Stanford only offers Go Passes to selected employees. SLAC employees, for example, aren't eligible.

Web Link

I'm told that's because SLAC is in San Mateo County. Many SLAC employees, however, drive through Santa Clara County to get to work.

One problem is that many of these companies are east of Hwy 101, while most of their employees live west of Hwy 101. Public transit as well as bicycle and pedestrian routes crossing the highway are generally terrible.

The Adobe Creek bike path that connects Palo Alto residents to their jobs in the north Shoreline area has been closed all year. The sign on the fence says it may reopen in Fall 2012, like anyone believes that. I wouldn't even bet on it being open next summer.

Bicycling to Facebook is just as bad. Bicycling over Hwy 101 at University Ave is a death trap, even on the sidewalks. East Palo Alto has been talking for years about building a separate pedestrian bridge, like they have the money to do that.

Caltrain is a great resource, but it is already overloaded and does not have the money to expand service. Many commute-time trains are standing-room-only and standing up in a bumpy train with no handrails for an hour is not real safe or comfortable.

Companies that build campuses far away from where their employees live have a responsibility to help build the transportation infrastructure to get their employees to work.

Light rail, bike expressways, BRT? We have to improve so the 61 percent have options.

One of the big problems is that commuters are not driving from home to work and then back again. Many commuters I know are driving their kids to school or daycare en route to work (often private schools not in walking distance of home) and doing the same on their return. Most public transit options are not realistically geared up for this type of commuter.
Additionally, if a commuter needs to use more than one type of transit for first and last mile,or need to do two equal length bus journeys (to San Antonio center and then to Foothill college) they need an additional ticket with an additional fare. Making all the transit authorities in the Bay Area more user friendly would go a long way to help.The different authorities need to work together on ticketing and be time sensitive rather than mile (zone) sensitive, and buses need to meet and wait for trains to meet passengers needs.

I am angry that Facebook got off without contributing to helping to close the bay trail gap as part of their mitigations for their monstrous office park. That would have gotten a lot of their employeees out of cars. Shame on them. Shame on Menlo Park for prioritizing motor vehicles in the negotiations.

The City of Palo alto doesn't really use any sticks at all in their TDM plans...and they give out all of the carrots up front before property owners deliver car trip reduction.

Developers work with staff on TDMs in place of other more expensive transportation mitigations when a developer is negotiating for more density. The city never builds in enforcment mechanisms (the sticks). Even if they did, they couldn't enforce them because the city doesn't have the staff to follow up on compliance and enforcement.

The carrot, higher density, is given away up front so the developer has no incentive at all to comply.

Be wary of developers asking for TDMs. The city should stop approving TDM plans until they have a strategy and resources to do it right.

An innovative, straightforward and quick solution for the parking issues: use an "Even-odd market" approach. Simply alternate days when cars can park in the area from odd number license plates to even number license plates (with home owners given a 1-car street-parking permit valid all days). Then let "market" forces apply, where people will find creative ways to get to work and move around (e.g. scheduled trips, public transport, car share, bike, walk etc). Worthy of a thought?

A couple of comments:

On carrots and sticks - My dad used to say that carnivores (ie developers) don't respond very well to an offer of carrots. And if Palo Alto has no sticks -- oh well. In the case of the so-called "incentives" offered to downtown SOFA developers and property owners - they are prime beef steaks that are gobbled up without restraint -- and subsidized by the residents of the area with the quality, livability and value of their homes.

On Downtown Palo Alto development - Every project approved in downtown Palo Alto over the past couple of years has been issued a negative declaration (no problems) under the California Environmental Quality Act review (CEQA) and a statement from Planning that there are no "cumulative" impacts. The traffic back ups on University Avenue, Middlefield and Alma, as well as the parking and traffic impacts in the neighborhoods suggest this may have been overly optimistic, if not purposely contrived.

