I'm from the Bay and no longer live there but for how massive the region (functionally: Santa Rosa to Santa Cruz; SF to Antioch+) is the public transit is pretty good. Obviously not perfect and a lot of room for improvement.
I've spoken with old timers who would talk about the days before the Richmond-San Rafael bridge, to name one piece of the puzzle.
Which is a problem in and of itself, at least theoretically. I don't live in SF, but I do live in a highly balkanized area (Atlanta) where the proliferation of local governments is a weight around the neck of the region overall
There are a couple of metro areas that escaped this problem by having regional government, Mpls/St Paul, MN and Portland, OR.
Minnesota has the Metropolitan Council which derives its power from state statute and can supersede the decisions of local governments. The same people that bitch about ‘my tax dollars’ complain about the Met Council but I feel it provides a cohesive regional planing organization and they provide water, sewer, transportation, and regional parks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Council_(Minnesot...
You say that, but if your SF tax dollars were paying for VTA you'd probably have stronger complaints... Moreover, public transit isn't evenly distributed even within SF so I don't think the transit agency count is an important variable.
They're all tied together through Clipper, so it doesn't make a difference to end users anyway.
It matters in that it's impossible to reliably and efficiently coordinate routes across that many agencies. Even if a rider can go from South San Jose to Oakland to Petaluma in a single trip on a single fare transferring as they go, okay it's an optimal payment experience but the routing and interlocking between systems surely isn't
Check out the storied history of RM2. Taxpayers literally voted to raise sales taxes to fund a rail corridor, and the money was reallocated to a different county for an unrelated project that did not benefit the counties in question. Never mind that an actual functional Dumbarton Rail could be a huge improvement to life on the Peninsula if done well.
Imagine a genuinely fast transfer between any one of the Caltrain stations (say Palo Alto or Menlo Park) and one of the East Bay BART stations. Of course, getting the western portion past all the expensive neighborhoods in the way sounds like a real mess.
One of these doesn't require a multi-decade approval process for good reason. (Figuring out the logistics and civil engineering planning is a real thing and building it out isn't trivial) . Of course this could change
It is a plain fact that there would be more interest in public transit if it was as clean, as safe, and as reliable (if not cleaner, safer, and more reliable) than driving using personal vehicles.
Excluding the fact that drug addicts are still humans deserving love, care and the opportunity to recuperate - fostering a clean & safe transit environment is practically a solved problem internationally.
Maybe the moral depravity of SF breeds truly irredeemable addicts, but as someone whos met a lot of troubled people and ridden a lot of public transit your statement seems alarmingly and unhelpfully critical
>fostering a clean & safe transit environment is practically a solved problem internationally.
In your opinion, what is that solution? If we take a survey of the highest ranked transit systems, it seems like most solutions involve not allowing drug users to use transit systems, whether it's the unthinkable in Asian countries or peppering the system with officers and cameras in Berlin and London. Is that really treating them with love?
Considering how much often I smell alcohol and weed in Waymos, maybe it's actually the most tolerant solution.
London's public transport was safe before the cameras became common. Its something everyone used, and everyone let their kids use, decades ago. Affluent people commuted from the Surrey "stockbroker belt" to London at least as far back as the 70s. Kids used trains and busses to go to school- some of my friends did at least as young as eight.
Loving or caring for someone is not giving their addiction a Carte Blanche, it can often be to allow them access to treatment and a path out of their situation.
They can access treatment. There are a lot of options. The question is should we force treatment at some point.
Use the veil of ignorance to answer that.
Suppose your loved one was one of these afflicted individuals literally killing themselves on the street. Would you want to force them to get clean or would you want to make their lives "easier" by giving them some "harm-reduction" that will allow them to persist in their zombie state?
Or what if you were in the grips of this lifestyle. Would you want someone to force you to get help or facilitate you killing yourself?
I don't know what the "tenderloin" refers to, but I guess it is a part of a US city.
That's generally the point I am trying to make. By letting these people suffer from addiction and homelessness, not offering good medical and social care, you are not caring or loving them, which is a kind of cruelty.
FWIW if you search "tenderloin city" the answer appears immediately.
It's a big internet, sometimes people will mention neighborhoods or customs you're unfamiliar with. In my experience, the polite thing is usually to take 3s to make the Google.
This is the problem with context and language and assumptions and algorithms. Even with that I get two restaurants and one Wikipedia article on meat before I get anything resembling a city district in my search results.
Can we really blame individuals when we have recorded, legally admissable evidence of corporations knowingly pushing the over-perscription of extremely addictive drugs while claiming they are safe and non-addictive?
Yes. I don't think the typical homeless drug user is relying on pharma provided research on the substances they're ingesting when deciding to pick up the habit in the first place.
