[taatof]

How do we get around? To get downtown I have to take two busses and then bart (or two busses but it takes longer because there are a lot more stops).

The kicker: I'm not even in a suburb, I live in SF!

All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. At least NYC has a plenty good enough train system.

I end up WFH anyway, largely because it's annoying to get to an office downtown every day.

[maxwellg]

> All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better.

In the last half decade we've seen the opening of the Salesforce transit center, the Chinatown subway station, the Van Ness BRT, the Caltrain Electrification Project, BART expansion to Berryessa, 800 new BART cars, and hundreds of smaller projects.

You can see a full list of SFMTA projects at https://www.sfmta.com/sfmta-projects

[taatof]

While I'm obviously exaggerating by saying "never", the list is much smaller than it needs to be, and you have some misleading things on that list.

Chinatown subway station is great. Better connects SF residents and it's exactly what I want to see more of in SF.

- Van Ness BRT? That project started in 2003. It took 20 years to complete. Not exactly the poster child of solid transit improvements in SF, except if you ignore how it got there.

- The Caltrain electrification project is great for the environment, but doesn't help SF much as far as improving transit availability. It's slightly faster, at least.

- BART expansion to Berryessa is a bit separate from SF transit improvements, which is what I'm talking about.

- Salesforce transit center is fine and has good vision, like expanding caltrain downtown. But doesn't add a massive amount of transit availability that wasn't already nearby (yet).

[maxwellg]

I provided a list of the biggest ticket items from the past few years. If you want to only look at projects that increase transit availability, reliability, or speed within SF County, check out the Muni Forward projects. Usually half a dozen lines are prioritized each year. https://www.sfmta.com/projects/muni-forward

I live in the Richmond, so I've been positively affected by the improvements to the 38/38R (although I still would strongly prefer a BRT system) and the new-ish-but-not-really 1X. In the next year I can expect transit improvements to the 1 and the 5/5R. Pretty much every bus I take on a weekly basis has seen transit improvements since I've first moved here.

[ardit33]

Geary BRT is still not complete. 25 years in the making, and it is just a half assed solution. SF is very inefficient into completing mass transit infrastructure.

[what]

What actually improved about the 38? They moved the stops to the other side of the intersection, which saves maybe 1 minute along the entire route.

[maxwellg]

- Stops moved to be after the light, so bus isn't stuck waiting after people board

- Stops moving after the light mean Transit Signal Priority works better. GPS on the bus can "hold" the green light for longer - https://www.sfmta.com/blog/green-lights-muni

- Red painted lanes decrease private car use in bus lane, so bus can go faster

- Speeding fell by 80%, so fewer accidents mean transit is more reliable

There have been a few different projects on different sections of Geary over the years. The bus now runs 10-20% faster depending on direction and variability decreased by 25-40%.

Check out pages 15-19 of https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...

[asdff]

Doesn’t the bus just stop before people board now? Seems to me the issue is the bus isn’t capable of preempting green lights not where it stops and hits the red light on its route. When the police want to get to lunch quicker they are allowed to preempt the lights with the tooling they are given.

[tuukkah]

Better Caltrain means less road congestion in SF so benefits everyone.

[raldi]

And before that: https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/8df1z7/after_...

[mazugrin2]

How would you imagine one could make driving better, aside from making public transit better? The best thing you could hope for if you feel like you need to drive within SF is to have as few other people feeling the need to drive within SF.

But wait, I have to ask: why do you live in SF?

Practically anywhere else in the US is cheaper and better for people who want to drive.

Very few other US cities are better for people who want to get around by other means.

[whimsicalism]

it's too bad SF did not build an underground railway system covering the city in the short window when the labor to do so was affordable

[mazugrin2]

What do you mean by "the short window when the labor to do so was affordable"? Other cities in the world seem to be able to build underground railways just fine and they have similar labor costs as the US. See Paris or Sydney for cities that have created new underground railways recently.

[whimsicalism]

Labor costs in Paris for building rail are considerably cheaper https://archive.is/Ojs0k

But my comment was a bit tongue in cheek - it is mostly political dysfunction. Of course the US could find people willing to work for less than $400/hr or whatever, but there is an incentive disalignment.

[WillPostForFood]

1851?

[master_crab]

1850-1950s. But just as importantly this time frame also happened to be before the NIMBYists stepped in (which is arguably more consequential).

