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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

There's nothing mysterious about the situation in silicon valley really.

It's about space. Wikipedia tells me Copenhagen is 86.20 km [1] and San Jose is 466.109 km [2] but naturally silicon valley is several times larger than San Jose proper. If it was possible to just rent an apartment near where one worked, that wouldn't be an issue but we know how hard that is today.

When where one's work is twenty miles or more from one's living space, one just isn't going to easily bike to work. There could be bike path with wind-tunnel and it still wouldn't be possible [edit: for most, average office workers, certainly possible for some].

Silicon Valley's permanent, festering housing crisis, now spilling to San Francisco, is pretty much the culprit for the unliveability and unbikeability problem. How could it not be.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose,_California

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However, please do note that the Copenhagen city proper is geographically just a minor part of the metro area, and only about quarter of the metro population. The metro area is, as mentioned in your link, 2,778.3 km2, five times that of San Jose proper.

If you're going to compare metro areas, you should do the same for San Jose: 6,979 km2.

This is in fact even larger than the Randstad (4,300 km2). I'm not going to bike from Amsterdam to Rotterdam (in fact, I find that too far to commute no matter what method of transport I have). If the housing problem in Silicon Valley is really so big that it's hard to find a house within 10 km of the office, I can see how it's going to be hard to get people to commute by bike.

Yes, of course, but anyway Copenhagen is not really quite as dense as the small area of the city proper would lead you to believe.

(Looking at Wikipedia, the San Jose metro area actually seems to be very concentrated in the city proper, with almost 1.9 million in the city proper and only 56 000 outside it. )

Wikipedia is wrong if it means the effective metropolitan area surrounding San Jose is just San Jose. People live and work spread across the entire Silicon Valley area, that is indeed why that term is used most often for the region. Since housing is expensive and difficult to find and expensive, workers wind-up spread out at close to the maximum drivable to distance, putting them at far from an easily bikable distance.

"Geographically, Silicon Valley is generally thought to encompass all of the Santa Clara Valley, the southern half of the Peninsula and southern portions of the East Bay."

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley

Is it? I thought all of Silicon Valley was pretty densely populated, and that's more than just San Jose.

In any case, biking works best when distances aren't too big. Amsterdam is probably the bike capital of the world (more bikes than people), but biking from a suburb on one side of the city to one on the opposite side is pretty rare (except for the more dedicated biker, obviously). You're a fool if you take a car into the city center (many people don't even own one), but around the edges, cars work fine.

Although my wife, who is not a dedicated cyclist at all and usually commutes by car, has had a time where she regularly cycled 17 km to Schiphol.

Was with you until that "twenty miles ... still wouldn't be possible." I ride my bike 20 miles to work frequently; its nowhere near as flat as Silicon Valley (Iowa is hilly). And the weather is often worse here.

So maybe readjust 'not possible' up a notch or two?

Really, I meant say "no easy", in fact I did:

When where one's work is twenty miles or more from one's living space, one just isn't going to easily bike to work.

I slipped and said "not possible" later so jeesh, sorry. I meant "It's possible for it to be easy enough for the average person". I've commuted further distances myself but the average worker isn't going to do it. Sad but there you are.

True its a stretch. But compare an hour on a bike, vs an hour in traffic. It might be a wash.

As for the effort, the average person can do a whole lot more than they think. I ride with 20,000 Iowans in a weeklong 400+ mile ride every summer - aged 6 to 60 - 40 to 100 miles per day, pretty average people.

The only thing that makes the average person unable to do this is, they think they can't.

"As for the effort, the average person can do a whole lot more than they think."

Sure, the average person can do a lot more than they think but most average people won't do that lot-more unless something fairly extreme compels them and that doesn't especially likely in any future moving forward.

"But compare an hour on a bike, vs an hour in traffic. It might be a wash."

One get fit enough to ride two hours/day on a bike everyday, sure. But I don't think one can get fit enough to not be tired after the experience. I recall years ago talking to a professional bike messenger friend - I asked her if she got used to it after a while. Her answer was that she got used to the experience but that she just always felt tired.

Most people wouldn't want that because it would mean life after work wouldn't exist.

It might be 20 miles by car, however most places in SV are only a few miles from Caltrain. Just take your bike onboard.

This is why Caltrain has the highest (I think) number of bikes onboard of a commuter rail line in the nation.

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