The situation is weird. No one thinks like this, or it isn't a problem, in cities that actually have good public transport. A drug addict has never entered my mind when riding public transport in London, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, etc.
Even when a transit system is bad, you often find people use it anyway in situations where large events make driving a fool’s errand. There’s a hard incentive and comfort hurdle we’re decades from alleviating via impossible fuel prices for your average Joe
There are a lot of unviable transit in the US. Most transit systems have large unviable parts even if there is a viable core (generally in the city center). People often blame the unviable on lack of density, but there are examples of viable transit systems elsewhere in the world that have US suburb density.
Nothing specific, but when you look at European cities you discover many of them have areas with similar density to a US suburb and yet have good service.
I do browse on Google Maps from time to time, and I do see areas with similar-ish density. I also see a lot of cars. I've known a few people who have lived in such places, and they say their transit is near useless (poor service intervals, limited hours, doesn't go everywhere, etc) and most people drive if they can. Which will be less than in the US, as operating a car is often considerably more expensive there than here, tipping the math towards just accepting the poor transit service.
Which is why I was curious about specific experiences.
And I do say, better than many US suburbs which have absolutely no service at all.
IMO the root cause of problems you guys are having is internalized classism and strong affections with the idea of natural selection. You can have a homogeneous society with good welfare and not worry too much about spoiling ourselves, a near or even actual communism with extremely subsidized educations can still have bloodbath levels of internal competitions. You can do that and then you can make it weird for tons of over/under class people with absolutely no way out to be just there in plain sight.
I live in the heart of the Mission and I endorse that quote from the parent comment 100%.
Once every few days I even share public transit with a homeless person! Oh, the horror!!
The people I see out on the street are suffering terribly, sick, unable to escape the gravity of their situations, and the vast majority are not malicious. Anyone who does not see this has chipped away key bits of their own soul.
Or hasn't been smacked in the face yet , or had someone unhinged on the nyc subway state they are going to kill everyone on the train in a manic episode.
These are not un-rare events at all, it's just in a city with millions of people, most may never have it happen but we've all seen it. Nobody wants it to be them that day.
No
Absolutely not.
I have had enough to do with them to believe this lie.
They are broken people that are ruled by the drugs they are taking. they can be manageable when they have had their dose, but their entire life and existence is ruled by the need to find drugs for the next shot.
And believe me. When they feel that withdrawal they do not give a flying F about you or your rights. They need that drug.
People should not be forced to be around junkies
Not to get too political, but if you're right, why does it seem like societies which do not tolerate drug use have much fewer problems with rampant drug use than societies which tolerate it?
“Tolerate” is doing a lot of lifting here. You responded to someone saying treatment and support make addiction manageable. In the United States we had drug companies devising as many ways to make a profit off pain pills for years, so there’s tolerance, but when people started losing their jobs and their minds in mass due to the poison these companies were knowingly getting their customers addicted to, there was no plan or inclination for treatment or support.
Killing people as punishment for poor choices they enact on their own bodies is such a medieval take that it frankly can only be satirical or gallows humor.
But it does fit with the puritanical punishment fetishizing culture that the USA has fostered. Instead of rehabilitating people let's just liquidate them. Sure why not.
The Bay Area has reliable, clean, consistent public transit right now, it's just not evenly distributed
I'm from the Bay and no longer live there but for how massive the region (functionally: Santa Rosa to Santa Cruz; SF to Antioch+) is the public transit is pretty good. Obviously not perfect and a lot of room for improvement.
I've spoken with old timers who would talk about the days before the Richmond-San Rafael bridge, to name one piece of the puzzle.
> The program applies to all 27 San Francisco Bay Area transit agencies that accept contactless Visa tap-to-pay.
Probably has something to do with that. Why on Earth are there 27 different transit agencies in the Bay Area? Probably should be a single digit, no?
The why would be the ~100 municipalities in the bay area.
Which is a problem in and of itself, at least theoretically. I don't live in SF, but I do live in a highly balkanized area (Atlanta) where the proliferation of local governments is a weight around the neck of the region overall
There are a couple of metro areas that escaped this problem by having regional government, Mpls/St Paul, MN and Portland, OR.
Minnesota has the Metropolitan Council which derives its power from state statute and can supersede the decisions of local governments. The same people that bitch about ‘my tax dollars’ complain about the Met Council but I feel it provides a cohesive regional planing organization and they provide water, sewer, transportation, and regional parks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Council_(Minnesot...
Portland, Oregon has a similar organization called Metro that I am not familiar with, other than it is similar to the Metropolitan Council. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(Oregon_regional_governm...
You say that, but if your SF tax dollars were paying for VTA you'd probably have stronger complaints... Moreover, public transit isn't evenly distributed even within SF so I don't think the transit agency count is an important variable.
