With regards to density, San Jose has a density of 5,256 people per square mile. In contrast, Denver (which has an awesome train/bus system) has a density of 3,698 people per square mile.
If low density is why San Jose can't support a decent transit infrastructure, then how can Denver do it with even less density?
Land area is only a constraint in CA because they have rejected density as a solution to the constraint. The city of San Jose could be home to 13M people at Manhattan levels of density, or 7M people at Brooklyn levels of density. Instead, it is home to 1M people, with freeways that are relatively overbuilt in relative comparison.
Low density. Without enough population density it's impossible for transit to be economically viable. Tokyo has it. London has it. NYC has it. SF is... simply not dense enough to support a good transit infrastructure.
It's a valid point to consider, although I'm not sure that looking at average density across the entire country makes a lot of sense since you don't have to apply the same solution nation-wide. When considering transportation options for a denser part of a country, like the US east coast Boston-Washington DC corridor, it's irrelevant how much empty space there is in Wyoming. The same is true on a smaller scale as well. Sure, the fact that Denver is so far away from any other large population centers means building a bunch of high-speed rail lines there might not make sense, but there's no reason Denver itself can't have better non-car transit options to get around the city and metro area.
Edit: The US east coast is always a particularly interesting use-case since it's more comparable to the density found in a lot of countries with far better transit while also being significantly richer. The Bos-Wash corridor has about the same population as Spain but it is significantly more dense and with 3x the GDP. Yet Spain has far better inter-city high-speed rail and other transit options.
Density, in and of itself, is consistently correlated with lower per capita carbon footprint, lower water usage, lower vehicle miles traveled, etc.
You can have development that is sustainable and doesn’t pave over what few habitats we have left.
And the Bay Area hardly needs to be Hong Kong to accommodate more people; San Jose, for example, has a density a quarter of that of Queens, NY, a borough associated with large parks, streets with trees and early-20th century housing. If San Jose could accommodate 3M more people that would easily solve a good chunk of the housing crisis, and you could spread that 3M across all nine counties of the Bay instead of just one city.
I'm not sure what you're even arguing. It seems pretty clear that population density has a strong correlation to efficiency of public transit. If nobody lives there, don't run rail to it.
Your statement is exactly right and strengthens my argument. Switzerland has absolutely fabulous public transit while having low density. Therefore, the argument that you have to be incredibly dense to support good public transit is false.
Switzerland has excellent public transit. Therefore, if there is a density threshold to offering good public transit, an area would need to be at least less dense than Switzerland in order to argue that it isn't possible.
The SF Bay Area is denser than Switzerland. Therefore, the reasons for not having good transit are not to do with density, but with something else (politics, zoning, public support, etc.). But density is not the issue.
Isn't a big part of the problem that it's not really all that dense? Most of it is a sort of endless suburbia, not the kind of packed city where mass transit really shines. I'm sure that public transit could be improved anyway (it certainly seems quite poor to me, from a distance), but I'm not sure "such a dense area" applies.
At 25k people per km^2 you get 200 thousand people within 1 mile radius and 0.8 million people within 2 mile walking distance. That transforms most US population centers into tiny little walk-able islands.
Public transit can spread things out, but lower density is a real trade-off.
The only way to decrease sprawl would be to increase density, and frankly few Coloradoans would go for that. Few cities outside of Denver have tall buildings because people don't like their mountain views obstructed. And public transportation is pretty limited. Many people live in Colorado to enjoy the outdoors, and to do so, you need your own transportation. Once you have your own transportation, there's very little incentive to take a bus or train on a regular basis.
The solution is to increase density in the core parts of the Bay Area. Density reduces the distance between workplace and housing. Especially increased density around existing rail public transit (BART, Caltrain...) There is a lot of room for improvement here: Paris is thrice as dense as San Francisco despite having a 37m building ceiling.
That is not a problem of population density, that problem is inadequate peak capacity in transportation infrastructure. For example if you stack subway lines one under the other simalar to those described by Elon Musk, or increase the capacity of the existing public transport system through through faster & more frequent trains, you can resolve such issues. You just need to commit to spending on the infrastructure to support the population density.
Interestingly, it is policies like prop 13 in California that restrict the revenue needed to invest in the infrastructure to support higher population densities.
Most people in America live in places with comparable density to places in Europe with good public transport. The idea that America is so sparsely populated is only sustained because of the vast areas with really low density but also low total population.
California, for example, is only slightly less densely populated than France. Nevada is slightly less dense than Norway, but 2.2m of the 3m population live in the Las Vegas Valley, that makes up less than a percent of the total land area, so most of the population live in an area more than dense enough for successful public transit.
There are certainly really low density areas where trains and buses have less utility, but most people don't live there, or they wouldn't have been so low density.
And this is after a century of neglecting public transport. If there was more investment in public transport in the denser areas, density would likely increase further, because public transport hubs tends to drive up footfall to businesses nearby.
I suspect that JP's density is actually a bit higher than that today, given that it was 8500/sq mile based on 2010 population. Regardless, it's important to consider that JP is miles outside the city center. It isn't so much a model of super dense housing as it is a good way to up the density of neighborhoods that might otherwise only support 3500/sq mile. JP represents a good middle ground between the car-centric deep suburbs and the extremely dense city center.
Arguably some of those problems would be solved by greater density, right? Density makes better public transit economical, density reduces homelessness by bringing down housing costs.
That's crazy that people are getting murdered at your bus stop though. What city do you live in?
Most of the complaints against density are really against medium-density cities. Those combine the worst of both worlds. They don't have enough room for cars if most people drive, but far too many people have to drive because there are not enough people to support decent public transport on most routes. Once population density starts approaching something like 10k / square km (25k / square mile) over large enough areas, urban life becomes much more attractive.
I've never been to Seattle, but it looks like a medium-density city on the map.
It doesn't need to be just as dense, it has enough people. SF area and LA have massive growing population and economy, don't you think high speed train connecting those in under 2 hours would have enough ridership?
With density you can afford transit which would reduce traffic. See Japan for an example. Most people take the train or bus to the ski area. There’s barely anyone in the parking lot.
If low density is why San Jose can't support a decent transit infrastructure, then how can Denver do it with even less density?
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