A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M • Hacker News Board

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#201

Post by jdavis703 » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

ucaetano wrote: post #120

lisper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The housing and infrastructure problems in the SFBA are purely political, and self-inflicted. That's true, but the implication that these decisions are inarguably stupid ("self-inflicted") is unfair. It's a conscious and IMHO defensible choice by the people who already live here: we would prefer to deal with the problems caused by insufficient housing than by the problems caused by overly dense population.

I never claimed them to be stupid. Your words, not mine. But the Stanford professor writing about the plight of the poor workers commuting for 2 hours lives in a multi-million dollar home in Atherton and votes for anti-poor-people zoning laws. The young, billionaire, startup CEO who wants to cause a positive impact in the world lives in Los Altos Hills, where zoning laws forbid lot sizes smaller than 1 acre, and bans…

I live in a rent controlled unit and still feel we need to eliminate Prop. 13 (prevents property tax increases caused by property asset increases) and eliminate rent control. Both are removing people from having skin in the game when it comes to housing policy. If everyone can feel the pain, maybe everyone can figure out a way to stop the pain.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#202

Post by nshelly » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #161

ucaetano wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never claimed them to be stupid. Your words, not mine. But the Stanford professor writing about the plight of the poor workers commuting for 2 hours lives in a multi-million dollar home in Atherton and votes for anti-poor-people zoning laws. The young, billionaire, startup CEO who wants to cause a positive impact in the world lives in Los Altos Hills, where zoning laws forbid lot sizes smaller than 1 acre, and bans…

> I never claimed them to be stupid. Your words, not mine. The adjective "self-inflicted" has an undeniable negative connotation. Why didn't you say, "deliberately chosen" instead? > The Bay Area housing situation is a tragedy of the commons. No, it's not. It is neither a tragedy, nor does it have anything to do with commons. Yes, it is a case of the rich making life harder for the poor, but that's only a tragedy for…

> Tragedy for the tourists

San Francisco will always be a distinctive and attractive place, with or without density. And by building more housing and improving transit, it will become less distinctive in negative ways (homelessness for one). NYC has multiple tourist attractions that have almost 3 times as visitors as those in San Francisco.[1]

> tragedy for the wildlife

It is a tragedy for the wildlife worldwide for people who work in cities to have to spend countless hours commuting and expending carbon emissions.

True, rich land-owners may have to pay more tax and some may see slightly lower appreciation rates, but many other rich people and almost all poor and middle class will benefit. No doubt someone of it is "self-inflicted" at the state-level (Prop 13 for one, and "environmental" approvals used to drag down new development), but there are actionable ways to fix some of this -- passing sales tax, easing rigid zoning laws, and using new funds for transit measures like Measure M in Los Angeles, and Measure B in San Jose.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourist_attractions_in_the_Uni...

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#203

Post by BeetleB » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #161

ucaetano wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never claimed them to be stupid. Your words, not mine. But the Stanford professor writing about the plight of the poor workers commuting for 2 hours lives in a multi-million dollar home in Atherton and votes for anti-poor-people zoning laws. The young, billionaire, startup CEO who wants to cause a positive impact in the world lives in Los Altos Hills, where zoning laws forbid lot sizes smaller than 1 acre, and bans…

> I never claimed them to be stupid. Your words, not mine. The adjective "self-inflicted" has an undeniable negative connotation. Why didn't you say, "deliberately chosen" instead? > The Bay Area housing situation is a tragedy of the commons. No, it's not. It is neither a tragedy, nor does it have anything to do with commons. Yes, it is a case of the rich making life harder for the poor, but that's only a tragedy for…

>The adjective "self-inflicted" has an undeniable negative connotation. Why didn't you say, "deliberately chosen" instead?

You yourself said:

>we would prefer to deal with the problems caused by insufficient housing than by the problems caused by overly dense population.

Is problems not a negative connotation?

Yes, it is negative, and it is self-inflicted. In your original comment, you are actually agreeing with the parent.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#204

Post by anarazel » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

scriptkiddy wrote: post #169

ericd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the full story. Commercial property is much more profitable for a city than housing, so every city in the peninsula is trying to build office space, and trying to offload the cost of actually housing those new workers onto other cities. The tax code needs to be fixed to realign incentives. One proposal I heard was to make it so that the state shares the income tax of the employees that live in the city wit…

This is why I've always been in favor of Hybrid zoning. Hybrid structures are even better in my opinion. You can have a building where the bottom floors are commercial space and the upper floors are residential space. Or you can zone an area where both commercial and residential development are permitted. Sure, living right next to a metal shop or something isn't the most pleasant thing, but it's really nice if you w…

> This is why I've always been in favor of Hybrid zoning. Hybrid structures are even better in my opinion. You can have a building where the bottom floors are commercial space and the upper floors are residential space.