They're all tied together through Clipper, so it doesn't make a difference to end users anyway.
It matters in that it's impossible to reliably and efficiently coordinate routes across that many agencies. Even if a rider can go from South San Jose to Oakland to Petaluma in a single trip on a single fare transferring as they go, okay it's an optimal payment experience but the routing and interlocking between systems surely isn't
Hahahaha.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbarton_Rail_Corridor
Check out the storied history of RM2. Taxpayers literally voted to raise sales taxes to fund a rail corridor, and the money was reallocated to a different county for an unrelated project that did not benefit the counties in question. Never mind that an actual functional Dumbarton Rail could be a huge improvement to life on the Peninsula if done well.
Imagine a genuinely fast transfer between any one of the Caltrain stations (say Palo Alto or Menlo Park) and one of the East Bay BART stations. Of course, getting the western portion past all the expensive neighborhoods in the way sounds like a real mess.
They haven't created AGI either, they're just applying the CADT development model to money.
can't find what cadt means
“Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers“ [0]
[0]. https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
A reminder, never link directly to jwz from hacker news.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260830071400/https://www.jwz.o...
[dead]
One of these doesn't require a multi-decade approval process for good reason. (Figuring out the logistics and civil engineering planning is a real thing and building it out isn't trivial) . Of course this could change
you know there are jurisdictions outside of California that don't take multiple decades to add a bus line, right?
these aren't "good reasons" or unavoidable laws of nature or understandable tradeoffs. it's just a uniquely dysfunctional political system
If by "good reason" you mean avoiding any perceived slight to drivers, you've accurately described the current state.
It is a plain fact that there would be more interest in public transit if it was as clean, as safe, and as reliable (if not cleaner, safer, and more reliable) than driving using personal vehicles.
Would it make sense for cities to wait around, and buy huge fleets of autonomous vehicles? Probably.
While I understand that “plain fact” is highly subjective, I would think downvoting is more appropriate than flagging. (Vouched)
[flagged]
Excluding the fact that drug addicts are still humans deserving love, care and the opportunity to recuperate - fostering a clean & safe transit environment is practically a solved problem internationally.
Maybe the moral depravity of SF breeds truly irredeemable addicts, but as someone whos met a lot of troubled people and ridden a lot of public transit your statement seems alarmingly and unhelpfully critical
>fostering a clean & safe transit environment is practically a solved problem internationally.
In your opinion, what is that solution? If we take a survey of the highest ranked transit systems, it seems like most solutions involve not allowing drug users to use transit systems, whether it's the unthinkable in Asian countries or peppering the system with officers and cameras in Berlin and London. Is that really treating them with love?
Considering how much often I smell alcohol and weed in Waymos, maybe it's actually the most tolerant solution.
London's public transport was safe before the cameras became common. Its something everyone used, and everyone let their kids use, decades ago. Affluent people commuted from the Surrey "stockbroker belt" to London at least as far back as the 70s. Kids used trains and busses to go to school- some of my friends did at least as young as eight.
No. It means not allowing drug addicts (and everyone else) to mis-use transit systems.
They are not hotels, homes, rehab clinics, or personal drug use pods.
Cigarette smokers manage to ride trains and buses without lighting up. We should expect the same of everyone.
There’s barely any officers in the Berlin transit system. I get checked like 3 times per year
There's nothing compassionate, loving or caring letting people kill themselves consuming hard drugs.
Loving or caring for someone is not giving their addiction a Carte Blanche, it can often be to allow them access to treatment and a path out of their situation.
They can access treatment. There are a lot of options. The question is should we force treatment at some point.
Use the veil of ignorance to answer that.
Suppose your loved one was one of these afflicted individuals literally killing themselves on the street. Would you want to force them to get clean or would you want to make their lives "easier" by giving them some "harm-reduction" that will allow them to persist in their zombie state?
Or what if you were in the grips of this lifestyle. Would you want someone to force you to get help or facilitate you killing yourself?
I know my answer
Walking through the tenderloin on a bad night seems like Carte Blanche to me, and it seems cruel and unusual (except maybe Philadelphia).
I don't know what the "tenderloin" refers to, but I guess it is a part of a US city.
That's generally the point I am trying to make. By letting these people suffer from addiction and homelessness, not offering good medical and social care, you are not caring or loving them, which is a kind of cruelty.
FWIW if you search "tenderloin city" the answer appears immediately.
It's a big internet, sometimes people will mention neighborhoods or customs you're unfamiliar with. In my experience, the polite thing is usually to take 3s to make the Google.
In my experience the polite thing is to just say “San Francisco” instead of talking down to people.
This is the problem with context and language and assumptions and algorithms. Even with that I get two restaurants and one Wikipedia article on meat before I get anything resembling a city district in my search results.
