[bosie]

Increasing housing increases demand on alot of other resources (medical, kindergarten, streets, public transport, schools,...). how do you orchestrate such a rise in demand in a densely populated city like san francisco quickly (dense in the sense of non-used land, not by population)?

[rahimnathwani]

I live in SF. The resources you mention are not currently a limiting factor.

Medical: is provided by private companies like Kaiser, who have proven their ability to grow as their customer base grows.

Kindergarten: the school district has excess capacity, as # students has shrunk from 70k+ to fewer than 50k. They will probably need to close some schools to increase utilization.

Streets: the streets in San Francisco are way less crowded than anywhere else I've lived.

Public transport: the last few times I've taken the bus, it's been easy to find a seat. The last time I took the BART it was nearly empty.

Schools: see comment above.

[bosie]

I can't comment on Kaiser or SF, not familiar with either. But great if Kaiser can just create GPs and consultants localised in newly built areas like that. well done them. To be honest, I forgot the private aspect of health care in the US. I wonder how city planners are planning around that.

> Public transport: the last few times I've taken the bus, it's been easy to find a seat. The last time I took the BART it was nearly empty.

if that is the case, SF has either the most amazing public transportation already or the most under-used public transportation. or you are simply cheery-picking.

school, kindergarten and medical need to be in close vicinity though. the overall capacity is meaningless for the first two if you build housing for an additional 15k within a few blocks and then have no GPs (and to a lesser extend consultants) within a few minutes of walking or no hospital within a quick driving distance. and if that 70k to 50k (i assume it is not covid related) is uniformly across all kindergartens, it is pretty meaningless for housing

[rahimnathwani]

"I can't comment on Kaiser or SF"

The comment to which you replied was specifically talking about SF so I assumed (reasonably I think) that you were commenting about SF, too.

"if that is the case, SF has either the most amazing public transportation already or the most under-used public transportation. or you are simply cheery-picking."

Those are not the only explanations. And, given I said live in SF, maybe it's reasonable to assume I'm reporting actual observations, unless I've previously demonstrated some pattern of exaggeration.

[bosie]

Mind sharing some other explanations?

[rahimnathwani]

Some potential explanations off ghr top of my head...

- I happened to get lucky on my last 5 journeys

- Many people how have more flexibility about when they start/end work, even if they're not working remotely

- People are avoiding public transport due to worries about COVID and increasing crime

- Outside of peak hours, buses still need to run with some minimum frequency to be a viable option, so they often run empty or with only 1-5 passengers

You could come up with others...

[8organicbits]

How much of those stats are pandemic related? (i.e. were true in 2019).

I'm ex-bay area since 2016, but I recall standing room only BART and shoulder-to-shoulder CALTRAIN can't add another body when heading to south bay. Although I didn't take SF bus, or send kids to Kindergarten.

[rahimnathwani]

The stats I quoted (drop from 70k to 50k) are not pandemic related. The drop has been gradual, as SF has become less hospitable to people with kids (costs, safety, school quality).

The enrollment dropped from 2019 to now, but by something like 5k (on my phone and don't have the exact stats handy).

My anecdotes about the last few journeys I took are recent, not from 2019. But, even in 2019, my experience of public transport in San Francisco was that it was far less crowded than that in London, New York or Beijing.

SF's roads are not congested. If buses were to become crowded due to increased population, we could just buy more buses and increase the frequency. This would keep crowding at current levels, whilst reducing wait times, thus making buses far more convenient than they are today.

Regarding Caltrain: if SF had more housing, fewer people who work in SF would need to live outside and take Caltrain in.

[beebmam]

City planners have a wide variety of opinions about this, and all of them are pretty useful. Most of them will mean a decline in effective property values, which is almost ALWAYS strongly opposed by the public.

[rguillebert]

A lot of these things can scale vertically rather than horizontally. If you allow denser housing by building higher, schools and hospitals can also build higher.

[walkhour]

> kindergartens, schools and medical offices.

Where exactly do you think schooling and medical practices happen or children are taken care of?

>Public transport

How hard is to coordinate to double the number of trains or buses?

> Streets

I don't know what you mean by the demand of streets increases.

Most times solving the housing problem is a lack of will or coordination, and the solution is muddled/deleted/delayed indefinitely by arguments like this.

[edmcnulty101]

And alot of times, especially with mass transit, there are economies if scale.

So it's even more efficient with higher population.

[bosie]

> Where exactly do you think schooling and medical practices happen or children are taken care of?

in close vicinity of the housing. not sure i understand the question.

> How hard is to coordinate to double the number of trains or buses?

running a bus during peak hours at twice your current rate (unless the rate is completely ridicilous) does not sound easy. why do you assume it is? at that rate, for SF at least, you are talking subway.

by streets i meant the higher volume during peak hours that need to be sustained (walking, cycling, driving, busses, trams, parking etc).

[rahimnathwani]

"running a bus during peak hours at twice your current rate (unless the rate is completely ridicilous) does not sound easy"

The 14R (the fastest bus from my home to downtown SF) is scheduled to run every 10 mins (on average) during the morning peak.

Running that bus every 5 mins (which presents no special difficulty) would double the capacity, and reduce average wait time by 5 mins.

[bosie]

Can you please back up the claim that doubling every bus and tram does not present special difficulty? I would genuinely love to read an actual analysis of 'just doubling the frequency', does not even have to be San Francisco per se.

[rahimnathwani]

I didn't say every bus.

I didn't mention trams.

I wasn't making a general case that's applicable to every city.

I was talking about specifically about SF, which has relatively uncongested roads, bus lanes that are mostly empty, and where the busiest bus stops receive buses no more than ~10 times per hour.

[bosie]

You said this:

> Running that bus every 5 mins (which presents no special difficulty) would double the capacity, and reduce average wait time by 5 mins.

the problem with public transportation among other things are connections. running specific buses with a higher frequency does not give you a lower wait time (on the journey) but only on that stop.

> I didn't say every bus. > I didn't mention trams.

ok i don't get it. why did you bring this up at all then?