On Stanford -- Great job. Except that like similar programs by private companies that pay employees not to drive - some people game the system by collecting their rewards, parking in the neighborhoods and walking, biking or skateboarding to work/school. A serious residential parking program is the only way to prevent this misuse of TDM incentives.

I live within a few blocks of El Camino in Palo Alto and work on El Camino in Menlo Park. As far as I can tell (and I periodically check to see if things have improved), the fact that I cross county lines means I cannot make this trip with only one bus fare or stay on one bus. If I am wrong, then the information made available to the public needs to be fixed. The trip is less than 5 miles in a straight line, but each county has their own bus system and fees.

I would love to walk the short distances to the bus stops and take the bus, however not when I am charged twice for the short distance and have to change buses (with then double wait time).

I am primarily posting because I hope someone with experience will actually tell me I am wrong and that it is actually possible for me to take one bus and pay once (in which case our transit groups need to seriously improve the information on the various websites.

The stick approach only works when there are safe and convenient alternatives. Caltrain is already overcrowded with no plans to expand service until electrification happens at some point in the not near future. There is no light rail or BART service to Palo Alto and no plans to build any, ever. Many people would be willing to bicycle to work if there were safer bike paths. Mountain View has a nice cross-town Stevens Creek bike path, but Palo Alto has no such facilities.

Market forces may be able to build new private parking lots, but can these forces really build new bike paths or new public transit? I know that Stanford is proposing to build a new Adobe Creek bike path over Hwy 101, but that took more than a decade of negotiation. Can employer sponsorship pay to accelerate Caltrain's electrification program?

This article follows the typical story line that cars are bad and people need to be stopped from driving. We've been trying to do that for the past 30 or 40 years with ZERO success. Traffic is only going to improve when we make it easier to get around. Fewer impediments. No cut-off streets, no roundabouts, no carpool lanes. None of these things have worked. They've made air pollution worse because people spend more time driving around the obstacles that NIMBYs forced elected officials to put up.

Peter - you are just wrong. Any traffic engineer will tell you that building more and more highways (at huge expense) just encourages people to drive more miles to get to their jobs. That of course causes more congestion, more gasoline use, more pollution. The impediments mentioned in the original article are things like freeway interchanges, which are not easily or cheaply fixed.

Even if you do pave all these new roads, you still have the problem of where do you park all the cars? Downtown parking garages are tremendously expensive (like $100 million). Should tax payers pay for these? If a private companies build new garages, would commuters be willing to pay $20/day (or whatever the break-even prices is) to park there?

I've biked to downtown PA for decades and even bought our home because it was on the Bike Blvd. and I saw the sale sign while biking by. It is a short commute and I invest in good rain gear to try to bike year round. I LOVE how I get to work or home feeling refreshed with a clear mind after my 3 mile commute. The time to bike is about about the same as driving due to traffic, esp. with construction delays. I also try to bike for errands in town when possible.

I wish they'd repair the potholes on the bike boulevards as a priority. Some are quite deep and hazardous.

I think more folks would bike if they got into the habit. While it seems inconvenient and may take more time depending on the distance, it can enhance quality of life and peace of mind.

Like in Holland, if more of us bike, the commute will be safer for cyclists.

Peter - you are alos wrong when you say "with ZERO success" - as the article itself points out 61% carpool here instead of 80% other places - that's 19% success and does not even count the mass transit ridership.

But I agree that we need large investments in light rail, bus, Caltrain, bicycle paths (crossing 101 is dangerous except at Page Mill and at Ringwood), south bay ferry - everything should be up for discussion.

Developers and property owners are the ones responsible for providing and paying for the parking needed for those who use their buildings - not the public entity. It is simple planning and zoning policy and the town that doesn't do it and accepts the responsibility to pay for it or that forces the surrounding properties to provide it is --- well, they are not on top of the situation.

I was a city planner for many years in Mountain View and worked to get Light Rail into town and support for the trails. It does take years - we called it advance planning -- apparently a progressive idea to some.

