[kortilla]

> And yes California is proceeding with a high speed train despite the anti-train hit pieces from the LA Times.

So far the high speed train has been a boondoggle, not a good example of a success. It will be decades before it goes anywhere useful.

> Or finding a public park since the land was all sold to private developers. That’s not how urban planning works in functioning cities like San Francisco.

Have you ever actually lived in San Francisco? A significant chunk of it (and 95% of the rest of the bay) is not walkable. And there is no functional urban planning in San Francisco. A policy of rejecting every new substantial proposal is not “planning”.

When was the last time they agreed to allow dense housing to replace single/multi-family homes? When was the last new BART line added? When were new commuter rail lines added in?

I lived in the Bay Area for over a decade now and this fantasy you have of a functioning local government doesn’t exist. The only people that make good enough money to be worth it are senior software folks. Everyone else is better at their slightly reduced equivalent wage anywhere else in the US (aside from maybe NYC).

Tax money is absolutely being pissed away at an alarming rate based on what citizens get here. The schools are frequently garbage, the public transit is useful for maybe 5% of the population, and the homeless problem is as bad as ever. All of this for the low price of one of the highest income tax states + sales tax.

I chose the bay because of the tech economy and nice weather in spite of the blisteringly incompetent government. I don’t think any of my friends or coworkers are in SF or the wider bay because they think it’s a good governance model. The thought is likely pretty laughable to most residents.

[mrgordon]

You don't need to replace historic Victorian and Edwardian houses necessarily, although its one option. Instead you can extend zoning in areas like SOMA to allow much larger buildings there where there aren't as many people already living there and most of the structures aren't nice historic houses. This is exactly what they've done. San Francisco has a whole area of very tall residential skyscrapers in various stages of completion as well as the tallest building on the west coast (the Salesforce Tower) as part of a new transit hub.

Many of the schools are great. Sorry if your school district is bad. There are excellent schools in many areas. Cupertino, most of the Peninsula, Berkeley have some really great ones.

My coworkers for a decade took public transit more often than not. You live in the suburbs if you think 5% of the population takes BART or Muni to work. Plus many people walk or bike.

I've walked all over San Francisco so if you don't find it walkable its on you. Grab an electric scooter, a bike share, an electric skateboard, some rollerblades, or one of those uniwheel things and the hills won't be so bad if you can't handle walking them. The Mission has more streets of great walkability with restaurants and small businesses everywhere than almost anywhere in America.

Perhaps the fact that you don't even know about the BART expansion should be the warning sign that you don't really follow Bay Area transit very closely. Ironic that you ask if I have ever actually lived in San Francisco. Yes I have. Trying to act like the government is so incompetent that they can't open a station when they just opened Milpitas and Berryessa/North San Jose stations on June 13 says more about your lack of attention to local issues than it does about their urban planning. They also built 7,000 nearby housing units. Its actual transit-first development as they've been doing in SF for years.

I've met more people in junior roles get rich in the Bay Area from equity than would ever be possible by trying to live in the cheapest possible place with minimal opportunities such that your expenses are a slightly lower percentage of your take-home pay as a new graduate. If you did an entry level job at Twilio you're probably a millionaire now. People get promoted significantly faster in the Bay Area due to the number of fast growing companies and the pay, which started out higher, grows that much more every year due to promotions, larger cost of living increases, etc.

So sure make your money and leave. Don't try to improve things you don't like, just complain about them. Go somewhere new and find out all the issues there that you didn't realize including several of the ones I brought up here. Learn what a truly unwalkable place is like.

[kortilla]

> most of the structures aren't nice historic houses. This is exactly what they've done.

So they prioritized nice houses over solving the housing problem. Not to re-assuring if you aren’t rich enough to own one of these houses or compete for the few high rise units there are.

> Many of the schools are great. Sorry if your school district is bad.

Lol, the embodiment of what’s wrong with California politics. That’s almost literally NIMBY.

> My coworkers for a decade took public transit more often than not. You live in the suburbs if you think 5% of the population takes BART or Muni to work. Plus many people walk or bike.

Yes, I live where the majority of the Bay Area lives - outside of San Francisco proper because SF has such hostile housing policies. Nobody would give a shit about the bay bridge if public transportation was decent but instead it’s a parking lot every day (non-covid).

> Perhaps the fact that you don't even know about the BART expansion should be the warning sign that you don't really follow Bay Area transit very closely.

If you’re talking about the track extension to San Jose, that’s pathetic. That’s something that should have been done about 20 years ago and it still doesn’t solve shit for most of the peninsula. It also doesn’t do anything for most of San Jose itself. If people cared about transit there would be multiple lines up and down the peninsula, cross lines, and a way to get to Mountain View from SFO that runs 24/7 and doesn’t require waiting at a bart/Caltrain interchange for up to an hour when it is running. As it’s run now, BART and Caltrain are red-headed step children used as lip service by politicians afraid to do anything serious to address public transportation in a meaningful way.

> I've met more people in junior roles get rich in the Bay Area from equity than would ever be possible by trying to live in the cheapest possible place with minimal opportunities such that your expenses are a slightly lower percentage of your take-home pay as a new graduate. If you did an entry level job at Twilio you're probably a millionaire now.

What a sad distraction from the point about the incompetent government. I already said the business environment is great and operates in spite of the incompetent government. Also, keep in mind that only a couple percent of the population work for tech companies and only maybe 1 percent of that group get to ride a successful exit. For every millionaire junior engineer you met, there are 10,000 people being failed by the current Bay Area government.

> So sure make your money and leave. Don't try to improve things you don't like, just complain about them.

What makes you think I haven’t worked on improving things? You might learn that the ability to identify problems is the only way to actually meaningfully fix anything.

It sounds like you’re just happy with your rich circle of friends in the city, that’s great for you. IMO that “I’ve got mine” attitude is what makes the bay so miserable for the rest of the 99%.

> Learn what a truly unwalkable place is like.

I’ve spent months in Tokyo and over a year in NYC. The Bay Area is a joke when it comes to walkability. Small segments of SF can be suffered through and then everyone else is just fucked without a car or ride sharing.

I suggest the opposite to you. Go spend some time in walkable cities to open your eyes to how mismanaged the governance of the bay is. Try Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Osaka, etc.

Your point of comparison might be some suburb rust belt US city so it might look golden to you, but it’s shockingly bad compared to governments that are truly motivated to support car free lifestyles.