[alephnerd]

Much of SF didn't even exist until the 1930s-50s. For example, most of Sunset and Richmond is tract housing built during that era - before then it was sand dunes and chicken farms.

People underestimate how new much of the Western US is. For example, Dallas only began expanding in 1891 after the railways were built, LA was a small town until the 1910s-30s era expansion, modern San Jose only formed in the 1960s-70s after absorbing dozens of farming towns like Alviso and Berryessa, Seattle was mostly sand dunes until they were leveled in the 1900s-30s).

Because of how new it was, most of the cities are planned primarily with cars in mind - especially after the 1930s era Dust Bowl Migration and the 1940s-60s era economic migration. Same thing in much of Canada and Australia as well, which saw a similar postwar expansion.

> before the NIMBYists stepped in

NIMBYism in SF only really began in the 1970s onwards.

While NIMBYism is now elitist, it initially started out as part of the civil rights movement ("urban redevelopment" was often a guise for razing historically Black, Hispanic, and Asian neighborhoods in that era - for example much of Japantown/Fillmore) as well as the early environmental movement (eg. Sierra Movement, Greenpeace), which was opposed to profit motive compared to modern YIMBY+Greentech model.

[master_crab]

While that’s true of the outer communities (San Jose, etc) I took the OP’s message as referring to SF core/downtown which was already pretty developed by the 1950s. Unlike LA, SF was a major city far earlier.

[asdff]

No in the 70s when they built bart but intended it to be a suburban commuter network

[doctorpangloss]

Here in San Francisco? On my insured Stromers, with my family, that I bought for less than the cost of a year of auto insurance. Door to door, I am everywhere I want to be in about 10m. My longest typical journey is 45m across Golden Gate Bridge from the Mission, which is faster than any car, simply because I park my bike at the door of my destinations.

The better question is, have you ever seen a kid crying in the back of a bike?

[CalRobert]

Hear hear! Though I admit my own kid has cried once or twice in the front of an urban arrow, toddler rage is a powerful thing….

[taatof]

Everyone I know who bikes in the city has been hit by a car at some point (see: my complaints about enforcement of traffic laws in this thread if you want my opinion on that).

I cringe when I see parents with their kids on the back of their bikes. Super dangerous.

[tshaddox]

Congestion pricing makes driving better, not worse.

[cj]

Of course it does, if you remove price from the equation!

[tshaddox]

Sure, but that’s a dismissive interpretation.

It’s a bit like saying “sure, a cinema that refuses to sell more tickets than it has seats leads to a better cinema viewing experience, but only if you remove price from the equation!”

[potato3732842]

It boggles my mind (by which I mean "you should feel dirty for employing a dishonest rhetorical trick like that") that you can call his take dismissive when you simply ignored the area that is regressing (cost) in order to facilitate the tradeoff.

Cost is explicitly being traded away here to facilitate improvement in other areas. That's the whole point of implementing the toll/tax!!!!!

[tshaddox]

Phrases like “toll” and “congestion pricing” clearly imply that there will be a cost to driving, so I don’t think it’s reasonable to say anyone in the conversation is ignoring cost.

But again, dismissing the improvements because costs go up is like dismissing the reduction of water pollution because “now only people who can afford chemical disposal can operate a tannery next to the river.”

[AnthonyMouse]

There are two ways to not sell more tickets than you have seats. One is to jack up the price of seats, the other is to add more seats.

The latter in this context would be to e.g. build higher density housing so more people can feasibly take mass transit, as opposed to congestion pricing which is just a tax on people who can't afford the artificially scarce housing in the areas where mass transit use is feasible already.

[close04]

Wouldn't the price of the car, fuel, insurance, maintenance, etc. dwarf the congestion tax? So the car itself is the worst part about the driving experience?

[bluGill]

Maybe. Used vs new cars have vastly different costs. Generally tolls are far more than fuel cost where they exist. Insurance is - in the us - charged per year with unlimited use.

there are some who the charge would be significant (long paid off reliable used car) while others who it is a drop compared to the othes costs (new luxury car)

[close04]

True, there’s a lot of room to optimize costs. For example the congestion tax costs can be reduced to 0 by avoiding areas it targets. And that’s not even tongue in cheek, one could commute to the edge of the city and take public transport for example.