Keep dreaming that you're going to abolish cars. People run errands after work, go grocery shopping after work, have to pick the kids up, etc. During the work day, they often go to off-site meetings, out to lunch, to the dentist, etc.

They're not going to do that on bicycles.

If you're going to live in a fantasy world, you should have at least legalized marijuana and gotten the tax benefits rather than spending money on more silly studies.

The Palo Alto Comprehensive Plan, the document that guides development only went through 2010. It was based on analysis from the mid 1980s and was adopted in 1998. We are still years away from adopting a new Comprehensive Plan. We were the last City in Santa Clara County to submit a draft Housing Element to the State.

Council apparently doesn't see this as a problem and keeps increasing the scope of the Comprehensive Plan Update. It pushes off the adoption date further and further into the future. Meanwhile, with no new policies in place, the project reviews are based on what Staff and Council think our policies ought to be, rather than what has been reviewed and adopted through a public process that includes CEQA review. The CEQA review process includes an analysis of environmental impacts and identifies required mitigations.

This is like giving developers a get out jail free card. It's the residents and taxpayers that then bear the costs and suffer the consequences.

re "I live within a few blocks of El Camino in Palo Alto and work on El Camino in Menlo Park." (by Bay Area needs collaboration)
The transport black hole over the county line is striking. Not too many years ago, the VTA 22 bus went as far as the Menlo Park train station, and I argued strongly (before Palo Alto and Menlo Park City Councils) to keep it running across the county line. VTA argued that SamTrans could take care of that portion of the roadway. But Samtrans 390 only runs about once every 40 mins on weekdays, and KX only about once an hour, and they have no timepoints in Menlo Park. The trains that stop in both places are infrequent.
We do definitely need this collaboration/cooperation.

After World War II, there were ideas floated. BART was one, which you ask me wasn't done. We went for freeways, again not done. Bus lines are joke, more light rail lines, more bike trails. 61 percent find driving easier.

Just wait until the new hospital opens......How many thousands of cars coming and going on Palo Alto streets all hours of the day and night will there be? This is just the beginning! We need to get a handle on this situation.

Cue the song "Wishin' and hoping'" for a carless commute...

The staggering lack of reality by our officials continues.

The hospital won't increase traffic, adding more office space won't increase traffic, clogging up traffic with ridiculously timed lights to discourage driving won't increase traffic tie-ups, reducing the number of lanes won't cause any backups while cars try to park...."

For this we pay them money???

Bicycling is admirable, with rewards both to the cyclist and the environment, but it is also punitive to the cyclist, who must breathe the air made foul by the passing cars, most all of which have their windows rolled up, one assumes for protection from the foul air. It was Winston Churchill who said, "The invention of the internal combustion engine is the beginning of the end of civilization." Civilization appears to be driving at a faster and faster speed toward one wonders what end with a windshield too steamed to see clearly ahead.

Bicycling is admirable, with rewards both to the cyclist and the environment, but it is also punitive to the cyclist, who must breathe the air made foul by the passing cars, most all of which have their windows rolled up, one assumes for protection from the foul air. It was Winston Churchill who said, "The invention of the internal combustion engine is the beginning of the end of civilization." Civilization appears to be driving at a faster and faster speed toward one wonders what end with a windshield too steamed to see clearly ahead.

I tried public transportation when I lived in SJ. Took 3 hours to go from SJ to Campbell on the bus. Only 40 mintues by car. Six hours a day to commute is unacceptable: cuts into sleep time, errand running time, makes doctor appointments impossible.

My brother-in-law commutes by train from SJ to SF. Takes 2 hrs each way. All his doctors, dentists, etc are in the city because of it. saya he gets a lot of work done on the train, but a few times he has fallen asleep and missed his stop because he has to fet up at thea--crack of dawn to catch a train so that he can get to work on time.

Public transportation just does not work well unless it is ina huge city like NY, or Tokyo, or Paris. Otherwise, ridership cannot be guaranteed. It is too impractical. Even France's TGV is in fiancial trouble.

