I commuted 90 minutes each way for a year (120 miles round trip) in SoCal. The time spent driving wasn't that bad; I spent that time listening to books on Audible. The problem was everything else that had to give because I was spending that time driving. I couldn't cook dinner or spend much time with friends. It was tough to stay after work or develop friendships with coworkers because we were so geographically separated. I would not want to do this long term.
Now I work from home. I still listen to audiobooks whenever driving which is still amazing.
European here. After moving I was commuting for about 105 minutes with public transport, about 70 minutes by car. Was using public transport most of the time though, but I couldn't do this more than a few months. There is so much time and money that goes into commuting, it is insane... Going to the doctor/bank/shopping/etc. was always problematic because then I would have to stay in the company late into the night. When you come home you are just tired and want to rest. Pay wasn't even in the near of being good enough to justify that.
Right now I am working from home which (after some months of experience) I enjoy much more. Also got a substantial pay raise when changing jobs and at the same time save money on the commute.
Still glad I was at my old job since it got me into another field of software engineering and I learned a lot. Don't think I would've got my current job without it.
The sad fact is that long as people are willing to put up with this nothing is going to change. The crazy rents and terrible commutes sound insane to anyone living elsewhere but people are continuously more than happy to continue doing them to work at companies that haven't been priced out yet either. It's not an issue of social mobility either, since people living in the bay area are some of the most socially mobile workforce there is. Housing regulations may not be efficient given the circumstances but it'll only stop when everyone says enough is enough and leaves.
This is increasingly common in the Boston area as well. Cambridge/MIT is a massive biotech hub, meanwhile we have huge companies with many large offices in the downtown or in surrounding suburbs. Many workers live in RI, NH, or Central Mass, and getting to work for 9 am consistently will involve leaving at 730 for many, many workers due to congestion, construction, and the god-awful mess that is Boston infrastructure.
For those who aren't aware, many of Boston's intersections and squares are terrible intersections, remnants of the crossings due to actual cow-paths. There's also a massive amount of old housing property and relatively little new housing stock. There are high density apartment or condo buildings sprouting up here and there, but by large, you're going to be paying over 1 million for a small/old house in/around Boston, possibly 2 million depending on the location. If you're willing to commute 1.5 hours, you can get a fixer upper in a semi-rural area for around 300-400k. If Amazon came to Boston, it would be compound this problem exponentially, though whoever owns property currently would definitely make a good return.
This is the exact reason I don't commute by car. I live in Jamaica Plain and work in Kendall Square. Driving takes 45 minutes to go 4 miles. Taking the T takes 40 minutes. I ride my bike and my commute is 17 minutes each way, no matter the hour, traffic, or weather.
Anecdata: I signed the contract yesterday for a small Somerville single-family, near the Cambridge line, for just over $700k. I'm expecting to put $200k+ into it. If a developer got their hands on it, they would expand the square footage to the maximum possible extent, put in the trendiest appliances and finishes, and flip it for > $1m. That seems to be the economically rational thing for them to do in this market.
But I lock in a 20-25 minute bike ride (or 50-minute walk + public transit ride in winter) to work in the Seaport. I saw I-93 at rush hour once, and I shudder at the memory.
At least part of my reasoning was, "What if Amazon does choose Boston? Do I move my family into a second or third floor condo with no yard at all?"
Correct regarding the 9am comment. I live 30mi west of Boston and it is essentially an automatic 90min if I were to leave my house at 730am. For reference, it is 35min w/o traffic. Natick, MA seems to have become the "I can't afford Newton and Wellesley" town. Prices are crazy.
I thought the removal of physical toll booths from the Mass Pike would help. I have seen absolutely no benefit.
Getting into the city has gotten significantly worse over the past handful of years. As you say, the congestion is such that even coming into the city from the west where I live after work is sufficiently slow that I've cut back on doing it.
>If Amazon came to Boston, it would be compound this problem exponentially, though whoever owns property currently would definitely make a good return.
