[emmett]

Chicken and egg. Subways enable density. Right now if you greatly increased the density of many SF neighborhoods, you'd overwhelm the transportation infrastructure. (Obviously there are neighborhoods with transit that could already support increased density).

Hilariously, I wrote my highschool senior thesis on this exact topic. It was a case study on Seattle, Houston, and New York and how density changed before/after transit was added. You can see the pattern pretty clearly, transit leads to density and not the other way around. Which makes sense, right? Because density can be increased one building at a time, but generally subways need a huge investment to put in an entire line at once and benefit from having an extensive network.

[dkopi]

Is it really a Chicken and egg situation? SF prices in the last years have skyrocketed, through out the city. The financial incentive to build is there. But there isn't massive building of new housing. That isn't because of the lack of subways. It's because of zoning laws and building regulations.

[mateo411]

Thousands of new homes/condos are being built every year in SF, for the last few years. There is a massive amount of building going on, precisely because prices have skyrocketed. However, more housing would be built, if the zoning laws and building regulations were less onerous.

[irrational]

High school senior thesis? Is this a thing now? Did you go to a public or private high school?

[emmett]

I went to a private school. It was pretty non-traditional in many respects, and it wouldn't surprise me if writing a thesis wasn't common at other schools.