There is a 3rd reason: not (fast) enough transportation infrastructure.
If you don't provide good transport infrastructure, then people must live close to work which will increase housing demand close to work, which then increase prices.
You need to plan for high speed trains, subways and metros to provide enough transportation capacity, so people can live "far away, but short travel time".
Cars are really bad at this as they take up an enormous amount of space for parking and for roads. You also cannot get much stuff done while driving a car, much easier to do work in a Japanese high speed train.
Imagine there was multiple high speed rails lines going out from Silicon Valley: how far from SF can you get in 25 minutes using 300 km/h train versus how far can you get using a car in rush hour? Housing prices in SV would be much much lower if you could get from Stockton to Mountain View in 25 minutes with reliable service and a lot of metro for "last mile" transportation.
> Imagine there was multiple high speed rails lines going out from Silicon Valley: how far from SF can you get in 25 minutes using 300 km/h train versus how far can you get using a car in rush hour?
I think people who haven’t lived with such infrastructure don’t understand that it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Sure, the train may get you from point A to B very quickly, but you still have to get between your office and the train, then from the train to your housing. That’s three trips total, unless you’re lucky enough to live right next to the stop.
And it adds up: That's actually six trips total for a single day (round trip). If they don’t line up perfectly or you miss one, that’s four different places you have to sit and wait.
This is many why people still drive even when they have access to such transport: You spend so much time going through all the transitions and in-between transits that a long drive no longer sounds so bad.
I tried to use my laptop on the train, but the best I could do was answer a few emails before packing up for the next transit step. Better than nothing, but it’s much more complicated than the internet ideal version of taking a high-speed train straight from your apartment to the office.
I have a fairly reasonable, if not especially fast (in part because lots of stops) commuter rail on the rare occasions I go into a city office. But, yeah, I have to drive to the station--only a 7 minute drive but not reasonably walkable--and then it's either about a 35 minute walk or a subway+shorter walk. It ends up being about 2 hours door to door--similar to driving.
It's more pleasant to take the train in but if I'm not sure what my schedule will be I'll still sometimes drive because the train isn't that frequent especially outside commuting hours and I can park right next to the office. And this is a city that most people, at least in the US, would consider to have a well above average transportation infrastructure---and, really, isn't bad by overall European standards.
Driving in city is sometime a terrifying experience with occasional lack of parking spots. At some point, the road quality was so terrible that it was extremely bumpy.
I prefer trains when possible, but waiting for trains can be especially long, and I am sometime bothered by people, who might be mentally ill. Also, it's very noticeable when someone smoked weed, but that's about it. There's a distinct lack of transit employees for the most part.
Increasing train frequency and service would reduce the amount of time waiting, as well increased operation budget for human interaction issues. Upzoning around transit station will make trains more sustainable. Increased social service and effectiveness will take care of peripheral issues that's not the transit agency's job to fix.
Bikes and electric scooters are good at providing last_mile access.
In Copenhagen it's free to bring bike on subway trains. So a lot of people bike from home to subway station, take the subway, and then bike the last part from subway station to work.
Bikes work in Copenhagen because of all the seperate bike paths.
The metro also work very well as it is driverless trains which means it has very low marginal cost to run more trains in rush hours (and during night time) and when there is an unexpected high demand for trains.
A better alternative would be to set state policies that encourage economic development in Stockton rather than spending $100B on high-speed rail. It's really nonsensical to keep trying to cram more people and jobs into a geographically constrained region like the Silicon Valley. There's nothing special about Mountain View.