Interestingly in the mission bay area there's a lot of unused commercial first floor space below residential apartment buildings. Some of it empty since the buildings went up 2012/2013.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#205

Post by got2surf » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

Grustaf wrote: post #171

As the article says, she could sleep 90 minutes longer. And if she drove to work, she does have a car, she could easily leave at five. She could also get a 3200 dollar apartment where she used to live, have at least two rooms, sleep late and still have 3550 left every month. Maybe medical insurance and such things that we europeans don't need to buy are very expensive, but apart from that it doesn't seem very difficu…

Take-home salary after taxes could be a lot less than $6,750 per month. Health insurance is probably reasonably priced given that she seems to have a government job.

But I do see your point - she could (and many do) live closer, pay more, and sleep more.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#206

Post by BeetleB » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:54 PM UTC

jacinda wrote: post #170

lisper wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never claimed them to be stupid. Your words, not mine. The adjective "self-inflicted" has an undeniable negative connotation. Why didn't you say, "deliberately chosen" instead? > The Bay Area housing situation is a tragedy of the commons. No, it's not. It is neither a tragedy, nor does it have anything to do with commons. Yes, it is a case of the rich making life harder for the poor, but that's only a tragedy for…

It is a choice. The San Francisco Bay Area is already denser than the entire country of Switzerland and has a similar GDP. However, the Swiss have incomparably better public transit. And their taxes are lower than the US. There's no need to become Manhattan or Hong Kong. Just invest in infrastructure.

Minor nitpick, but I do not think you know what dense means.

Most cities are denser than Switzerland. My undergrad town of 25K is over 20 times denser than Switzerland.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#207

Post by jermaustin1 » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:54 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #174

jermaustin1 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a conscious and IMHO defensible choice by the people who already live here... This statement smells really, really bad. As the article stated, she had to leave the SFBA because she was evicted and the housing prices had gone up too much. She lived there, and didn't chose that. As with all gentrification, the population that lived there didn't chose for affluent (typically white) people to move in and raise thei…

Then she and other likeminded people should have organized politically and pressured the government to change the zoning laws before it was too late. Everything going on in the SFBA is the direct result of capitalism and democracy in action. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I don't see any principled way you could object to it. [UPDATE] Let me clarify: I can see how you could object to various aspects of our polit…

I don't buy that.

What you are saying, is after her building was bought out and she and her neighbors were then about to be homeless, they should have formed a political organization? Where, exactly? I mean, she went to one town, who knows where the other 5/10/50 people went.

That kind of argument comes from a very privileged position of a person who hasn't been gentrified out of their neighborhood.

This is a direct result of greed; not capitalism or democracy (I mean, we aren't even a democracy, but a representative republic).

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#208

Post by ghaff » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:55 PM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #80

edward wrote: post #11

I think these articles about extreme commutes are interesting. I recommend you read what Mr. Money Mustache has to say on the subject. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-c...

The entire article is pretty interesting, but here's the punchline: > So each mile you live from work steals $795 per year from you in commuting costs. > $795 per year will pay the interest on $15,900 of house borrowed at a 5% interest rate.

But note that the vast bulk of that is an imputed value of his time which, unless you're turning down work you can't do because you're in a car commuting, isn't something you can pay the bank with.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#209

Post by owenversteeg » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:56 PM UTC

Why isn't there a good, inexpensive bus? You can fit almost one hundred passengers on a single bus. Buses are pretty fuel-efficient per passenger, easy to reroute if you have more/less demand, and you can go directly to where you need to go. They scale very well - if there are only 20 people or so you can send a small bus, if there are thousands you can send multiple large buses.

Sure, traffic can be an issue, but I'd imagine train delays are roughly as big of a problem.

In this case, it looks like her 3hr 20min commute could become 1hr 30min with a bus that goes from Stockton.

Why has nobody done this?

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#210

Post by scriptkiddy » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

Scaevolus wrote: post #199

scriptkiddy wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I've always been in favor of Hybrid zoning. Hybrid structures are even better in my opinion. You can have a building where the bottom floors are commercial space and the upper floors are residential space. Or you can zone an area where both commercial and residential development are permitted. Sure, living right next to a metal shop or something isn't the most pleasant thing, but it's really nice if you w…

In Japan, zoning is hybrid (includes all zones up to a given level, so you can have mixed residential/commercial), and height limits are based on shadow projection instead of some city commissioner. It seems to work better than America's obsession with suburbanization and having all your housing in a giant clump a 10 minute drive from all your shops. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Yep. Japan leads as a great example in this case.