>Sure, everyone wants an easy commute where the train picks them up in front of their house and drops them off at the office, but they also want their house with yard in Walnut Creek. Or lacking that, their single family house in the Sunset.
You can have both. Tokyo is twice the size of the bay area. Density isn't the issue. It's incompetence.
Where in Tokyo do you have easy access to transit and a large suburban house?
My brother in law moved from Tokyo to where he could buy a house and yard in Chiba Japan, it's around 900 sq ft with a "yard" that's smaller than the deck on the back of my house. And it's still a 20 minute bike ride + 90 minute train ride to his job in Tokyo.
I don't know if you've been to many homes in Walnut creek, but a small attached house is not what people are moving out of the city for - if that's what they wanted, they could just move to the avenues and stay in SF
I don't think I'm overstating when I say that American style suburbs with large lots and large homes are not conducive effective public transit.
I lived in the bay area my entire life. You don't have to go to walnut creek to see suburbia. That ugly shit is everywhere.
Public transit in Tokyo is largely underground. Density is irrelevant. If you have high density or low density above ground, this factor is completely orthogonal to whatever you build Underground. Understand?
>I don't think I'm overstating when I say that American style suburbs with large lots and large homes are not conducive effective public transit.
You, in fact, didn't say ANYTHING related to this matter. You simply stated it's not conducive without mentioning why it's not conducive. I disagree. You can still build it because what's above ground has nothing to do with what's below ground.
The fact of the matter is, once you build this, barring zoning restrictions, the density should follow. Right now the bay area is a political battle ground where rich people effectively price out poor people with zoning restrictions. It's a class based war where a luxury you want is impacting the lives of people less fortunate than you.
If you let the bay grow naturally and fairly then people with your "wants" should move to the country side.
Suburbia is also not sustainable for the environment. It's why greenhouse gases per capita in the US is the worst in the world.
You seem to be arguing that it's physically possible to build transit that serves low density housing, I agree with that.
My argument is that it's economically infeasible, especially in the USA.
Extending Caltrain to downtown SF is estimated at $3B/mile, BART to San Jose is $780M/mile. You can't spend hundreds of millions of dollars building transit to a neighborhood with 100 homes. It's already hard to serve those neighborhoods with buses, since bus routes are either long and slow that wind through many neighborhoods, or they are vastly underutilized.
Right and you should’ve stated this in the beginning but you didn’t.
It’s economically feasible. We have the most powerful military in the world we have the highest gdp per capita in the world.
It’s economically feasible. When I say we are incapable of building mass transit I’m referring to every single type of incompetency in existence except for economic incompetency.
>Right and you should’ve stated this in the beginning but you didn’t.
I didn't think it was necessary to specify "under normal economic constraints and not a thought experiment where we can spend unlimited money on transit". I forgot where I was. Lesson learned.
We are not under normal economic constraints when we have the most money per capita on the face of the earth. The financial capital to do this exists.
I’m baffled at how you think it’s not economically possible when it completely it is. How does Tokyo even exists if it’s not economically possible?? It’s possible it’s just we can’t do it due to incompetence.
Just look at the high speed rail in California. That is a framed picture of American incompetence.
You can have both. Tokyo is twice the size of the bay area. Density isn't the issue. It's incompetence.