The US Government Is Sitting on a Possible Solution to the Housing Crisis

bloomberg.com

4 points·petethomas··5 comments

All you have to do is look at a map of where public lands are to see this idea (of opening public lands for housing) will not work. It's in the middle of nowhere, not where the jobs are

A better idea is to build upwards, not outwards

The obvious solution here is high speed rail.

For example the distance from San Francisco to Sacramento is only 90 miles.

Using our archaic excuses for public transportation this takes over 2 hours.

It's well within possibly to get this done to 30 minutes considering many high trains go well over 200 miles an hour.

Even a 1 hour train ride allows working class people to commute in easily.

Now imagine high speed rail going to towns which already have plenty of housing stock.

Commuter rail, not high speed rail. High speed rail is very expensive, and a monthly pass between San Francisco and Sacramento would probably be something like $1000. High speed rail would also not have stops in random towns and small cities, because every stop would add 5-10 minutes to travel time.

Commuter rail is what we have now.

High speed rail from major metro to major metro makes more sense if you want to get commute times down.

This is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever read.

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