extension. I guess those aren't really about cost, but there's a common thread of "I don't like the noise" and "I don't like the kind of people that transportation brings in to my quiet neighborhood" and "we shouldn't be making it more attractive for gentrifiers to live here."

> "I don't like the kind of people that transportation brings in to my quiet neighborhood"

I see this on NextDoor whenever VTA LiteRail improvements are discussed. Possibility of a Los Gatos [or Netflix] stop? "Criminal Homeless will invade our city". Maybe, but I won't see you complaining when you go to a 49rs game in person at the stadium and take VTA so you don't get stuck in car traffic.

> It is necessary to divorce employees from trying to drive (mostly) the same routes at the same times

How is this possible without massive and awesome public transit? Rush hour traffic exists because "every employer" wants "every employee" at their desk at 6-9am.

I think the best solution is for employees to drive the unique parts of their routes (home to suburban transit stations with parking structures), and then ride fast, frequent, reasonably comfortable train service for the "trunk" part of the route.

Use cars where they're the best option. Use public transit where it's the best option. Take 5 minutes to transfer in between.

Even better, ride your bicycle to the train or bus station, and take it with you. At the destination, ride to work.

You need secure bike parking on the suburban side and bike share on the urban side. A typical commuter train car can take maybe 3 bikes per 100 passengers. Carrying your bike only works because so few people do it. Fortunately, the Bay Area already has this.

If you find the Spartan lifestyle compelling, sure, bike to the train station. From a planning perspective, it's a no-brainer to put the infrastructure there to facilitate it.

Just don't force it on the rest of us. (My mornings would go from pleasant and relaxing to miserable, getting in an overcrowded train car while sweaty fucking sucks, and I would have to stop running - if I'm capable of cycling the next morning, I didn't run hard enough the night before. If only my area were a little flatter).

Also, you often don't need a whole car. Scooters and low-displacement motorcycles are cheap and fun. E-bikes are getting cheaper. I mostly ride my little Honda motorcycle to the train now, when the weather cooperates. BART's ample motorcycle parking is pleasantly surprising, and a very good idea.

> E-bikes are getting cheaper.

Just yesterday I learned of the NYC hate against e-bikes. I hope that whatever red tape there is surrounding e-bikes gets cleared up and understood.

Wouldn't that just result in giant parking structures at the suburban transit stations? It seems like it's less a solution than a mitigation.

Yes, it would. The problem stated here are traffic jams and the waste of urban land, and this has neither of those problems. What are your objections?

I suppose it would be nice to build tall, dense housing around the station, but people living in the suburbs are expressing their preference for more, cheaper space per person and lower building heights, and would be extremely unlikely to authorize a microcosm of the city inside their suburb.

If we can solve the "people don't want tall buildings" problem, why not put them inside the city where their occupants are in walking/biking distance, rather than relying on expensive trains?

> Yes, it would. ... What are your objections?

I'm thinking that if we look at the numbers we might actually find it makes the problem worse, but in other areas. We have very heavy traffic areas currently, but spread over at least a few square miles, which allows that traffic to route to the available spaces through all the available roads. Giant parking structures at specific points along rail would move a large chunk of that traffic to those structures, but those structures are also much more condensed points for traffic

Simply put, if you think urban traffic is bad, imagine trying to get to a specific parking structure along with a couple thousand other people all at the same time. Instead of a thousand different businesses over a hundred or more roads, it's a few structures, each with limited ingress and egress routes, and limited entrances and exits. Worse than navigating the parking structure at the mall at Christmas, but every weekday as the new normal.

Much better, in my opinion, would be a fleet of autonomous buses and vans with ad-hoc ride-sharing. Since they use the normal road system, they can reach much closer to peoples homes. I actually ran the numbers on this in a comment a few months back (although not very thoroughly)[1].

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13172888

> Use cars for the unique portion.

Fair enough. I also like the walk//bike suggestion also made here for this consideration.