The proposed location (Suffolk Downs) is sort of an odd one from a housing perspective. It is on the T but that's all very blue collar neighborhoods around there, some of which have gentrified a bit but still not places your typical software engineer would normally choose to live.
Yup. I commute into Cambridge from the middle of NH (~60 miles away). It takes me an average of 90-120 minutes to get to work. People who live "in" the city still take an hour and they have a fraction of the distance to travel. Getting around in Boston is a nightmare, even more so if the weather isn't perfect.
What I find amazing is companies insisting on being located near Kendall or the Seaport District (and paying massive amounts of money for the privilege) to be "innovative."
Why aren't more companies in New England going to where the commercial real estate and housing are cheaper?
I recently had an opportunity to move out to the Bay Area with my current job (I am currently at a satellite office). The commute time combined with CoL and a few other factors made the decision easy to not go. I currently have a 3 minute commute and I would honestly lose my mind if I had to commute 90 mins one way. I have also been seeing a general rise of articles mentioning how many people are leaving, how insane the commutes are becoming, and general unpleasantness of living there if you aren't in the top 10%.
Don't get me wrong, I fully enjoy the area when I visit but unless there are significant changes I don't see myself ever being able to move there.
>. I have also been seeing a general rise of articles mentioning how many people are leaving, how insane the commutes are becoming, and general unpleasantness of living there if you aren't in the top 10%.
But if you are in the top 10%, life is amazing here. It's an absolute paradise. Every single time I'm sitting in traffic hating my life, I try to do a pro/con on getting the hell out of here. Every single time I just can't justify it. The weather, the scenery, the ocean, the food, the people, the tech. There is literally nowhere else in the US even remotely on par. LA is pretty close, but the bay is much more "livable" IMO.
People may be leaving in droves, but it's only because they have to, not really because they want to.
I lived in the city (SF) and outside the city. My commute to the Embarcardero wasn't too bad when I lived in Pacifica. Just drive over the hill to Colma, park and take BART. I'd read on the way into the city and walk to work. Probably the best commute I've ever had except working from home.
Pacifica felt like a small town separated from it all. But I lived in the Manor area. Living down in Linda Mar (anything past Sharp Park) and dealing with Hwy 1 traffic would be frustrating.
If people were actually leaving, then these problems would be getting better... not worse.
If you can live somewhere that public transit (by rail) is feasible, then its quite tolerable. Of course this is the US, where that's less common than it should be.
Part of me is still trying to understand why the housing shortage in the Bay Area is so severe. I understand NIMBYism from the homeowner's perspective, but there are a lot of renters in the SF Bay.
SF is 63% renters, and should be able to outnumber NIMBY homeowners easily to have a lot more dense housing built. Alameda County is in 2nd place at 47% renters [1], so only a small percentage of homeowners need convincing that this housing shortage is bad for everyone in the long term.
Because renters dont vote. They either dont have residency, are foreigners, or live transiently.
I think it is a terrible strategy to try to convince homeowners that its best for them to forego clear economic benefits for blurry future profits. The solution is land value tax: just remove city sales taxes and add a tax on land. That will make low density units more expensive, the tax burden is relieved from the renter and lands on the homeowner and renters see their income increase immediately.
Well, you can't just throw up condos all over the place and assume that alone fixes the problem. You have to build schools and other infrastructure changes, such as water and electricity to support the influx of a population.
Activism to push change requires a lot of energy and time. Most of the people who live here are busy with their jobs and families and do not have time to invest in it. So the activists who have the time to push usually want radical changes, such as 100% low income housing or homeless shelters. These are fine ideas, but for communities of upper middle class families, the change is scary and usually unwelcome. So then those families suddenly find the time to show up and protest and that's where you meet NIMBYs.
Change like this really requires the will of the local governments to make progress. Yet I think they get elected on other platforms such as, building better schools, or improving roads or downtown small businesses. YIMBY seems to be the first political wave of politicians actually running on a platform of more housing.