What does a biker do in bad weather? American bikes do not come with rain canopies.
I was once refused a job by National Semiconductor because I rode a bike 365 days a year, and had no car. They said: what will you do when it rains. I said: carry an umbrella in one hand. The interviewer said: unacceptable, get realistic. you cannot come to work wet. Even though I lived near the company in Sunnyvale at the time!

I cannot believe that people are condemning bicycling because it rains here occasionally. Yes, we got some sprinkles today, but I can't even remember the last work day that it rained. Total rainy days can't be more than 5% of work days. Is a 95% success rate so low that you're declaring a complete a complete failure? If you can't afford a rain jacket, then come up with a backup plan like public transit or carpooling or telecommuting on those 5% of days when you can't bicycle.

Sure public transportation has some room for improvement, so lets make those improvements. Many public transit systems around the Bay Area are currently overcrowded (Caltrain, BART, Muni, and others) with standing-room-only and passengers regularly left behind. More people want to use these systems, but do not, because of the crowding issues. This is a reason to invest more in public transit, not less.

WHY doesn't Palo Alto install LEFT TURN signals ON University ONTO Middlefield in each direction.. Autos going west in the morning are backed up to almost 101 and in the evening bumper to bumper eastbound through downtown Palo Alto. Only one car if any per light change gets through that intersection to go left onto MIddlefield. So.....savvy drivers divert to Hamilton,etc. westbound or Lytton eastbound and snake down to Chaucer. "Party traffic" is horrendous west bound on Friday and Saturday nights. Why doesn't the Transportation Department wake up to the problems?

Whereas my earlier post was directed to the point of attempting to commute without using a car, the reality is that cars are the method of choice for most of us.

The title of the article assumes that there will be people who would be delighted to use alternate means to commute if it was simpler.

For the rest, then Palo Alto transportation gurus seem to suggest that if they make it so difficult to drive around town then the majority will give up and use an alternate method. This is not going to happen.

Accordingly, I would suggest that it makes sense to improve the flow of traffic around town. Roadways around town should be designed to get traffic to where it needs to go in the most efficient manner possible at the speed limit without too many stops and starts. Normally, this is what traffic engineers attempt to do. However, around here this is not the case. The idea seems to be to make it more difficult to drive than it is to walk or ride a bike.

So many of our routes are bottlenecks designed to stop the flow of efficient moving traffic and make it take alternate routes. What comes to my mind immediately is the Alma/SandHill intersection which has been designed by morons for political reasons. I could mention Charleston/Arastradero, but I won't because that is another political bone of contention.

El Camino/Embarcadero is horrendous, particularly the sb/ECR left turn lane to Embarcadero which tales back beyond the turn left into T&C and causes traffic that exits T & C having to cross this tale back and is crazy.

Therefore, I say, fire all the traffic engineers who obviously never drive around Palo Alto at the busiest times of the day, or get them to use bikes or walk to all their destinations they are investigating, after they have come here by train or bus, of course.

While Palo Alto may be getting a lot of gleaming new projects, that are harder to approve in Mountain View, Palo Alto long-term livability seems to be heading downwards quickly compared to Mountain View, which has a long-range, long-term view of development and livability. An example of pro-development short-term greed, short-sightedness ruining this soon-to-be once-great town?

I would take the train more often if it ran more often. As it is, if I miss the train from my station, I have to wait another hour. It hasn't been made practical yet.

Of course the situation will only get worse. Plans to deal with increased traffic congestion are either inadequate or have too many budgetary constraints. The corporations, who keep building new buildings with more employees, view congestion as the problem of the municipalities. While the cities are hoping the corporations assist in the planning. When one is stuck in their vehicle endless hours, attempting to get from one end of the SC Valley or SF Peninsula to the other, hopelessness starts to set in.

Who mentioned CEQA? Palo alto planners have issued neg decks, with no cumulative impacts, no impact on jobs housing balance, no impact on traffic, no neighborhood impacts, etc on every downtown project for the past couple of years. And, they consider parking in residential neighborhoods a "social" impact - not something to mention in a CEQA environmental review.

