5 ms·

Subways make sense in dense urban areas - When a lot of people are within walking distance from the subway station. For SF to justify extensive subway infrastr

by dkopi 10y ago

Subways make sense in dense urban areas - When a lot of people are within walking distance from the subway station. For SF to justify extensive subway infrastructure, it needs to start building higher density neighborhoods.

dasil003 10y ago
SF is the second highest density city in the US. I agree that as long as the NIMBYs prevent building housing, then SF won't really reap the benefits of improved transportation, but SF has pathetically bad public transport for the existing density. I live in much lower density Oakland/Berkeley, and I can get around by BART better than most city dwellers.
- grardb 10y ago
  >SF is the second highest density city in the US. This isn't even close to being true. It's likely only true if you only count cities with populations over a certain amount. Please see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12754395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12754395
  - dasil003 10y ago
    Anything outside the tri-state area?
    - grardb 10y ago
      It cuts the list shorter, but still not quite second place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
      - thesmallestcat 10y ago
        Can you say that with a straight face after reading that list? Let's just look at the populations, no names: 11,176 66,455 49,708 50,005 4,724 8,175,133 23,594 2,406 27,395 69,781 6,707 7,137 23,805 20,832 58,114 75,754 34,399 53,926 362 146,199 805,235 Now guess which ones are central cities in their respective MSAs. Excluding those, guess which ones aren't part of the NYC or LA areas. Let's do ourselves a favor and exclude Poplar Hills, Kentucky (362). There's one city left, it's part of the Boston area (which is the next densest large city after SF), and you guessed it, Somerville has a subway with a separate light rail extension under construction. The only outlier is Sunny Isles Beach, FL (20,832), in the Miami area. And Miami? It's just after Philly, all known dense cities. So yea, it's NYC, then SF, minus a couple pockets of LA. And these are all dense places that need subways. It takes a special sort of something to claim, as the top comment did, that SF is not dense enough to warrant a subway, let alone massive large-scale investment in all modes of mass transit as NYC has.
  - dionidium 10y ago
    City-to-city comparisons suffer from all sorts of problems, not the least of which is that cities are defined according to their own historical, arbitrary borders that are practically meaningless when talking about actual issues. Consider that NYC covers 302.6 sq/mi to SF's 46.69, which means that NYC isn't merely double the density, it's double the density over a much, much larger area. This is why most serious comparisons are conducted at the level of the MSA (which would fold every one of the cities you're putting ahead of SF in density into a larger metro). Often, when laypeople compare cities, they're thinking about the MSA while quoting numbers they've found for cities-proper. That's why nobody in this conversation is thinking about Guttenberg, NY (and why mentioning it is almost a non sequitur).
    - grardb 10y ago
      I totally agree with you re: meaningless comparisons. However, I think the MSA comparison is pretty flawed as well. For example, the Los Angeles metro area has a higher density than both NYC's and SF's (which is higher than NYC's), but it's obvious – to me at least – that in reality, considering only areas that most people would agree are remotely close to being in/near "the city," the density order of these three would be more like: 1) NYC 2) SF 3) LA. But yeah, at the end of the day, I'm mostly being pedantic :)
bigdubs 10y ago
NYC has subways that extend out to less dense / borderline suburban neighborhoods. Though ridership to these terminals is much lower than in manhattan and northern brooklyn and queens, they're still an important way for some people to get to work. I agree, however, that SF needs to build at a higher density (outside of FiDi and downtown) regardless of future subway infrastructure.
emmett 10y ago
Chicken and egg. Subways enable density. Right now if you greatly increased the density of many SF neighborhoods, you'd overwhelm the transportation infrastructure. (Obviously there are neighborhoods with transit that could already support increased density). Hilariously, I wrote my highschool senior thesis on this exact topic. It was a case study on Seattle, Houston, and New York and how density changed before/after transit was added. You can see the pattern pretty clearly, transit leads to density and not the other way around. Which makes sense, right? Because density can be increased one building at a time, but generally subways need a huge investment to put in an entire line at once and benefit from having an extensive network.
- dkopi 10y ago
  Is it really a Chicken and egg situation? SF prices in the last years have skyrocketed, through out the city. The financial incentive to build is there. But there isn't massive building of new housing. That isn't because of the lack of subways. It's because of zoning laws and building regulations.