2012-2013, live in SF work in San Mateo
25 minute walk to caltrain + 45 minute caltrain ride + 5 minute walk from caltrain
====> 75 minute door to door
2013-2014, live in SF (Potrero Ave in the Mission) work in SF (Financial District)
On bus, due to surface traffic + busses not coming, anywhere from 20 - 80 minute commute
On foot, ~75 minute commute (3.5 miles walk)
===> 75 minute door to door
2014-2015, live in Berkeley, Work in SF
20 minute walk to BART + 30 minute BART ride + 15 minute walk from BART
===> 65 minute door to doo
2015-2017, live in Oakland work in SF
20 minute walk to Transbay bus + 20 - 60 minute bus ride + 15 minute walk from BART
===> on average 90 minute commute
I absolutely agree that 90 minute commutes are absurd and unacceptable. I moved out of the bay area and now my door to door commute is 15-20 minutes. It has dramatically changed my life for the better.
But every time I read an article that complains about the commutes in the bay area _getting bad_, it confuses me. My commutes in the bay area have _always_ been that bad. Who are all these people with relatively reasonable commutes and how do they do it?
Oh, tech companies. If only there were a way to have conversations about, create, and transmit computer programs using some kind of long-distance network. Maybe we could break the data up into "packets". Just thinking out loud here. Then maybe everyone creating textual output for a living wouldn't have to transport their physical body to an office.
>Then maybe everyone creating textual output for a living wouldn't have to transport their physical body to an office.
Remote work hasn't taken off on a large scale because massively successful multi-billion dollar companies like Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/SpaceX were not built with remote workers.
You get (relatively) minor companies touting it such as Automattic and Basecamp. Those smaller businesses haven't achieved enough success to convince business leaders on a large scale.
So to riff on your writing... "if only there were a multi-billion dollar company built on the competitive advantages of remote work."
If that happened, we'd then have Harvard Business Review doing endless case studies on its superiority.
EDIT TO ADD:
There is a limited type of "remote" work that existing successful companies will allow (and even encourage): it's the offsite remote _team_.
Some examples include IBM's team to build the "personal computer" down in Miami instead of working in the New York offices. Amazon (Seattle hq) has Lab126 (Silicon Valley) working on the Kindle. Google wanted a rewritten Javascript V8 engine and hired Lars Bak from Denmark. From the story I remember, Lars Bak made it a condition of employment to not relocate to California and because he already had the reputation, Google agreed. At first, he worked out of his home in Denmark but then he opened a Google office and his programming team then worked in that office.
Those semi-remote scenarios are about as far as you're going to get until other businesses with full remote employees working from home proves to the business world that "remote working" is a competitive advantage.
Remote office with an onsite team in that remote office -- yes. Remote telecommuting from home on a large scale? Not yet.
I'm a programmer. "Creating textual output" is only a small portion of what I do for a living. A huge amount of my job is discussing ideas with coworkers which is simply easier to do in person.
What's interesting is that I routinely see comments little different from this one. Just as routinely, companies choose to pay whole multiles times as much for engineers in-person instead of remote.
Is it possible that we're missing something in this? And that there might be more to this than companies being unwilling to try remote workers?
I know my own experiences with working remotely and having remote colleagues have upon occasion been other than an unalloyed positive.
There are companies out there that are fully remote (like my current employer https://www.sonatype.com/). Though I suppose many of them don't like to hire fresh graduates so you could be in a bit of a chicken/egg problem.
My current team is mostly remote. We are much more effective than the fully local team of my previous employer.
I think it really just boils down to hiring talented people you can trust. Paying them plenty. And fighting off all the unnecessary project management nonsense that makes politics and therefore in person meetings important.
Well, the main problem is that creating textual output is a small part of the process of creating value for the customer (which is ultimately what most businesses do). This is a host of processes that go way beyond text manipulation, and they require collaboration. This is best done by getting in the same room (still!) and is not likely to change (unless of course someone develops some work collaboration application on top of VR).