So what, put them in prison?
Is that your only idea or are you trying to be facetious?
SF and CA have a very liberal tax policy, maybe dedicate some of the funds to get them treatment.
Can we really blame individuals when we have recorded, legally admissable evidence of corporations knowingly pushing the over-perscription of extremely addictive drugs while claiming they are safe and non-addictive?
Yes. I don't think the typical homeless drug user is relying on pharma provided research on the substances they're ingesting when deciding to pick up the habit in the first place.
[flagged]
The situation is weird. No one thinks like this, or it isn't a problem, in cities that actually have good public transport. A drug addict has never entered my mind when riding public transport in London, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, etc.
When a transit system is bad only those in the worst situations use it because they have no other options. Thus all you see are societies worst.
When transit is good everybody uses it and normal people are the vast majority so you rarely see or notice the bad people.
The percentage of bad people is about the same in both cities overall
Even when a transit system is bad, you often find people use it anyway in situations where large events make driving a fool’s errand. There’s a hard incentive and comfort hurdle we’re decades from alleviating via impossible fuel prices for your average Joe
That is more mediocre versus bad. Most of the bad transit systems I'm aware of don't have service to large events at all and so it's not an option.
Fair point. I likely never encountered truly bad public transit since it was never pointed to as viable.
There are a lot of unviable transit in the US. Most transit systems have large unviable parts even if there is a viable core (generally in the city center). People often blame the unviable on lack of density, but there are examples of viable transit systems elsewhere in the world that have US suburb density.
Can you share some examples of viable transit systems in areas with similar density to US suburbs? I'd like to know more.
Nothing specific, but when you look at European cities you discover many of them have areas with similar density to a US suburb and yet have good service.
I do browse on Google Maps from time to time, and I do see areas with similar-ish density. I also see a lot of cars. I've known a few people who have lived in such places, and they say their transit is near useless (poor service intervals, limited hours, doesn't go everywhere, etc) and most people drive if they can. Which will be less than in the US, as operating a car is often considerably more expensive there than here, tipping the math towards just accepting the poor transit service.
Which is why I was curious about specific experiences.
And I do say, better than many US suburbs which have absolutely no service at all.
IMO the root cause of problems you guys are having is internalized classism and strong affections with the idea of natural selection. You can have a homogeneous society with good welfare and not worry too much about spoiling ourselves, a near or even actual communism with extremely subsidized educations can still have bloodbath levels of internal competitions. You can do that and then you can make it weird for tons of over/under class people with absolutely no way out to be just there in plain sight.
I live in the heart of the Mission and I endorse that quote from the parent comment 100%.
Once every few days I even share public transit with a homeless person! Oh, the horror!!
The people I see out on the street are suffering terribly, sick, unable to escape the gravity of their situations, and the vast majority are not malicious. Anyone who does not see this has chipped away key bits of their own soul.
Or hasn't been smacked in the face yet , or had someone unhinged on the nyc subway state they are going to kill everyone on the train in a manic episode.
These are not un-rare events at all, it's just in a city with millions of people, most may never have it happen but we've all seen it. Nobody wants it to be them that day.
Yes, but the minority who are malicious can render public spaces completely unusable.
Drug addicts,when treated properly, are alright manageable. Without treatment or support these creations of a dog eat dog world become unpredictable.
No Absolutely not. I have had enough to do with them to believe this lie. They are broken people that are ruled by the drugs they are taking. they can be manageable when they have had their dose, but their entire life and existence is ruled by the need to find drugs for the next shot. And believe me. When they feel that withdrawal they do not give a flying F about you or your rights. They need that drug. People should not be forced to be around junkies
Not to get too political, but if you're right, why does it seem like societies which do not tolerate drug use have much fewer problems with rampant drug use than societies which tolerate it?
“Tolerate” is doing a lot of lifting here. You responded to someone saying treatment and support make addiction manageable. In the United States we had drug companies devising as many ways to make a profit off pain pills for years, so there’s tolerance, but when people started losing their jobs and their minds in mass due to the poison these companies were knowingly getting their customers addicted to, there was no plan or inclination for treatment or support.
Disagree lol.
We could move the entire population of San Francisco into full time care for very little compared to what we're spending on AI.
They'd have to consent.
Are you arguing that the reason that the public transportation system in SF sucks is because of drug addicts? LOL
[flagged]
> enacting the death penalty for substance abuse
May you never see progress on such a horrifying goal.
[flagged]
Killing people as punishment for poor choices they enact on their own bodies is such a medieval take that it frankly can only be satirical or gallows humor. But it does fit with the puritanical punishment fetishizing culture that the USA has fostered. Instead of rehabilitating people let's just liquidate them. Sure why not.