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Comment by EricaJoy | Hacker News Reader

You live in NYC. You have a 24-hr public transportation system going between the boroughs that is a flat fare, per ride, no matter where you go. This makes commuting a very feasible and affordable option for those that can't afford to live in Manhattan.

Things are a bit different in SF. While you have 468 stations, we have 44. Expansion of our public transportation system has been hampered by NIMBY homeowners who have done all they can to prevent it. Rents in areas that surround BART stations (http://www.bart.gov/stations/)are still quite high, except around some of the further out stops (http://rentheatmap.com/sanfrancisco.html). Unfortunately, the further you live from the city, the more it costs to commute to the city (http://www.bart.gov/tickets/calculator/).

So while everyone moving away from the city like folks in Manhattan do would be nice, it's not that easy here.

(Aside: I miss New York public transportation.)

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Wouldn't it be a good starting point to work towards a better public transportation system in the Bay Area then?

I see that you're bringing up NIMBY, but that should be the area to focus on instead of somehow trying to control the underlying problem through things like rent control.

I personally see the California High Speed Rail system as an interesting option there. If they offer regular rail service and I can reach my work in Silicon Valley within 1 hour then I would consider moving out of Silicon Valley. Especially so if the city is interesting or becomes interesting through the increasing number of people moving there and if they offer Wifi on the train so that I could even start working there.

This is similar to Atlanta, which is considered a "car centric" city.

Our Public transportation system "MARTA" only operates fully throughout two counties in our metro area. The reason for this is that many citizens in the suburbs are afraid of what will happen if they provide easy access for urban "characters" that are presumed to be "bad or unsavory" because they cant afford a car. (I live in one such county)

Every time there are talks of expanding MARTA (train or bus lines) to other counties people come out in protest.

> So while everyone moving away from the city like folks in Manhattan do would be nice, it's not that easy here.

It's actually quite easy for people to not live in the central city, which is why of the 7.15 million people in the SF Bay Area metropolitan area, only a little over 800,000 live in the City and County of San Francisco. The ratio between the population of San Francisco and that of the whole metro area isn't really all that different than the ratio of Manhattan's population to that of the New York Metro Area.

> It's actually quite easy for people to not live in the central city, which is why of the 7.15 million people in the SF Bay Area metropolitan area, only a little over 800,000 live in the City and County of San Francisco.

I thought the article proved that people don't live in the city because there isn't enough housing and/or it's too expensive, not because it's easy to live outside the city.

> I thought the article proved that people don't live in the city because there isn't enough housing and/or it's too expensive, not because it's easy to live outside the city.

The article didn't prove anything, it started with mistaking anecdote for data, and proceeded to tell a just-so story to explain the anecdote, and then make a series of value claims about what needs to be done based on that just-so story, explicitly grounding those claims in at least one false fact claim (that the three high population bay area cities are the places with "the space" in the bay area to accept a disproportionate share of the region's growth.)

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