The article interviews a restaurant manager and a construction site superintendent. Non tech workers are significantly more affected than tech workers, because they cannot afford to live closer to their place of employment, and do not have access to the perks (work from home, shuttles, etc.) that tech workers have.
Not everyone can work remote. In fact I'd wager a majority, including many of those who think they can work remote, cannot. And teams dealing with remote workers is also a source of friction.
Remote work is only part of the solution. Urbanism, prioritizing transit & deprioritizing cars, increasing density are also parts
Let’s just get a few things straight regarding remote work:
* Your job is not to “write code” no matter how much you wish it was that simple. Your job is to provide value for your company.
* You provide much more value for your company when you’re available in-person than when you’re remote. You provide value to your coworkers who can communicate to you easily, effectively, and timely.
* it’s much easier for your manager to gauge that value in person than remotely, so you create less work for those that are responsible for you’re performance (and your job).
If you over-simplify your role, then it’s easy to wonder why remote work isn’t more successful. When you become responsible for the health of the business, then it becomes much more clear.
The picture in the article is from the I-580 exit in Dublin/Pleasanton about 5 minutes from my house.
The real estate here is booming as many people have settled here due to BART proximity and the fact that it's one of the few communities building lots of new housing. All the FANG companies are also sending their shuttles here.
It's also a way better commute for more lower income folks coming from Stockton, Modesto, etc since it's on the way to San Jose so you can actually have a labor force to staff restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, etc.
However, there has been a recent wave of NIMBYism coming through as the development has been unchecked and they haven't built enough public services (like schools) to support the housing growth. Many locals also do not like the efficient land use through zero-lot-lines and multi-story townhomes that the developers are flattening hills to build. I hear a lot of jeers calling my neighborhood "an eyesore" full of "cookie cutter homes". My hope that this all gets resolved in the next few years as people come to their senses but it's clear that Californians really have no idea how to plan urban development to match their growth.
I think the key that legislatures should focus on is up-zoning industrial lots near transit with large state tax incentives (i.e. capital gains tax exemption) for owners of 100 acre industrial lots near transit if multiple land owners sell at the same time to make room for high density schools, etc.
My old neighbor in SF and commutes to Cupertino for work. So many people in the company do it, that the company has set up a hotel where employees can sleep if they don't want to head back to SF. His girlfriend is not happy about that arrangement.
Actually when I lived in SF, it took me over an hour to get to work in SOMA. We joke and call the outer Richmond the SF suburbs, because it takes as long to get to downtown from there as from the actual suburbs of most cities.
Because it seems like it's about as common to have 90+ minute commutes over here in London too. I know people who came from Cambridge to London (and back) every day. People coming in from all over the country is pretty damn common here, and a large percentage of jobs I've had in software engineering have involved commutes of this length.
This article points out the challenge of asymmetric wages on communities. Engineers, managers, and executives living close to work and wait staff, support services, teachers, etc commuting in from far afield.
It isn't sustainable, and it will crash back to earth. One of the houses near me recently sold for way more than expected, and I pointed out that the development it was in had been build during the dot.com boom, what was more nearly all of the houses in that development had fallen out of escrow (the buyers walked away) when the crash hit because their source of wealth (stock in technology companies) essentially evaporated over 6 months.
If you're doing this, your almost certainly choosing a suboptimal career path. I think most of the times you could optimize your job and location and come out ahead economically.
That's not the only consideration, but it's tough to imagine the 90 minute commute winning on quality of life factors.
I grew up in a suburb on the outer edges of the bay area where my father commuted over an hour every day. I also had two jobs that required me to commute over one hour. These experiences led me to vow that I would never take a job where I had to commute longer than 30 minutes. I'm sitting at ~20 minutes now and looking to shorten it, and it has made my life so much better.