  - mateo411 10y ago
    Thousands of new homes/condos are being built every year in SF, for the last few years. There is a massive amount of building going on, precisely because prices have skyrocketed. However, more housing would be built, if the zoning laws and building regulations were less onerous.
- irrational 10y ago
  High school senior thesis? Is this a thing now? Did you go to a public or private high school?
  - emmett 10y ago
    I went to a private school. It was pretty non-traditional in many respects, and it wouldn't surprise me if writing a thesis wasn't common at other schools.
bluthru 10y ago
Good infrastructure anticipates rather than reacts.
amorphid 10y ago
San Francisco has a population density of 18,451/sq mi (7,124/km2)[1]. In the Unites States, That is denser than just about any place other than Manhattan. At peak times, busses are crowded and traffic sucks. Personally speaking as an SF resident, having more efficient public transit options would be awesome. I'll let others crunch the numbers of the feasibility of building & paying for it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco
- grardb 10y ago
  > In the Unites States, That is denser than just about any place other than Manhattan. I think that depends on your definition of "just about." Every borough in NYC aside from Staten Island is much denser than San Francisco. Additionally, many parts of where I'm from – northern NJ – are even more so: Hoboken, West New York, Union City (the densest city in the country), Guttenberg (the densest township in the country), and more. If you're talking about cities larger than a certain size, then perhaps, but even then, I personally think it's a bit misleading to single out just Manhattan.
  - aetherson 10y ago
    You're right, it is misleading to single out just Manhattan. But SF is the second densest large US city, after NYC (all boroughs combined).
- zanny 10y ago
  It is not a matter of feasibility. Infrastructure transit produces tremendous returns in productivity. Even insanely overbudget projects like the Big Dig in Boston are already breaking even after only a decade, because of how much room for growth they produce. This is why having fast rail, uncongested highways, and always expanding to meet demand are always worth the cost. Unless you can accurately forecast a downturn in regional economic growth irrespective of whether or not you meet transit demands, it is never rational from the perspective of long term city planning for maximum economic throughput to not grow the system and increase density.
timanglade 10y ago
San Francisco[0] proper has a higher density than London[1], and slightly lower density than Paris[2] — two cities that have thriving subway + commuter rail systems. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris
- karim 10y ago
  I think you mixed up imperial and metric systems --- San Francisco has 18,451 people/sq mi. Paris has 55,000 people/sq mi. It's almost three times as much.
  - irrational 10y ago
    Not if you include the homeless people! [Ducks]
  - timanglade 10y ago
    Good catch on Paris, and I should know better I’m from there! Perhaps it’d be more interesting to compare the greater urban Paris area to San Francisco proper as Paris is an exceptionally/abornally tiny town for historical reasons. Too late for me to edit though, thanks for the note!
- hoprocker 10y ago
  There's got to be a more useful metric than average city density; the 2010 US Census [0] places the 5 densest cities in the US as having a population under 70,000 (yes, I'm quoting Wikipedia). City planners must have a unit more like person-acres or something to get an idea of the actual spread of the density. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density#Incorporated_places_with_a_density_of_over_10.2C000_people_per_square_mile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Standard density quotes for cities can be pretty misleading as it often reflects fairly arbitrary divisions. For example while Paris is indeed reasonably dense the oft quoted number is for a fairly small parcel of central Paris.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
matthewowen 10y ago
We already need it with the density we have. Moraga/Lafayette/Orinda is my favorite example of this in the Bay Area. I sympathize with the complaint that they aren't building enough, but I think the SFBARF/Lafayette lawsuit is stupid. Building more in those places wouldn't help us, because the transit capacity doesn't exist. Have you taken BART, or the Bay Bridge, or the Caldecott tunnel at rush hour? If 20,000 people move from the city to Lafayette, how do they get here for work? But you can even find this in the city. Yeah, it'd be great to increase density in the Sunset. But have you actually commuted from the Sunset to downtown? It's a disaster. Muni is at capacity, and driving isn't an answer. You can cycle to work (I used to from 48th Ave), but that's a 7+ mile ride with a few hundred feet of elevation: it's not an easy casual ride for most people. The idea that SF doesn't have the density to justify this stuff is... it's just not true.

