Also, compared to most other places, traffic laws out here are ridiculously inefficient. For example, light cycles that include a “yield on left turn” step and then skip the left arrow if the lane has cleared are incredibly rare. Also, instead of “left lane fast, right lane slow”, the law is “use whatever lane you’re comfortable in”.
Simply ripping out the “improvements” made in the last decade and bringing traffic laws in line with the rest of the US would increase road capacity by double digit percentages.
(The lack of progress on public transit is also embarrassing, especially given the tax and income levels around here)
Right now local regulations require large amounts of parking, which means large amounts of the most valuable space devoted just to cars, and forcing people to pay for the car. If you're forced to pay an additional 10% in rent to cover the space used for parking, then you're probably going to get a car.
If people were allowed to make the decision to not have cars and reap the financial benefits, we'd see a bigger shift.
As it is, car use is regulated into the way that we build things.
That sounds miserable. Caltrain has much more reasonable rolling stock (i.e. with seats) for that trip.
I don't think we can stop that assumption until we have much better public transit. Cause if the trains aren't running where I need to go, when I need to get there, I have to drive.
Run BART the short way between SF and SJ, build many clusters of high density along heavy transit routes. Let the current freeway dependent population continue to use them, but build housing so that people can get to jobs without using single-occupancy passenger cars.