I realise new buildings are carbon intensive, but does anyone have the knowledge to do a back-of-the-envelope comparison of carbon emissions if these super-commuters were to move in to high-density housing that enabled them to walk or cycle to their jobs.
I got my start in tech by driving over an hour each way into LA. Sucked with lower salary but now Im happily working remote and rarely driving. Last two years I've barely got 10k miles - most of those from driving from Portland to LA a couple times.
[+] [-] jacobkg|7 years ago|reply
Now I work from home. I still listen to audiobooks whenever driving which is still amazing.
[+] [-] readittwice|7 years ago|reply
Right now I am working from home which (after some months of experience) I enjoy much more. Also got a substantial pay raise when changing jobs and at the same time save money on the commute.
Still glad I was at my old job since it got me into another field of software engineering and I learned a lot. Don't think I would've got my current job without it.
[+] [-] spyspy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WhompingWindows|7 years ago|reply
For those who aren't aware, many of Boston's intersections and squares are terrible intersections, remnants of the crossings due to actual cow-paths. There's also a massive amount of old housing property and relatively little new housing stock. There are high density apartment or condo buildings sprouting up here and there, but by large, you're going to be paying over 1 million for a small/old house in/around Boston, possibly 2 million depending on the location. If you're willing to commute 1.5 hours, you can get a fixer upper in a semi-rural area for around 300-400k. If Amazon came to Boston, it would be compound this problem exponentially, though whoever owns property currently would definitely make a good return.
[+] [-] tjridesbikes|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r_klancer|7 years ago|reply
But I lock in a 20-25 minute bike ride (or 50-minute walk + public transit ride in winter) to work in the Seaport. I saw I-93 at rush hour once, and I shudder at the memory.
At least part of my reasoning was, "What if Amazon does choose Boston? Do I move my family into a second or third floor condo with no yard at all?"
[+] [-] averageweather|7 years ago|reply
I thought the removal of physical toll booths from the Mass Pike would help. I have seen absolutely no benefit.
[+] [-] ghaff|7 years ago|reply
>If Amazon came to Boston, it would be compound this problem exponentially, though whoever owns property currently would definitely make a good return.
The proposed location (Suffolk Downs) is sort of an odd one from a housing perspective. It is on the T but that's all very blue collar neighborhoods around there, some of which have gentrified a bit but still not places your typical software engineer would normally choose to live.
[+] [-] oo0shiny|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilamont|7 years ago|reply
Why aren't more companies in New England going to where the commercial real estate and housing are cheaper?
[+] [-] fokinsean|7 years ago|reply
Don't get me wrong, I fully enjoy the area when I visit but unless there are significant changes I don't see myself ever being able to move there.
[+] [-] aphextron|7 years ago|reply
But if you are in the top 10%, life is amazing here. It's an absolute paradise. Every single time I'm sitting in traffic hating my life, I try to do a pro/con on getting the hell out of here. Every single time I just can't justify it. The weather, the scenery, the ocean, the food, the people, the tech. There is literally nowhere else in the US even remotely on par. LA is pretty close, but the bay is much more "livable" IMO.
People may be leaving in droves, but it's only because they have to, not really because they want to.
[+] [-] justherefortart|7 years ago|reply
Pacifica felt like a small town separated from it all. But I lived in the Manor area. Living down in Linda Mar (anything past Sharp Park) and dealing with Hwy 1 traffic would be frustrating.
[+] [-] octorian|7 years ago|reply
If you can live somewhere that public transit (by rail) is feasible, then its quite tolerable. Of course this is the US, where that's less common than it should be.
[+] [-] ProfessorLayton|7 years ago|reply
SF is 63% renters, and should be able to outnumber NIMBY homeowners easily to have a lot more dense housing built. Alameda County is in 2nd place at 47% renters [1], so only a small percentage of homeowners need convincing that this housing shortage is bad for everyone in the long term.
[1] http://www.towncharts.com/California/Housing/Alameda-County-...
