Interestingly, I actually do wish all these lower-income workers would leave the Bay Area (or at least the highest-priced parts): I'd love to see how all the NIMBYs fare without any supermarkets, restaurants, schools, or firefighters.
Oh they’d do fine — don’t worry, those low income people just love to spend hours and hours commuting from the Central Valley. Their lives will become worse, but not the NIMBYs!
I would love to just see a hyperlocal minimum wage set in CA that's tied to housing prices. Live in enclaves with an average home of 10M dollars, your house cleaner will need to be paid $500/hour type thing.
What I'd like to do is pass a state law that requires employers to pay commuting costs for their employees, plus only allow up to one hour of unpaid commuting.
So, suppose the only people applying for your job live 2 hours away. You'll have to pay 1) the federal mileage rate ($0.50/mile??) (or better yet, an even higher state rate to account for higher costs of car ownership there), or buy the employee a company car, for their commute time, and 2) the employee will get paid for 3 hours of commuting time, and only have to actually work 5 hours on-site (but getting paid for 8), so you'll have to hire another employee to cover the time difference.
These people living in 10M homes should be paying $500 per plate to eat at a restaurant and $20/gallon for milk from the supermarket. And yes, $500/hr for the house cleaner.
Here in Tokyo, it's normal (maybe legally required?) for employers to pay for employees' commuting costs. Of course, since the best public transit system in the world is here, a commuting pass doesn't cost that much.
The hopelessly optimistic side of me thinks this might be just the thing we need to spur massive improvements in mass transit, when big employers discover that it's cheaper to chip in for some commuter light rail than it is to pay everyone to sit in traffic. Realistically I don't think it'll happen, but I can dream.
Mass transit is horribly expensive, not just to build, but to operate too. Because of this, it requires high density to really work. You can't just slap some light rail lines into a giant suburban US city and expect it to work out somehow. Even here in Tokyo, with hundreds of train/subway stations all over the metro area, you frequently have to do a significant amount of walking (or even cycling) in between the nearest station and your actual destination. And don't forget all the stairs: subway stations are frequently quite deep, and have long staircases to get in and out. (There's many escalators and elevators, but they're not always that conveniently located.) It's a completely different culture that most Americans will not desire nor put up with. Mass transit isn't some kind of utopian panacea where a nice train will take you right to your employer or shopping destination or home.
It all works here because the city was built densely to begin with, and because they made the smart decision back in the 60s, when it looked like car culture was going to take over, of revamping the zoning laws and permitting the construction of housing just about anywhere, which made it more profitable to build housing and other buildings than parking lots, which made it extremely inconvenient to use a car.
I don’t see your point, in most European cities (and I don’t know Tokyo but I believe it’s the same), mass transit is much faster than driving, including walking, escalators, and elevators.
Yes, you have to walk a little, but we are not talking about a hike. In fact for most people, it’s not even enough walking to compensate for their sedentariness.
Also you are talking about subway stations but I doubt that there isn’t a denser bus network in Tokyo to get you to the subway stations fast and dry.
> in most European cities (and I don’t know Tokyo but I believe it’s the same), mass transit is much faster than driving, including walking, escalators, and elevators.
This is not the case in Shanghai. Driving is a lot faster.
The big difference is that driving lets you plan your own route between your origin and destination, whereas if you take mass transit, (a) you have to follow whatever the existing route is; and (b) you're constantly starting and stopping at the intermediate points on the route, making for low average speed.
I don't believe either of those points vary in other cities.
>The subway will beat driving during the rushiest of rush hours but off peak the car will win unless it’s literally prohibited.
This assumes there's a place to park at or near your destination. In dense cities, this normally isn't the case. However, here in Tokyo this makes taxis quite fast most of the time, because there's not much car traffic, and the taxi doesn't need parking and can drop you right at your destination.
> The biggest speed advantage for driving is the same as biking or walking - you can begin the trip at any time.
This just isn't true. For example, it takes a bit over two hours to take mass transit to the airport, but it takes a bit under one hour to make the same trip by taxi. The potential five minute wait for the train to arrive is a sideshow. The problem is the intermediate stops.
My point is that Americans won't see it the way you and I do.
>mass transit is much faster than driving, including walking, escalators, and elevators
It really depends; it's hard to compare. If you have a route in the US that's mostly highway and you avoid rush hour, you can get to your destination very quickly. If it's a bad route and/or rush hour, it can be hellish. Many people I work with have hour+ long commutes; it's not unusual at all. It usually takes me 45-60 minutes to get to various locations in Tokyo, and I'm not even that far outside the central district; it really depends whether I have to change trains though. Cars really can get you places quickly, but the problem is the whole thing breaks down if there's too much traffic. Not to mention the stress factor and expense.