[bluGill]

That is the goal of course. The open question (though we will know in a year) is will they. Or will they just reduce something else from their budget to pay these tolls? If only a handful of people change their behavior this failed (though the extra money to transit may result in useful service expansions for someone else who isn't driving now). If thousands change their behavior it was a success.

[whimsicalism]

for a bus-centric system like SF, congestion pricing intrinsically makes public transit better

[CalRobert]

For what it’s worth a folding bike and BART is a great combo

[wkat4242]

Yeah that's the key. Not disincentivising cars but to make public transport the obvious answer by making it really good.

They do that really well here in Barcelona. 21€ a month and you can use all the transport you want in the city, all modes. Why would i want a car what's expensive to own, park and maintain and I can only just it when I've not been drinking?

Problem is, making transport good costs money and a lot of effort. Taxing cars is easy and brings money in.

[eru]

> All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better.

Well, congestion pricing would make driving better. (And perhaps make busses better, too, since they use the same roads.)

[whakim]

> All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better. At least NYC has a plenty good enough train system.

Except that SF public transit is actually pretty good. East-West transit works extremely well via buses and MUNI depending on whether you live in the northern or southern part of the city. Bay Wheels is extremely affordable and makes a lot of sense for short trips in a city of SF’s size. BART has its limitations but it also generally pretty good. Sure, SF public transit could be better, but I’d actually argue the problem is that driving in SF isn’t hard enough - many people have great public transit options but refuse to use them because we haven’t forced them to reprogram their car-brains.

[ajsnigrutin]

> All we do in SF is make car driving worse, we almost never make public transit better.

Same happening here in my smallish (~300k peeople) capital of a small eu country...

Too many cars? More expensive parking! Less parking! More expensive parking! Less parking! More pedestrian-only streets, and even more cars around that...

And the buses? They suck. The city is roughly star-shaped.. want to go from one leg to another? Well, you have to cross the city center. Sunday? Half of the buses don't drive then. Something happening in the city center? Good luck with getting on the last bus after the event is over, and no extra buses added. Dog? Not during "rush hours" (6.30-9:30 and 13-17h). AC? Barely any. Two buses needed? No time sinchronization at all. Train-bus time sychronization? haha good luck. Need to go just a stop or two? It's expensive. Need to go across the whole town? It's slow, even with empty streets.

But hey, parking will be made even more expensive!

edit: also, a student? You get cheaper transport! Here's a line for you to wait to get the transport card: https://www.zurnal24.si/slovenija/pred-okenci-prevoznikov-pr...

[taatof]

Sounds right. Here in SF, instead of police pulling over people who speed and run stop signs, we're getting rid of parking spots within 20ft of intersections so people speeding and running stop signs can see if they're about to kill a pedestrian.

Could raise a fortune for public transit if we enforced traffic laws and used that money.

[milch]

Because police can't physically be in every intersection at once, and there's research that shows that removing parking around intersections reduces pedestrian fatalities. They could add cameras, but I bet you that people would fight tooth and nail against that as well... not being able to park within 20ft of an intersection doesn't cause any privacy issues, or funnel money into the city councilman's cousin's company that just so happens to be in the business of installing red light and stop sign photo enforcement cameras, or need ongoing maintenance to keep working

[taatof]

> Because police can't physically be in every intersection at once

Can we compromise at some number greater than 0? I've lived here for more than a decade and don't remember seeing anyone getting pulled over by SFPD.

[cyberax]

> Because police can't physically be in every intersection at once

They don't have to be everywhere. They have to be at least _somewhere_ and start visible enforcing. People need to know that they might get away with running a red light a couple of times, but they WILL be caught eventually, and there WILL be consequences.

> and there's research that shows that removing parking around intersections reduces pedestrian fatalities.

I read a lot of the urbanist propaganda research, and most of it is pure crap. Bad statistical methods, poor significance, P-hacking, biased tests, you name it.

[what]

You must not be a pedestrian if you don’t like the red zones at intersections. You can’t see the oncoming traffic without stepping into the intersection.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Could raise a fortune for public transit if we enforced traffic laws and used that money.

If you consistently enforce the law then the fine revenue falls below even its current level because consistent enforcement reduces violations, meanwhile costs go up because the additional enforcement has to be paid for.

The existing system is the one cultivated to maximize revenue by setting speed limits below the median traffic speed so that cops can "efficiently" issue citations one after another as long as there isn't enough enforcement to induce widespread compliance. This is, of course, dumb, but the alternatives generate less net profit for the government.

