[jphelan]

IMHO the aesthetic cons will seem petty when you're waiting an hour for an ambulance because the EMTs are late to work because of their four hour commute.

We have no housing oversite on these councils and even in Sunnyvale where we're talking about voluntarily adding 7k housing units on El Camino, the council's primary concern is the impact on home owners' views. I sat in the council planning meeting and it was all about how to make the buildings tolerable to the council - who are home owners. To my knowledge I was the only renter there. They want to add 400 units along a mostly empty 1 mile stretch (mostly car dealerships), to keep the appearance minimal. But, that means that mile can't support walkable restaurants and those 400 people will be getting in their car on crowded El Camino to do anything.

If they would just build dense enough to support walkability and to have enough riders for transit efficiency to improve! Their compromises pick the worst of both worlds.

And then in Cupertino, the mayor points at Palo Alto and says "why should we build if they aren't?" Darcy Paul literally said this to me at a vallco meeting.

From what I see, I think the city councils say one thing about sb 827 but really they'd love to have the responsibility be taken out of their hands. They just aren't capable of solving their prisoners dilemma.

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