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90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

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Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#261

Post by pwinnski »

supahfly_remix wrote: post #126
soulnothing wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a double standard though. I was at one of the big companies mentioned. I was the only one on my team in my office. Everyone else was remote in a time zone. My manager wasn't on site. But I couldn't work from home, and my desk space was reduced several times during my time there.

What was the difference (in policy or whatever) that allowed your colleagues to remote in but you not?

Not GP, but many companies have a policy allowing employees to live in remote places, but if you live in the same city as the office, you're not allowed to work from home.

The idea seems to be that remote employees are expected to establish a little mini-outpost of that company within their own home, while local employees who "work from home" are more often than not really handling errands or lounging or whatever. It's a double-standard, but a very common one in my experience.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#262

Post by csisvunit »

conanbatt wrote: post #181
nerfhammer wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this source claims 72% is more accurate: https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apart...

Wow this law is so ridiculous, it basically applies to most the stock. I don't think most people enjoy this benefit of rent control, it wouldn't make sense to rent out properties. I wonder what is the effective rent control rate (that which has affected price significantly). Maybe a rental turnover rate would hint at a solution.

rent control is what's keeping san francisco, barely, san francisco. it isnt going away. its also whats keeping my landlord from doubling my rent, thank you very much.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#263

Post by replicatorblog »

Steltek wrote: post #217
replicatorblog wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, what towns would you recommend. I don't deny I'm making a consumer choice, and said so in my comment. When I lived in Houston, I lived in a beautiful flat, a 20 minute walk from my office, and did so making the equivalent of $18/hr. I can't think of many places that'd be possible in the Boston area.

Well, a walking commute like that is probably not going to happen in Boston without tradeoffs. I think extremely few people are lucky enough to have a commute like that in the US. That said, Cambridge has a the highest percentage of "pedestrian" commuters in the country. Anyway, off the top of my head: Medford, Quincy, Braintree. Schools might not knock it out of the park like Lexington but they're not crap either. A…

All good points. My co-worker drives from medford, despite being just a few miles away, it's a 30-40 minute drive. I've never lived in the southern part of MA, but Google Maps still makes it look like an hour-ish drive from either of those towns.

I'm not complaining, just noting that it's the tax of working in cities with a lot of economic activity. The major alternative is moving to a smaller city with fewer job options, but higher quality of life, e.g. Salt Lake City, which only has 3-4 unicorns, but balances that with 5 minute commutes to gorgeous new construction. Pick your poison!

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#264

Post by sjg007 »

jasode wrote: post #215
raverbashing wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red Hat and Canonical have achieved great success with a lot of remote workers. Heck pretty much the entirety of Linux and its ecosystem is remote. All I hear is excuses and lack of willingness to work remotely, coped with lack of experience on how to make it work. From all sides. The secret is following the procedure and working remotely even if the person is sitting next to you. (I don't mean get into a video chat…

>Heck pretty much the entirety of Linux and its ecosystem is remote. I'm a full 100% remote worker and I would never bring up "Linux development" as evidence for businesses to adopt remote work. If remote work evangelists want to argue for the benefits of work-from-home, please do not use Linux as an example because it undermines credible business thinking. As I've said before[1] and paste again here: Open source dev…

I thought Jeff Dean built everything at Google.. :)

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#265

Post by several »

moultano wrote: post #13
Analemma_ wrote: post #2

It's time to start acknowledging that this is never going to be fixed. SB 827 died when homeowners protested fiercely, and it doesn't look like any proposed replacements are going to get traction either. People just have too much of their equity tied up in their homes. I hate it, but I can also see where they're coming from: if you had a savings account that accounted for most of your net wealth and was appreciating…

If they permitted their land to be upzoned, the value of it would rise even faster than it already is, so I don't think financial incentives are the crux of the political opposition. Old home owners in the valley don't want anything to change and resent the change that has already happened.

