Hacker News Reader

Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

Cambridge/Somerville, Berkeley/Oakland, SF, Portland. You can live well without a car in Silicon Valley, though it's not a city. Maybe Austin, but I've never been there, so can't say for sure. Maybe Boulder, if it's over your threshold of urbanness.

View on HN

I'll second Oakland. The cost of living is lower in terms of rent/housing and you can still be close to BART and lots of great parks, trails, and culture. From Oakland, you can work anywhere (just about) from Fremont to SF.

So if you lived in Oakland and your best job opportunity was in Santa Clara on Great America Parkway, what's the convenient way you'd get to work without a 45 minute car ride? Or for that matter Sunnyvale, or even Pleasanton?

There are obviously lots of good reasons to live in SF/bay, but transportation really doesn't seem like one of them. What am I missing?

The right job.

Santa Clara is not anywhere along the "Fremont to SF" easy-access claim of drsnyder.

If you want to live in Oakland and don't like a 45-minute car commute, you don't take a job in Santa Clara or Sunnyvale.

Oakland to Pleasanton should be reasonable by BART.

The Bay Area can't compare to the USA's best train-centric cities (NY, Chicago, Boston) but beats most other domestic places for mass transit. Still, it's spotty, with some great corridors and some journeys that are really hard.

Fun historical factoid: LA used to have a world-class train system! Good luck with its public transport now, though... "I'd have to take 5 busses and it would take 3 hours? To get groceries?"

LA used to have a world-class train system

It was just a movie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Electric#The_.22General...

Other factors that may have contributed to the decline of electric traction in the United States include [...] low revenues.

Don't forget:

The plot of the 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit is loosely modeled on the conspiracy to dismantle the streetcar lines in Los Angeles.

Pleasanton, like Oakland, is in Alameda County, and the two are connected by the BART Dublin/Pleasanton Line.

Santa Clara County is car country.

Unless you work in the East Bay, Oakland is a bad place to live for a hacker, simply because the commute to other parts of the bay is very inconvenient. My advice for people who don't know the area is: don't live in the east bay unless you also work in the east bay.

Most hacker jobs are in the south bay, followed by the peninsula and the city. The commute from the east bay to the south bay is painful, much more so than from the city to the south bay.

If you work in the city, you can take BART, but the convenience of BART depends on how close you live to a station. Berkeley/Oakland residential areas are much more spread out than SF. It isn't unlikely that the station is a 30 minute walk from your house.

When I lived in the east bay and worked in SOMA I had to walk 30 minutes to BART, then BART for about 30 minutes, then another 20 minute walk on the SF side. Now I live in the city and work in the same area of SOMA and I can get there in 15 minutes on the train or a 40 minute walk. I don't even want to talk about when I lived in the east bay and had to drive to Cupertino. What a driving nightmare...

In summary, Oakland is NOT a great hacker city unless you can do your hacking on that side of the bay...

you pretty much need a car in Austin. best public transit in Texas, but that's not saying much.

Austin is pretty bikeable, and there is (limited) car sharing for the few times you actually need a car. The buses seem like they'd work well enough and were fine the couple of times I used them, but biking is faster and more fun.

I think Dallas and Houston have Austin beat in terms of public transit. Dallas has plenty of rail, Houston has some rail with a lot in the works, and Austin has a commuter rail line that's about to open but doesn't actually get you anywhere without transferring to a bus that will be stuck in traffic. There's more to a good transit system than rail, but it's the best indicator I have since I've only used Austin's system in Texas.

I have lived in Houston for years, that city is designed for having a car. Drivers in big trucks and SUVs are very aggressive around cyclists and pedestrians. A plus is that it was cheap to live there.

I did see a coworking place is located on 7th street in Austin for only $350/month.

I'm thinking of moving my home base to Austin. And yes, Houston is definitely designed for driving. Even "the cool shops near the university" district near Rice U is essentially just a mall with streets running through it. Things are way too spread out.

i came from houston.

austin wins hands down. the bus system's a lot better. the houston rail line is mostly useless unless you work in the medical center.

besides it's possible to bike in austin.

I used to have a car there, but I still would take the buses or walk most places.

You only really need a car if you live in the suburbs of Austin. Buses in central austin take you anywhere you need to go. And its a pretty small town anyways so if worse comes to worse you can just walk home.

Yes, I agree that you need a car unless you happen to live in central Austin or downtown, or in certain parts of South Austin. The downside of course is that those areas are generally more expensive. The median house price in Austin last I heard was something like 190K, but in central Austin I'd imagine it's over 300 if not more.

IMHO, Austin's upside is the low cost of living (see above median house price, low taxes (no state income tax)) and overall livability -- lots of live music, universities, etc. I think the tech scene here is better than a lot of places, though no doubt it's not nearly as good as Silicon Valley. Still, there are few places I'd rather live.

Cambridge is the only one with both jobs and usable public transport. If you are a decent cyclist, I may add Berkeley.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com