by dkopi 10y ago

dasil003 10y ago

SF is the second highest density city in the US. I agree that as long as the NIMBYs prevent building housing, then SF won't really reap the benefits of improved transportation, but SF has pathetically bad public transport for the existing density. I live in much lower density Oakland/Berkeley, and I can get around by BART better than most city dwellers.

grardb 10y ago
>SF is the second highest density city in the US. This isn't even close to being true. It's likely only true if you only count cities with populations over a certain amount. Please see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12754395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12754395
- dasil003 10y ago
  Anything outside the tri-state area?
  - grardb 10y ago
    It cuts the list shorter, but still not quite second place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
    - thesmallestcat 10y ago
      Can you say that with a straight face after reading that list? Let's just look at the populations, no names: 11,176 66,455 49,708 50,005 4,724 8,175,133 23,594 2,406 27,395 69,781 6,707 7,137 23,805 20,832 58,114 75,754 34,399 53,926 362 146,199 805,235 Now guess which ones are central cities in their respective MSAs. Excluding those, guess which ones aren't part of the NYC or LA areas. Let's do ourselves a favor and exclude Poplar Hills, Kentucky (362). There's one city left, it's part of the Boston area (which is the next densest large city after SF), and you guessed it, Somerville has a subway with a separate light rail extension under construction. The only outlier is Sunny Isles Beach, FL (20,832), in the Miami area. And Miami? It's just after Philly, all known dense cities. So yea, it's NYC, then SF, minus a couple pockets of LA. And these are all dense places that need subways. It takes a special sort of something to claim, as the top comment did, that SF is not dense enough to warrant a subway, let alone massive large-scale investment in all modes of mass transit as NYC has.
- dionidium 10y ago
  City-to-city comparisons suffer from all sorts of problems, not the least of which is that cities are defined according to their own historical, arbitrary borders that are practically meaningless when talking about actual issues. Consider that NYC covers 302.6 sq/mi to SF's 46.69, which means that NYC isn't merely double the density, it's double the density over a much, much larger area. This is why most serious comparisons are conducted at the level of the MSA (which would fold every one of the cities you're putting ahead of SF in density into a larger metro). Often, when laypeople compare cities, they're thinking about the MSA while quoting numbers they've found for cities-proper. That's why nobody in this conversation is thinking about Guttenberg, NY (and why mentioning it is almost a non sequitur).
  - grardb 10y ago
    I totally agree with you re: meaningless comparisons. However, I think the MSA comparison is pretty flawed as well. For example, the Los Angeles metro area has a higher density than both NYC's and SF's (which is higher than NYC's), but it's obvious – to me at least – that in reality, considering only areas that most people would agree are remotely close to being in/near "the city," the density order of these three would be more like: 1) NYC 2) SF 3) LA. But yeah, at the end of the day, I'm mostly being pedantic :)

bigdubs 10y ago

NYC has subways that extend out to less dense / borderline suburban neighborhoods. Though ridership to these terminals is much lower than in manhattan and northern brooklyn and queens, they're still an important way for some people to get to work. I agree, however, that SF needs to build at a higher density (outside of FiDi and downtown) regardless of future subway infrastructure.

emmett 10y ago

Chicken and egg. Subways enable density. Right now if you greatly increased the density of many SF neighborhoods, you'd overwhelm the transportation infrastructure. (Obviously there are neighborhoods with transit that could already support increased density). Hilariously, I wrote my highschool senior thesis on this exact topic. It was a case study on Seattle, Houston, and New York and how density changed before/after transit was added. You can see the pattern pretty clearly, transit leads to density and not the other way around. Which makes sense, right? Because density can be increased one building at a time, but generally subways need a huge investment to put in an entire line at once and benefit from having an extensive network.