You are 100% correct that homeowners stand to make much more money if their land was upzoned, but I think most don't realize this.

Perhaps a way out of this NIMBY induced housing crisis is make more of them aware of this fact?

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#266

Post by WhompingWindows »

averageweather wrote: post #147
WhompingWindows wrote: post #24

This is increasingly common in the Boston area as well. Cambridge/MIT is a massive biotech hub, meanwhile we have huge companies with many large offices in the downtown or in surrounding suburbs. Many workers live in RI, NH, or Central Mass, and getting to work for 9 am consistently will involve leaving at 730 for many, many workers due to congestion, construction, and the god-awful mess that is Boston infrastructure…

Correct regarding the 9am comment. I live 30mi west of Boston and it is essentially an automatic 90min if I were to leave my house at 730am. For reference, it is 35min w/o traffic. Natick, MA seems to have become the "I can't afford Newton and Wellesley" town. Prices are crazy. I thought the removal of physical toll booths from the Mass Pike would help. I have seen absolutely no benefit.

I've had a bit of experience with Route 9 in Framingham. You have this one light near a Whole Foods which causes a massive backup, it can go for miles. The reason? There's another street that comes in at around a 30-40 degree angle to route 9, and it gets its own light cycle rather than having an on-ramp.

Big problem in RI, if you've ever driven down to the south county beaches on Rt 1, you'll actually be on a "highway" that has 6-7 lights. Why not just have off/on-ramps? Infrastructure is hard, apparently no one wants to spend on that.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#268

Post by sampo »

timr wrote: post #247
sampo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if you could suddenly build all of the housing required to reduce prices on a short timescale, you'd have to solve the infrastructural problems that come with it The value of new multi-story units along good commute in the most expensive housing market in the world would be so high that some taxation of that profit would be more than enough to fund building the required commuter rail or subway lines and also n…

"This is how Tokyo has funded new commuter rail lines." Japan also runs a massive defecit relative to GDP (~250% vs our ~100% value). They spend like drunken sailors on public infrastructure.

Like the article explains, Tokyo's rail system is privately owned and operated.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#269

Post by bluGill »

several wrote: post #245
bluGill wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. It changes things, but in the location of the new housing things get busier. The major hiways elsewhere see less traffic and the average is probably better, but the local situation needs to be fixed to handle it. Of course ideally the local situation would be everybody works within a couple blocks and so the elevators and sidewalks can handle it. Most zoning boards hate this idea though.

Not necessarily bluGill. If new housing is built across most of the city or state, there could well be less thru-traffic from the suburbs into the city. I do agree with you though that if new housing is only built in a small number of areas, those areas could very well see more traffic. A goal of SB-827 was to increase housing across the entire state, particularly near areas well served by mass transit, in the hope i…

You are mistaking long term with short term. Short term it is impossible to build/rebuild housing. Short term that street is no longer big enough. Short term you will discover unintended consequences that don't work out for you.

Long term we will (as always) re-create the entire city. Long term we will notice that the street is too busy and do something about it. Long term we might even be do something about it people not working close to their home. Long term will will figure out what the true consequences of our decisions are and make further decisions to mitigate them which in turn will result in a new set of unintended decisions.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#270

Post by eloff »

_lcnb wrote: post #226
eloff wrote: post #117

If you're doing this, your almost certainly choosing a suboptimal career path. I think most of the times you could optimize your job and location and come out ahead economically. That's not the only consideration, but it's tough to imagine the 90 minute commute winning on quality of life factors.

Very rational thinking for an individual, one I happen to share. However, in a large system, there have to be some practical limits to consider in order to apply this stratagem to a large number of people. Bottlenecks. Like both this traffic jam and number of available positions in the entry / exit funnel of an occupation. All I have is questions, but, could you imagine what % of workers can possibly achieve the opti…

You don't have to worry about everyone unless you're the government. You definitely should work on optimizing your own career path. Two separate problems for different groups of people.
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