Public transportation is not practical. It is too slow, too infrequent, does not run 24/7, among other impracticalities that make it inefficient. I hav e worked for employers who docked commuters' pay for things like being late because the bus broke down, or the train was late, etc.

When public transportation has more routes, more stops, more days, all days, then I will use it. It has to be more convenient and easier to use, as well as more available for everyone, before it will have a profitable ridership. It has none of that now, and until it does, it will run in the red because it does not reach enough people.

Do employers also dock your pay if an accident causes a traffic jam? Or if you can't find a parking space near work? These happen a lot more often than the train being late.

Public transit can be improved for much less money than building new highways. Those new ramps being built on Hwy 101 right now cost a staggering $100 million of your tax dollars.

For people who complain about public transit running in the red, where do you think the money to build and maintain our roads and highways comes from? Most of that comes from sales taxes and property taxes, because car registration fees and gasoline taxes are way to low to support car infrastructure.

Need to make public fast, a choice for drivers. Easy to use, efficent, clean. Just like bike riders moving and you are sitting in traffic. Not everyone will use public transit or ride a bike evert day, but seeing how we built for single drivers for the last 50 years. Putting urban type transit in a suburban area that wants to be small town suburban with thousands of jobs. I'm not just talking about Palo Alto.

I'm bad lost a word, public transit must be easy to use.

Is there a Garmin powered for bicycle riding? I have no sense of direction.

Yes, Garmin makes GPS units for bicycles. They are expensive, though. If I get lost, I just pull off the road and bring up Google Maps on my smartphone. Google Maps has lots of bicycle route features.

Many good thoughts, but it seems to boil down to two major problems: one is lack of coordination of public transportation; the second is that there are too many variables for one size fits all, e.g. different needs for different households, and different lengths of travel.

I agree that penalizing drivers is a lose-lose situation, but traffic engineers keep butting their heads against this stone wall. They really don't have good alternatives to reduce car use beyond a certain level, but they paid to find a way. Hence many poorly thought out ideas.

I don't know the answer. Does anyone?

Car commuters to Stanford get a great deal if they are willing to walk for five minutes. Drive into Palo Alto, park in the neighborhoods and walk to catch the Margarite shuttle, then get $300 a year for not driving to work!

More and more savvy Stanford employees are using this method to get to work. Some even park their car and get out a bike to ride onto campus. Extremely handy if you need to get about campus during the day.

Also clear to anyone who stops to think for a moment that the 160 foot office tower and three other towers Arrilliaga wants to build at University and El Camino is being quickly pushed through the city council BEFORE Palo Altans start realizing the huge traffic impact from employees driving to and from the new and hugely expanded Stanford medical center.

And the property taxes will go to the county.

El Camino is going to be reduced to two lanes. This plan has been in the works for years. The city planners have the idea that this will make for a pleasant boulevard to encourage people to walk down. Also safer for pedestrians to cross, and people on bicycles.

Reduce EL CAMINO to TWO LANES? Are they nuts? Are 101 and 280 next??

And then they'll wonder why sales tax revenues dropped even more.

It appears many people want public transportation to take them quickly to exactly where they want to go, 24/7, from within a block of where they are situated. Unfortunately they don't want to pay for it.

Finding funding for long term transit will be the major task, not tomention what kind of transit project. Minor short term transit and traffice improvements will help. Signal timing, lane improvements, bike lanes, and etc. All will work but for how long when the space is filled. Long term improvements will require how we live, work and play.

A Neighbor

"While Palo Alto may be getting a lot of gleaming new projects, that are harder to approve in Mountain View, "

Lucky you, developers definitely seem to have it a lot easier in Palo Alto. They have constraints everywhere else, so they come here, and they even get exceptions if something bothers their project.

In general, the city seems to be pro-developer, even though residents bring the income, and developers bring the costs.

about the "stick approach."