[rafram]

> we're getting rid of parking spots within 20ft of intersections

This is called daylighting, and it’s a very good idea. The rest of your comment was just snark, and I assume you know that road improvements don’t have anything to do with law enforcement, but I just want to emphasize that daylighting is going to be a huge positive for the city.

[fragmede]

SF put in 33 speed cameras in known locations, and are aiming to install 900 more by the end of this year. As a bonus to speeders, speeds in excess of 100 mph will incur a $500 speeding ticket, though that may have unintended consequences.

[whimsicalism]

what unintended consequences?

[JackFr]

The real unintended consequence is that cities ultimately don’t like to run them. They’re effective, and thus the revenue the city is expecting disappears. In they end they become costs rather than revenue sources.

[potato3732842]

The root problem is voters tolerating a government that sees law enforcement as a profit center.

[whimsicalism]

that hasn't been true in any city i've lived in that had speed cameras (shockingly few actually). dc makes money on their cameras

[SoftTalker]

$500 is just dinner for some people in SF.

Or maybe people will drive at 99 mph to get the best value.

[oefrha]

Speeding also carries point penalties. Get caught a few times and your license is suspended. You can’t just pay to speed indefinitely (unless you also buy something like a get out of jail free card from the police union).

[whimsicalism]

is this different than the existing law? like they're not lowering the penalty

[potato3732842]

Nothing special. Slight increases in minor accidents and near misses, some minority of which will involve pedestrians or road rage violence Basically the same downsides as anything else that changes the speed via rule or enforcement rather than changing the conditions of the road (e.g. "traffic calming").

[whimsicalism]

i fail to see how adding cameras and an additional penalty will lead to any of those things

[fragmede]

A normal person sees that $500 fine as a incentive to not go that fast. But there's a certain kind of person for whom $500 is nothing compared to being able to tell the story of that time the city sold them a picture of them, complete with certificate that says they broke 100mph somewhere in the city limits, a trophy to frame and display openly in the garage next to said vehicle.

[fragmede]

Really gotta wonder if the people that downvoted disagree that people would do such a thing, don't want to give people ideas and thus buried it, or are people who would do such a thing. Or some other thing.

[Mawr]

First off, false equivalence - there is no "instead of", what the police do or do not is unrelated to the reduction of parking spaces.

Second, implementing safety by modifying the physical environment is vastly superior to anything else because it scales. There's no longer a need to educate every single person who will use every intersection in the city every day on how to do it safely, nor a need to ensure x police officers are present. The physical design creates an environment that is safe by default.

[bushbaba]

There’s a cost of policing, and a significant amount of ticket revenue goes to court fees. Not everyone pays their ticket.

Likely it’d not raise a fortune and the ticketing revenue would mostly offset the cost of enforcement.

[mh-]

That's.. fine? It'd drive behavior modification if there was even a small risk of getting a citation. Today, there really isn't.

[tlogan]

The goal is straightforward: make driving more pleasant for wealthy people. Rich Democrats will claim it’s beneficial for the environment, while rich Republicans will call it capitalism at work. In the end, improving public transit isn’t really on their radar. And they rule the world.

[leetcrew]

buses and cars compete for the same right of way. improving one mode necessarily comes at the cost of the other, but many more people can be moved with a bus.

trains would be even better, but people don't like to see the price tag.

almost not worth discussing honestly. this has become yet another factionalized holy war over the last decade.

[tlogan]

One challenge with your 100% logical reasoning is that it assumes wealthy and powerful people share the same priorities you do. Unfortunately, this is rarely true, and it often takes time to realize just how different those priorities can be.

I’m all for public transit myself, but after 25 years in San Francisco, I’ve only seen it decline. That sentiment isn’t just mine—many longtime SF residents share this cynicism.

[nine_k]

Oh, SF, the home of both some of the most powerful NIMBYs and the most outlandish "social justice" experiments. I feel for this once wonderful, poor city.

As a consolation, I must say that e.g. NYC was also handled miserably, say, in 1980s. Despite that, it rose from the filth, and is now fine, even outright enjoyable here and there.

I think that SF will also shake off its current insanity, and will turn back into a flourishing, living, and thus changing city.

It takes time, thoughtful voting (of many, many people), and likely a bit of luck.

