As someone who's tried to get from San Francisco to Silicon Valley without a car, I'd love to see companies like Google advocating and supporting better public transportation as well as just providing a private solution.
Public sector unions and corrupt/incompetent government workers in SF Bay Area is the root cause of the atrocious public transportation in this area, money is not. There are plenty of cities around the world that spends less per capita on infrastructure but still has a way more effective system.
There's enough blame to go around- city councils and affluent voters in communities in the peninsula and points beyond who can't break out of NIMBY enough to allow BART to expand from the East Bay are a big cause for why the transportation system is so badly Balkanized.
So what kills me in every one of these conversations about shitty old rules and regulations and nimbyism, is that to this day I've never seen one comment by one person on HN explaining exactly what we can do to advocate against the current rules and regulations to allow more housing to be built.
There must be some way for us all to be able to get involved in the right places in the right way to get these arcane regulations changed. Would hosting a daytime bike party during city council meetings with an obligatory stop at city hall help? Are there specific people to write to write to to voice our opinion?
Most people haven't the foggiest clue on how to engage effectively with local city politics.
The very fact that such a a place like SF has such a high cost of living is the problem.
I recently just came back from Tokyo, truly a world class city with multiple times the population density of SF and the highest city GDP in the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP
You know what? Cost of living there is actually CHEAPER than here, food, transportation, hell, even housing is cheaper than the joke that is SF.
Arguably, but that doesn't mean you can ignore it, or that the increase in cost of projects due to a higher cost of labor is a sign if mismanagement of those projects.
If you would like to propose an intervention targeted at reducing the cost of living in SF, I'll certainly listen though I won't promise I'll agree.
A large part of cost of living is driven up by cost of housing. That has historical reasons in the case of California.
After the 70s California voters voted against raising property tax, the government had to get most of their revenue from income-tax, thus the highest state income tax in the country. Due to this, California government income fluctuates a lot with the economy (as we saw from 2008-2009), but that's a different topic.
One thing about property tax law in California is that it's calculated based on how much one paid for property, not its current worth.
The problem with low property tax is that when combined with federal tax incentive for housing mortgage and a cheap rate, it makes sense to invest in housing, and having the value going up does not punish the home owners like places with higher property taxes or places that calculate property tax based on the current values of the properties.
The end result is that existing homeowners in California are very much against new development since they've got a "I've gotten mine, so fuck you" mentality since they want to keep their existing properties valuable, and this is ESPECIALLY true for owners that own multiple properties that can use it for rental.
Imagine you bought a few apartment complexes in SF right after the recession back in the 90s, the places would be worth multiple times as much now but your property tax has not gone up, but you can charge $3k for a small one bedroom apartment, then you'd vote with all your power to make sure new development and new supply for housing is stalled.
This is one of the reasons why direct democracy doesn't work, since people are very short sighted when voting for important issues that could have long lasting effects. A suggested solution would be lower income tax, but make property tax to be calculated off existing values of properties, thus thwart artificial inflation of property values. Of course things like this will NEVER get passed since no politicians dare to piss off existing homeowners.
To be honest, I am personally pessimistic about this state's ability to change for the better, a big reason being the state's obsession with direct democracy that resulted in many bad policies in the past.
While I think in many cases the counterarguments are stronger than you present them, I don't think I disagree with either taxing current value of homes, or reducing the impact of direct democracy in CA (at the very least, we should require something stronger than simple majority of votes cast).
between Nimbys and public sector unions and the fact that the Bay Area is essentially under one-party rule...no. It's just not going to happen. Private initiatives are the only hope.