From: jeremy@classic.asd.sgi.com (Jeremy Higdon)
Subject: Re: Cars as "something better"
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 11:19:33 GMT

In article <1i52riINNemr@agate.berkeley.edu>, lazzaro@boom.CS.Berkeley.EDU (John Lazzaro) writes:
> In article <ucoafj4@sgi.sgi.com> jeremy@classic.asd.sgi.com (Jeremy Higdon) writes:
> >
> >I don't know.  The financial district is at one edge of the city.
> >It makes for a pretty indirect route for most travellers.  If I'm
> >going from the Marina to the Sunset, I don't want to have to go
> >through the financial district.
> 
> The 28 starts connects the Marina and the Sunset directly.

Right.  My point exactly.  Most travellers from the Marina to
the Sunset would take the 28 and transfer if necessary to a vehicle
to take them to their final destination.  They certainly would
not go to the financial district.

> To make a more general point, the layout of San Francisco naturally
> fits with mass transportation, and this is the real reason MUNI and
> BART have high ridership compared with other systems. Take a swatch
> through Silicon Valley that represents the same number of residents
> and employees as San Francisco, and you have an area that is very
> difficult to service with mass transit, an area where the freeways are
> hell at rush hour (with no earthquake excuses to fall back on), an
> area with higher smog than the rest of the Bay Area, an area where
> jobs are leaving.  As the head of Cypress Semiconductor said as he
> announced the closing of a chip plant in San Jose (paraphrased)
> "people here think R&D jobs will be safe, but those jobs are the
> easiest to move of all".

I often drive on 85 and 101 during rush hour, and you overstate their
situation.  They usually aren't too bad.  Many folks seem to think
of rush hour in the bay area as a 4 hour stretch where cars average
5 to 10 mph, but in my experience, it is very rarely that bad . . .
most of the time cars move along in the 35 to 55 range.

You are also misrepresenting TJ Rodgers's statements.  It was not
due to poor mass transit that he was leaving but rather high wages
and excessive regulation.  The areas where Cypress has other plants
(Colorado and Texas, I believe) have poorer mass transit than does
San Jose.

Also, the greater smog in the Santa Clara valley is mostly due to
being surrounded by mountains/hills on three sides, with prevailing
winds from the north.

Don't get me wrong.  Good transit is a fine thing and all that, but
I don't think you can credit all the good things that happen in SF
to it and all the bad things that happen in SJ to the lack of it.
Sure, you couldn't get all the workers into downtown SF without it.
However, it certainly isn't necessary (or even sufficient) to get
all Silicon Valley workers to their jobs.

> San Francisco, on the other hand, has a downtown vacancy rate that is
> the envy of other cities on the West Coast. Companies large and small
> are moving their headquarters and R&D into San Francisco from the
> suburbs (Oracle is moving an R&D division to the Financial District,
> Supercuts is moving headquarters from Santa Rosa, The Gap is breaking
> ground for their new headquarters, many small multimedia companies are
> grouping around SOMA). And good mass transit is one piece of the
> puzzle for these people; if BART and MUNI were as anemic as Caltrain
> and SSCTA, SF would be uncommutable and shrinking.

I also wouldn't say that SF was financially a rosy picture of health.
The cities of Silicon Valley are generally in much better financial
shape than SF, as well as having lower crime rates.  Shall we
attribute this to a lack of good mass transit?  It would be a bit
silly, wouldn't it.

jeremy