The average time of employment in the tech sector for people under 40 in tech is under 4 years. Your plan is untenable because it involves frequent personal relocation to make feasible.
I don't want to commute out to the country.
> Live near your job
Hmm.....
Personally, I think California's HSR project is stupid and the money could be better spent on regional light rail plus conventional rail between metro areas. But allowing CA to become a shitty place to live so as to force people from their cars is the least attractive option.
That's empirically not as true as it intuitively seems; induced traffic is a thing.
> Personally, I think California's HSR project is stupid and the money could be better spent on regional light rail plus conventional rail between metro areas.
But, the HSR project is spending money on regional light rail and conventional rail between metro areas.
It's definitely empirically true. I've watched it happen for decades. There are certainly new cars on the road, but they would have been there anyway, for the most part. If you have a growing economy people immigrate in search of jobs whether the infrastructure is ready or not.
Now, I'd rather we had enough rail to handle all those people and more, but the problem with rail is before your network is built out completely it's not very useful.
>But, the HSR project is spending money on regional light rail and conventional rail between metro areas.
Great. Then all we need to cancel is the HSR itself.
Your unsupported speculation of what you expect would have been true in a counterfactual situation is not support for a claim of empirical truth.
> If you have a growing economy people immigrate in search of jobs whether the infrastructure is ready or not.
People are not the same thing as the car trips; whether the same number of people would have been present with less road capacity is a different question than whether the number of car trips would have been.
Medium term - Build bike lanes, convert streets to promenades, build light rail, build traffic calmers (narrow streets, speed bumps, lane bollards)
Long term - Marketing programs to encourage different business lifestyles (city vs. country, remote vs in-person). Tax incentives for moving out of the city.
Certainly I'd find that lifestyle less difficult to plan moves around. Of course, I'd also find it fulfilling and depressing.
That isn't a rule of thumb at all, just your opinion...
I don't think it makes sense to make things denser if it's going to be so ugly that no one wants to live there.
Very rarely, if ever, are buildings "so ugly that no one wants to live there", especially when places to live are as scarce as they are in SFBA.
also, transit oriented development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit-oriented_development
Just FYI, people saying things like this is definitely a key part of why us New Yorkers think the Bay Area has literally gone insane.
Bad idea. More roads does not mean less traffic, More roads = more cars. And more infrastructure begets more infrastructure - You build more roads and buses and light rail lines, now you need all the staff to maintain these things, now you need somewhere for these staff to live, now you need more infrastructure to get the staff to work to maintain the infrastructure...
Stop the madness! The answer is not to transit at all. Live near your job, walk or bike to work. Build more housing dammit! Why the fuck does a software company need to be in the middle of big city? All you need is electricity and internet, move out to the country!