In "suburban commuting" areas like Palo Alto, sticks work well and the resultant shift from driving alone goes mostly to carpooling.

European and Asian gas prices are roughly $8 per gallon. Per capita annual driving (vehicle miles traveled or VMT) is one-third less than the US. The influential US non-partisan climate-transportation policy analysis, The Moving Cooler Report, agrees that a phased-in $5 per gallon gas tax increase will reduce US transportation GHG by 28%. No one contests that raising the cost of driving decreases the amount of driving. But, alas, neither political party will suggest even a $0.05 gas tax increase. There doesn't seem to be a way to have an "adult conversation" in the US about raising the price of driving.

Says Bay Area MTC about charging for parking (another way to increase the cost of driving): "There is no question that the provision of free parking is a huge incentive for people to drive to work. A 2000 survey of Bay Area commuters found that while 77 percent of commuters drove alone when free parking was available, only 39 percent drove alone when they had to pay to park. Additionally, among commuters with free parking, only 4.8 percent commuted by transit. By contrast, among commuters without free parking, 42 percent commute by transit."

From the set of US employers with free workplace parking, there are two virtuous outliers: Google Mountain View at 52% SOV (single occupancy vehicle) and Microsoft Redmond at 62% SOV. Both Google and Microsoft spend much more on commuting benefits than can be expected from marginally profitable firms. Traditional free-parked corporate commute trip reduction programs are comprised only of incentives without a driving price increase for SOV. These programs are disappointingly ineffective, often yielding only 1% commute shift. Stanford does a great job of pricing parking and of making parking a really big hassle. (Palo Alto Council is really good at demanding that Stanford have "no new net trips," but for some strange reason, Council hesitates when it comes to demanding that Palo Alto voters reduce their driving.)

Overall, the US commuting market has 102M individual commuters with 91% provided with free parking.

Steve Raney

"There doesn't seem to be a way to have an "adult conversation" in the US about raising the price of driving."

Palo Alto could lead, by raising the price of driving in Palo Alto any ideas?

"among commuters with free parking, only 4.8 percent commuted by transit. By contrast, among commuters without free parking, 42 percent commute by transit."

City Hall wants to increase parking, encourage driving, so we're stuck somewhere closer to the 4.8%

Steve Raney,

I googled you and found Web Link

"The Ultra personal rapid transit (PRT) is a new and innovative on-demand system for developed or urban environments. Using small, driverless electric vehicles that run on guideways, the lightweight and flexible nature of the system enables it to be retrofitted into a broad range of environments and provide transportation that is environmentally friendly and operationally efficient."

This sounds interesting for Palo Alto.

A related town square thread "Group calls for more rail crossings, parks around Caltrain tracks" states a priority - to improve connectivity between east and west Palo Alto. The City suggests opening 15 pedestrian crossings, but I think the real problem are not pedestrian but cars.

Dreaming out loud, but if only to reduce cars in Palo Alto, it would be nice if all the parking would stay along 101 and 280, and thee pods could transport commuters into central Palo Alto, or have various routes to major offices like Stanford Research Park.

They look faster and more fun than buses.

From Silly: "People run errands after work, go grocery shopping after work, have to pick the kids up, etc. During the work day, they often go to off-site meetings, out to lunch, to the dentist, etc. They're not going to do that on bicycles."

To Silly: Not true. I do everything you mention above as a part of my bike commute(except the kids since I don't have any). And I do it in a dress and heels. And in rain, dark and cold. With the proper gear--saddlebags, baskets, fenders, raincoats--it's not hard at all. If I'm going more than 5 miles one way or in a hurry, I take my bike on Caltrain.

I live in Mountain View and work by San Jose airport. My dentist is at Stanford, my doctor at PAMF, my primary shopping areas are San Antonio and Stanford Shopping Centers. I've met our PR firm for dinner on University Ave and business alliance partners on Castro Street. I've also Caltrain + biked to both SFO and SJC for 1-2 day business trips. The more I bike, the fewer limitations I find.