[+] [-] conanbatt|7 years ago|reply
I think it is a terrible strategy to try to convince homeowners that its best for them to forego clear economic benefits for blurry future profits. The solution is land value tax: just remove city sales taxes and add a tax on land. That will make low density units more expensive, the tax burden is relieved from the renter and lands on the homeowner and renters see their income increase immediately.
[+] [-] jarjoura|7 years ago|reply
Activism to push change requires a lot of energy and time. Most of the people who live here are busy with their jobs and families and do not have time to invest in it. So the activists who have the time to push usually want radical changes, such as 100% low income housing or homeless shelters. These are fine ideas, but for communities of upper middle class families, the change is scary and usually unwelcome. So then those families suddenly find the time to show up and protest and that's where you meet NIMBYs.
Change like this really requires the will of the local governments to make progress. Yet I think they get elected on other platforms such as, building better schools, or improving roads or downtown small businesses. YIMBY seems to be the first political wave of politicians actually running on a platform of more housing.
[+] [-] nerfhammer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eqdw|7 years ago|reply
2012-2013, live in SF work in San Mateo 25 minute walk to caltrain + 45 minute caltrain ride + 5 minute walk from caltrain ====> 75 minute door to door
2013-2014, live in SF (Potrero Ave in the Mission) work in SF (Financial District) On bus, due to surface traffic + busses not coming, anywhere from 20 - 80 minute commute On foot, ~75 minute commute (3.5 miles walk) ===> 75 minute door to door
2014-2015, live in Berkeley, Work in SF 20 minute walk to BART + 30 minute BART ride + 15 minute walk from BART ===> 65 minute door to doo
2015-2017, live in Oakland work in SF 20 minute walk to Transbay bus + 20 - 60 minute bus ride + 15 minute walk from BART ===> on average 90 minute commute
I absolutely agree that 90 minute commutes are absurd and unacceptable. I moved out of the bay area and now my door to door commute is 15-20 minutes. It has dramatically changed my life for the better.
But every time I read an article that complains about the commutes in the bay area _getting bad_, it confuses me. My commutes in the bay area have _always_ been that bad. Who are all these people with relatively reasonable commutes and how do they do it?
[+] [-] nathan_long|7 years ago|reply
We can dream.
[+] [-] jasode|7 years ago|reply
Remote work hasn't taken off on a large scale because massively successful multi-billion dollar companies like Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/SpaceX were not built with remote workers.
You get (relatively) minor companies touting it such as Automattic and Basecamp. Those smaller businesses haven't achieved enough success to convince business leaders on a large scale.
So to riff on your writing... "if only there were a multi-billion dollar company built on the competitive advantages of remote work."
If that happened, we'd then have Harvard Business Review doing endless case studies on its superiority.
EDIT TO ADD:
There is a limited type of "remote" work that existing successful companies will allow (and even encourage): it's the offsite remote _team_.
Some examples include IBM's team to build the "personal computer" down in Miami instead of working in the New York offices. Amazon (Seattle hq) has Lab126 (Silicon Valley) working on the Kindle. Google wanted a rewritten Javascript V8 engine and hired Lars Bak from Denmark. From the story I remember, Lars Bak made it a condition of employment to not relocate to California and because he already had the reputation, Google agreed. At first, he worked out of his home in Denmark but then he opened a Google office and his programming team then worked in that office.
Those semi-remote scenarios are about as far as you're going to get until other businesses with full remote employees working from home proves to the business world that "remote working" is a competitive advantage.
Remote office with an onsite team in that remote office -- yes. Remote telecommuting from home on a large scale? Not yet.
[+] [-] umanwizard|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kalium|7 years ago|reply
Is it possible that we're missing something in this? And that there might be more to this than companies being unwilling to try remote workers?
I know my own experiences with working remotely and having remote colleagues have upon occasion been other than an unalloyed positive.