>Yes, you have to walk a little, but we are not talking about a hike.
It's frequently a 5-15 minute walk from a station to your destination. Of course, land closer to stations is more valuable because of this, so apartments closer to stations are more expensive. But many people have to walk 10+ minutes to get home from the station, after climbing all the stairs to get out. For most Americans, that really is "a hike".
>In fact for most people, it’s not even enough walking to compensate for their sedentariness.
Yes, but we're talking about people here who fight over parking spaces that are 50 feet closer to the door of their Walmart.
>Also you are talking about subway stations but I doubt that there isn’t a denser bus network in Tokyo to get you to the subway stations fast and dry.
No, there really isn't. There are buses, but they generally only serve routes that are very poorly served by the trains. They're also not as convenient or fast as the trains. The network definitely isn't "denser" than the trains at all. They can be handy to save you a bit of walking when there's a typhoon though.
>It’s also SO MUCH LESS stress than traffic jams.
Agreed, but again we're talking about Americans here: people who would rather drive around in circles in the Walmart parking lot just so they can find a space 50 feet closer to the door.
So my point here is, it's not a panacea like many pro-transit Americans seem to believe. It's a very different lifestyle. I personally am happy with it and the tradeoffs, but car-brained Americans will not be.
Still I’m not convinced that people wouldn’t gladly adapt. People in Amsterdam are really happy of their situation and still, Amsterdam was a totally car centric mess up until the 70s-80s. Sure people pushed back when it was time to accept the change (and also changing infrastructure takes decades so you have to suffer decades of imperfect infrastructures) but now, nobody wants to go back.
Humans are rarely really anti or pro this or that, they just hate when things change and Americans aren’t really different beings.
So yes, I agree that there would probably be a huge political push back, but if it were to happen, they’d just adapt like every other country who did this transition and they’d probably never want to go back.
I don't think Amsterdam is a very good example. It's a very old city, similar to Manhattan NYC: it was built before cars (and coincidentally used to be named after Amsterdam centuries ago). So when they tried to go car-centric in the post-war period, it was basically a retrofit. Try driving around Manhattan and you have the same problem: roads are small and there's no parking. So going back to walkability isn't that hard: just rip out some of the larger roads and make things more bike- and walking-friendly like it used to be. All the buildings are close together anyway, so it all works.
Suburban/exurban America simply isn't like this: it was all built after the rise of the automobile. Trying to get people to ride bikes 15 miles to their nearest Walmart or Costco, because all the space between is filled with gigantic subdivisions full of big houses with big yards, isn't really feasible. Things are too far apart. So you can't just copy what Amsterdam did and expect it to work out. Manhattan could do it (and is doing it, slowly), and maybe a few other places mostly on the east coast, but other places not so much. Perhaps you could get more of this eventually if the US adopted Japanese-style zoning laws, but that would be very difficult to do because of the decentralized and local-first nature of lawmaking in the US.
Another issue is the enclave-style construction of American neighborhoods. I live in the very very front of mine, with a bunch of commercial businesses just outside that are ~100-150ft away as the crow flies.
Unlike the crow, I can't trespass and hop a fence, so to get to these businesses that are "right there", I'd have to walk 0.7 miles, almost all of it with no sidewalks, and more than half on busy 4+ lane roads.
Well, as a first stage transit, minibus lines could be set up to feed people to main streets that would have trams. A Sprinter minibus with 12 seats and 15 standing capacity is not that expensive.
> It all works here because the city was built densely to begin with, and because they made the smart decision back in the 60s, when it looked like car culture was going to take over, of revamping the zoning laws and permitting the construction of housing just about anywhere, which made it more profitable to build housing and other buildings than parking lots, which made it extremely inconvenient to use a car.
Being leveled during World War 2 by sustained allied bombing likely helped with this.
Huh? No: the European cities leveled by bombing were, mostly, rebuilt exactly the way they were laid out before. Go look at downtown Nuremburg, for instance: they built it to look exactly as it did before. The area outside downtown is much more car-friendly, though, but that part wasn't populated pre-war anyway.
> You'll have to pay 1) the federal mileage rate ($0.50/mile??) (or better yet, an even higher state rate to account for higher costs of car ownership there), or buy the employee a company car, for their commute time
If I buy them a company car, do they have to pay me the mileage rate?
>> plus only allow up to one hour of unpaid commuting.
And that kids is how I met your mother... I mean and how California finally got high speed rail funded. It only goes an hour into the Central Valley but its better than nothing.