[RHSeeger]

> Despite that, it rose from the filth, and is now fine

Well, except for the people being pushing in front of subways to their death, or lit on fire in stations. The subways stations are getting dangerous enough, even in "not bad" areas, that people are avoiding them.

[ufmace]

Out of about 3.5 million riders a day. Meanwhile, nobody pays any attention to the roughly 250 people who die in car crashes every single year in the NYC metro area. If you're so worried about safety, we should ban cars entirely instead of just taxing them a little.

[nine_k]

If you look at basically any subway station now, and compare it to 1980, it's a huge improvement. If you want a reminder, visit Chambers St station (it's heavily affected by leaks from the buildings above it).

[dullcrisp]

What are they doing instead? Driving on the roads? Staying home?

[leetcrew]

I don't live in SF, so could definitely be some local nuances I'm missing. in NYC, there is a pretty clear partisan split on the new congestion tax. the (relatively) red leaning areas are the loudest opponents. I guess having so many high earners already taking public transit might change the discussion.

[pclmulqdq]

Those areas are the poor areas. The rich areas in NYC are the most democratic.

[AnthonyMouse]

> buses and cars compete for the same right of way. improving one mode necessarily comes at the cost of the other

This is not true at all. Some ways of increasing throughput for both: Build higher density housing which allows more people to take the bus/train and reduces congestion even for the people who still have to drive, add more lanes that either can use (e.g. by building parking garages and then converting street parking to travel lanes), make streets one-way on alternating blocks (reduces congestion at intersections), build pedestrian catwalks above busy intersections to reduce pedestrian-induced congestion and keep pedestrians safer, etc.

> but many more people can be moved with a bus.

The "can" is really the problem. If you do the numbers for a full bus the bus seems very attractive, but then to run buses to everywhere that everyone travels in cars without an impractical amount of latency, many of the buses would end up having only one or two passengers -- and sometimes none -- while still requiring three times the space and fuel of a car and on top of that requiring a separate driver at significant expense.

So instead there is no bus that goes to those places at those times. And since you can't get those people on a bus, they're reasonably going to demand a solution that doesn't make their life miserable when they have to drive a car.

> trains would be even better, but people don't like to see the price tag.

Trains (especially subways) work great in the areas with the population density to justify them. But now you're back to needing higher density housing.

[nine_k]

I wish we had more trains where it's still possible to route them in shallow tunnels that are cheap to build by excavations, say, in many parts of Brooklyn. (The 2nd Avenue extension had to pierce rock at rather serious depths.)

[bluGill]

The problem is political not technical. People don'tewant thair streets block by construction for a couple years and so make up reasons against it. New york is easy as nothing archeolorical evists to worry about (north america generally lacks minerals to make things of interest from they used things that decayed long ago.

[asdff]

I thought that was only possibly because in there wasn’t so much in the way of buried utilities back then

[resters]

Suppose a non-rich person needs to use the highways for work and can make twice as many stops during the day because of congestion pricing.

Imagine a group of non-rich people who decide to carpool because of congestion pricing and end up spending half the time in traffic every day and as a result get more leisure time.

Considering that a parking spot in Mahnattan costs close to $1K per month, most of the cars are driven by people who are not poor.

[pclmulqdq]

Free/cheap street parking exists in Manhattan. A lot of it.

[resters]

then why do people pay over $600 per month for a spot?

[Lammy]

> The goal is straightforward: make driving more pleasant for wealthy people.

And spy on everyone, all the time, because now it “““has to””” track every vehicle's every move — Total Information Awareness

[forrestthewoods]

> how do we get around

By moving out of crappy overpriced cities?

[walthamstow]

If it was so crap, it wouldn't be overpriced.

[AnthonyMouse]

How do you explain Comcast?

[walthamstow]

It's difficult because I've never had Comcast (I pay my £10/month BBC fee that hasn't gone up in years with pleasure) but I'd probably start by saying that Comcast is not a scarce good.

[AnthonyMouse]

If it wasn't scarce then it would be cheaper. The problem is that it is scarce, artificially, as a result of regulatory capture etc.

Which is the same reason housing in places like SF is so expensive. Artificial scarcity as a result of zoning rules that make construction prohibitively expensive or otherwise inhibit it from increasing the housing supply.

Houston metro has more people than SF metro, so why does housing cost more in SF? Because there is less of it.

[walthamstow]

To bring us back onto the topic, Manhattan is a scarce resource, and there's nothing artificial about that fact.