[+] [-] joker3|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blktiger|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|7 years ago|reply
I think it really just boils down to hiring talented people you can trust. Paying them plenty. And fighting off all the unnecessary project management nonsense that makes politics and therefore in person meetings important.
[+] [-] rmk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GuiA|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwatson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] booleandilemma|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] BrainInAJar|7 years ago|reply
Remote work is only part of the solution. Urbanism, prioritizing transit & deprioritizing cars, increasing density are also parts
[+] [-] slothario|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 49bc|7 years ago|reply
* Your job is not to “write code” no matter how much you wish it was that simple. Your job is to provide value for your company.
* You provide much more value for your company when you’re available in-person than when you’re remote. You provide value to your coworkers who can communicate to you easily, effectively, and timely.
* it’s much easier for your manager to gauge that value in person than remotely, so you create less work for those that are responsible for you’re performance (and your job).
If you over-simplify your role, then it’s easy to wonder why remote work isn’t more successful. When you become responsible for the health of the business, then it becomes much more clear.
[+] [-] jupiter90000|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkarthik|7 years ago|reply
The real estate here is booming as many people have settled here due to BART proximity and the fact that it's one of the few communities building lots of new housing. All the FANG companies are also sending their shuttles here.
It's also a way better commute for more lower income folks coming from Stockton, Modesto, etc since it's on the way to San Jose so you can actually have a labor force to staff restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, etc.
However, there has been a recent wave of NIMBYism coming through as the development has been unchecked and they haven't built enough public services (like schools) to support the housing growth. Many locals also do not like the efficient land use through zero-lot-lines and multi-story townhomes that the developers are flattening hills to build. I hear a lot of jeers calling my neighborhood "an eyesore" full of "cookie cutter homes". My hope that this all gets resolved in the next few years as people come to their senses but it's clear that Californians really have no idea how to plan urban development to match their growth.
[+] [-] jpao79|7 years ago|reply
The Fremont Warm Springs project had few complaints from neighbors about overcrowded schools, etc. because they Lennar is building a new school. https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/03/17/fremont-approves-lenn...
The Google San Jose will be transformative as up until now all of the FANG offices have been planted in suburban office parks with horrible access to transit. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/10/google-says-its-getti...
[+] [-] ModernMech|7 years ago|reply
Actually when I lived in SF, it took me over an hour to get to work in SOMA. We joke and call the outer Richmond the SF suburbs, because it takes as long to get to downtown from there as from the actual suburbs of most cities.
[+] [-] CM30|7 years ago|reply
Because it seems like it's about as common to have 90+ minute commutes over here in London too. I know people who came from Cambridge to London (and back) every day. People coming in from all over the country is pretty damn common here, and a large percentage of jobs I've had in software engineering have involved commutes of this length.
See also:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38026625
Seems like an unfortunate side effect of a city with far more people than available/affordable housing, and one I'm not sure about the answer to.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|7 years ago|reply
It isn't sustainable, and it will crash back to earth. One of the houses near me recently sold for way more than expected, and I pointed out that the development it was in had been build during the dot.com boom, what was more nearly all of the houses in that development had fallen out of escrow (the buyers walked away) when the crash hit because their source of wealth (stock in technology companies) essentially evaporated over 6 months.
[+] [-] eloff|7 years ago|reply
That's not the only consideration, but it's tough to imagine the 90 minute commute winning on quality of life factors.
[+] [-] nathanaldensr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jldevictoria|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlrobinson|7 years ago|reply
If you can just nap or get work done while commuting you might not mind a 90-minute commute as much.
On the other hand, if you can’t afford an autonomous car and have to commute it will be even more hellish...
[+] [-] reaperducer|7 years ago|reply
Some people who work in the city live in Pennsylvania.
[+] [-] lightbyte|7 years ago|reply
That isn't really saying much. Easton, PA is almost exactly 90 min from NYC (though it has tolls).
[+] [-] misiti3780|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheSpiceIsLife|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawnerd|7 years ago|reply