[nshelly]

It's just that many of the stakeholders in these areas such as long-time property owners in the westside of San Francisco and residents with rent control fearing gentrification would not benefit directly from new development. Their incentives simply aren't aligned with younger generations who want to live and raise families in a city with reasonable housing costs. To break this quandary we simply to need intervention at the higher level. Congestion, long commutes and sprawl is hurting the U.S. (and Californian) economy so when change comes it will come at the higher level than the city.

[closeparen]

Oh sure, there are plenty of objections to the process of change. I'm more interested in why Manhattan is a boogeyman for the end result.

[niftich]

Manhattan is a byword for the unhappy worst-of-both-worlds situation where you have premium luxury housing no one can afford or run-down walk-ups where you're paying thousands a month for a hole-in-the-wall; pedestrians overrun the sidewalks and gridlock continues late into the night; there's technically trains but sometimes it's faster to walk; people are on top of each other and you can't find anywhere quiet.

Parts of Manhattan aren't like that, but that's not the image people have in their minds.

[mnutt]

there's technically trains but sometimes it's faster to walk;

I like to complain about train delays as much as any New Yorker but this perception is pretty much incorrect; once you're going more than 15 minutes away it'll always be faster to take the subway. Commuting from midtown to where I live takes 25 minutes by train during peak times and up to ~40 minutes late night; walking takes an hour and a half.

I guess I can see how someone who visits NYC and only visits Times Square / Canal Street gets that impression though.

[orangecat]

Manhattan is a byword for the unhappy worst-of-both-worlds situation where you have premium luxury housing no one can afford or run-down walk-ups where you're paying thousands a month for a hole-in-the-wall

As opposed to SF? At least in the NYC area you have the option of cheaper housing in Queens or New Jersey and a not-too-horrible commute.

[elvinyung]

What about east bay?

[cbhl]

The bay bridge and transbay tube are pretty much at capacity at rush hour (8-10a, 3-7p).

You can drive over the Bay Bridge in 15-20 minutes if there's no traffic. If there's an accident and a ball game and rush hour, you could easily be stuck on it for 90-120.

[closeparen]

For those who don't know, the Bay Bridge has a relatively thoughtful design where rate-limiting is done at the approaches so that traffic on the bridge itself moves just fine. Then there are dedicated lanes so that buses can jump the queue.

Right now the bottleneck for bus throughput is loading bays at Temporary Transbay Terminal. When the new Transbay Terminal comes online, AC Transit will be able to substantially increase bus throughput over the Bay Bridge.

The Transbay bus system has many distinct routes that go express all the way to SF after making a few local stops in a couple of adjacent neighborhoods. Consequently, it's often faster than BART, especially if you don't live particularly close to your BART stop. Transbay Terminal moving the SF terminus closer to the Market St subway will also make the transfer more pleasant if Embarcadero isn't your stop.

[troupe]

Having extensively used the public transportation system in a number of US cities, NYC has been by far the best place to try to get around by subway. Is there another US city where you think the subway works much better?

[abalashov]

Chicago's threatens to be borderline usable, but unfortunately as you tend away from the Loop to the vast expanses of suburbia, its utility diminishes exponentially. Still, by comparison to 95% of Middle America, Chicago definitely deserves a top spot.

[eecsninja]

The irony in all this is that NYC is actually more affordable than SF now.

I live in midtown Manhattan in a renovated studio on the 30th floor. I pay less than my coworker who is renting a 1bed apartment in Mountain View on a job rotation there.

Bay Area cities may have avoided turning into Manhattan but they have Manhattan-level rent prices. Congratulations people.

[nshelly]

The Financial District of Manhattan (and Midtown) is the only place like that in the U.S., and most people have been to Times Square, so it does a good job conjuring up an emotional reaction in voters.

[lev99]

> most people have been to Times Square

A lot of people have been to Times Square, but I doubt most United States voters have.

[adventured]

50 million Americans visit NYC each year. Times Square is a marquee draw for tourists.

There are ~150 million (134m in the last Presidential election) active American voters. They tilt older and financially better off, which is also the combination that is most likely to have a substantial travel history.

I'd bet on the majority of active US voters - 75m+ - having visited Times Square at least once in their lifetimes.

[dredmorbius]

50m visitors != 50m uniques.

There are people who never leave their home state, occasionally city/metro are, though I'm not finding a good source on that.

[cimmanom]

Where did you get that 50M number? That sounds more like the total number of tourists altogether, only a fraction of whom are Americans.

[lev99]

50M looks an awful like the total tourist numbers reported in this article[0]. I still hold the view that less than half of registered voters have been to time square.

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/09/nyregion/record-number-of...

[bewo001]

As a European I was surprised how many buildings in Manhattan are not sky scrapers.

[mcguire]

Pardon me for appearing to be the spokes-person for market economics, but if "congestion, long commutes and sprawl is hurting the U.S. (and Californian) economy", wouldn't they be self-healing problems?

Do "younger generations ... want to live and raise families in a city with reasonable housing costs" or do they want to accumulate as much of the easily-available money there a fast as possible? (The former is available almost anywhere.)

[lostapathy]

It probably is self-solving, but probably not over useful timescales.

Further - it seems like the people truly making the decisions (i.e., the people deciding to keep company headquarters in SF rather than moving) are in a better economic position than the entry-level people who pay for those decisions in quality of life.

[closeparen]

The "market self-healing" here is the development of multifamily residential near jobs and transit, which is already close to legal limits.

What's not available "almost anywhere" is your industry's center of gravity.