dkopi 10y ago
Is it really a Chicken and egg situation? SF prices in the last years have skyrocketed, through out the city. The financial incentive to build is there. But there isn't massive building of new housing. That isn't because of the lack of subways. It's because of zoning laws and building regulations.
- mateo411 10y ago
  Thousands of new homes/condos are being built every year in SF, for the last few years. There is a massive amount of building going on, precisely because prices have skyrocketed. However, more housing would be built, if the zoning laws and building regulations were less onerous.
irrational 10y ago
High school senior thesis? Is this a thing now? Did you go to a public or private high school?
- emmett 10y ago
  I went to a private school. It was pretty non-traditional in many respects, and it wouldn't surprise me if writing a thesis wasn't common at other schools.

bluthru 10y ago

Good infrastructure anticipates rather than reacts.

amorphid 10y ago

San Francisco has a population density of 18,451/sq mi (7,124/km2)[1]. In the Unites States, That is denser than just about any place other than Manhattan. At peak times, busses are crowded and traffic sucks. Personally speaking as an SF resident, having more efficient public transit options would be awesome. I'll let others crunch the numbers of the feasibility of building & paying for it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco

grardb 10y ago
> In the Unites States, That is denser than just about any place other than Manhattan. I think that depends on your definition of "just about." Every borough in NYC aside from Staten Island is much denser than San Francisco. Additionally, many parts of where I'm from – northern NJ – are even more so: Hoboken, West New York, Union City (the densest city in the country), Guttenberg (the densest township in the country), and more. If you're talking about cities larger than a certain size, then perhaps, but even then, I personally think it's a bit misleading to single out just Manhattan.
- aetherson 10y ago
  You're right, it is misleading to single out just Manhattan. But SF is the second densest large US city, after NYC (all boroughs combined).
zanny 10y ago
It is not a matter of feasibility. Infrastructure transit produces tremendous returns in productivity. Even insanely overbudget projects like the Big Dig in Boston are already breaking even after only a decade, because of how much room for growth they produce. This is why having fast rail, uncongested highways, and always expanding to meet demand are always worth the cost. Unless you can accurately forecast a downturn in regional economic growth irrespective of whether or not you meet transit demands, it is never rational from the perspective of long term city planning for maximum economic throughput to not grow the system and increase density.

timanglade 10y ago

San Francisco[0] proper has a higher density than London[1], and slightly lower density than Paris[2] — two cities that have thriving subway + commuter rail systems. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris

karim 10y ago
I think you mixed up imperial and metric systems --- San Francisco has 18,451 people/sq mi. Paris has 55,000 people/sq mi. It's almost three times as much.
- irrational 10y ago
  Not if you include the homeless people! [Ducks]
- timanglade 10y ago
  Good catch on Paris, and I should know better I’m from there! Perhaps it’d be more interesting to compare the greater urban Paris area to San Francisco proper as Paris is an exceptionally/abornally tiny town for historical reasons. Too late for me to edit though, thanks for the note!
hoprocker 10y ago
There's got to be a more useful metric than average city density; the 2010 US Census [0] places the 5 densest cities in the US as having a population under 70,000 (yes, I'm quoting Wikipedia). City planners must have a unit more like person-acres or something to get an idea of the actual spread of the density. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density#Incorporated_places_with_a_density_of_over_10.2C000_people_per_square_mile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- ghaff 10y ago
  Standard density quotes for cities can be pretty misleading as it often reflects fairly arbitrary divisions. For example while Paris is indeed reasonably dense the oft quoted number is for a fairly small parcel of central Paris.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

matthewowen 10y ago

We already need it with the density we have. Moraga/Lafayette/Orinda is my favorite example of this in the Bay Area. I sympathize with the complaint that they aren't building enough, but I think the SFBARF/Lafayette lawsuit is stupid. Building more in those places wouldn't help us, because the transit capacity doesn't exist. Have you taken BART, or the Bay Bridge, or the Caldecott tunnel at rush hour? If 20,000 people move from the city to Lafayette, how do they get here for work? But you can even find this in the city. Yeah, it'd be great to increase density in the Sunset. But have you actually commuted from the Sunset to downtown? It's a disaster. Muni is at capacity, and driving isn't an answer. You can cycle to work (I used to from 48th Ave), but that's a 7+ mile ride with a few hundred feet of elevation: it's not an easy casual ride for most people. The idea that SF doesn't have the density to justify this stuff is... it's just not true.