I don't do this to save the planet, I do it because it's pleasant, convenient, and I get a continuous stream of low intensity exercise. Our area is one of the best in the country for bicycling, in part due to visionary folks like the late Ellen Fletcher.

Look beyond the excuses and find a way to work bicycling, walking and transit into some of your daily trips. Every trip counts.

I only have dentist appointments twice a year, so that is a pretty flimsy excuse for driving to work every day. There may be occasions when people need to drive, but that is OK. We don't need everybody to bike to work every day. If people do it once a week that is a 20% reduction in car volumes, which is enough to eliminate congestion. Many people start by biking once a week, then find that the barriers they imagined are not so high after all and they enjoy it, increasing their percentage.

Regarding no bus checkpoints in Menlo Park: not all bus stops are listed on a schedule due to space limitations. Learn more about transit by surfing the transit agency's website. They generally have a customer service center and the staff would love to answer your questions about where the bus stops. Get out and explore instead of saying no from the sidelines.

Interesting stats about commuting in the area:
Web Link

Statistical representations are weak when undated. Larry's weblink above looks like 2012 data, like when this thread was started. Fortunately our comments here get an automatic time-stamp. Whether commute patterns have changed much in the past two or three years would be interesting. Most major alterations I read or hear about are anecdotal or due to disruptive construction projects. Data collection methods may be questionable, since many employees give answers the survey wants to see or transit providers inflate their figures to increase funding.

I am tired of people saying we are never going to have BART. BART close to the 280 side of town would help greatly with a Stanford Station and VA station.

If the BART is going to Santa Clara than Mountain View will follow - they are on top of their game. They have CALTRAIN, Lite rail, and buses.

As to electrification of CALTRAIN in preparation for HSR forget it. Both Japan and China use maglev technology for their trains - rides on air at 250+ miles per hour.

We need to step up to the best technology which is mag lev - everyone we point to is using it.
We keep getting trapped in old technology and limited options.

@Resident 1 - China has a single 19 mile maglev line, and Japan has a sing 5.6 mile maglev line, so not like maglev is widely in use anywhere. You can pretty up trains, but the whole concept is centuries old tech. If you want to step up why not look ahead past trains.

How do you reduce traffic, increase affordable housing, and reduce our carbon emissions all at the same time?

Zone to permit developers and residents to consider building extreme microhousing by our regions largest work hubs, with the condition these micro-houses will not build/design for any private cars, so no parking for cars other than for shared car services like ZipCars and shuttles, and no car garages but instead bike garages.

Many won't want to live there, they don't need to. There's enough who want to save for some future larger housing (like when one starts a family), who at the same time want to live on an extreme eco-footprint.

Micro-housing in Portland is suffering since it was not adjacent to companies, and added to local parking problems. We can easily substitute some future commercial development to build micro-houses (no impact on open space). Micro-housing is the only type of housing that can be affordable on such expensive land.

For anyone who thinks these would be dorms or slums, haven't seen what a 100 square foot design can look like, this video shows one such design: Web Link

People do what they need to do at different times in their lives. School age children want to bike with friends. Younger adults want to live in the city and take the bus down the peninsula. People with children and working parents need to be able to leave and pick up, drop off, and be available when needed. Older people may have health issues in which they need a car to haul groceries, etc. Trying to dictate how people work and manage their day-to-day lives is an opinion based on the age and health of the opinion maker.

Growing up in los Angeles we used to love taking the Wilshire Blvd. bus to downtown to shop at the big stores and go to the main library. That was a different time and age and it is no longer advisable to allow young teenagers to go downtown and visit the big city - at least in Los Angeles.

Unfortunately the opinion makers usually have an agenda - a company that is selling the components for electrification, or a union that will benefit from some purported service - like building the infrastructure. All those are important elements in the building of the economy but you cannot force feed options down people's throat and say that the total community is benefiting. The people that are providing the service are directly benefiting and the populace then has to chose which is the right fit at any time in their lives.