> > I work in Sunnyvale, my wife works in SF, and we play in Monterey
> Yes, but you've chosen those places due to the prevailing social norm in your society to drive all the time.
You've got it backwards. We chose those jobs because we like to make money. Driving makes it possible for us to earn much more money than we would if we didn't drive.
> Sunnyvale/Santa Clara/Cupertino, so that one of you could walk to work, and you wouldn't have to do too much urban driving to get to Monterey.
There's no "urban" driving between Sunnyvale/SC/Cupertino and Monterey. Urban is inside SF, Oakland/Berkeley.
> Unless I'm going somewhere obscure and far away, or travelling on Sunday, a train can normally get me to within 2 miles of where I want to be, within about half an hour of when I want to be there.
Middle of the day CalTrain schedules aren't every half hour and CalTrain isn't within 2 miles of everywhere I want to go on the Penninsula.
But, let's assume all that AND that CalTrain doesn't take any time to get between destinations. The half-hour schedule gap and 2 miles is an hour travel time.
Only one of our typical weekday trips are anywhere near that.
> That's plenty accurate enough, and certainly as accurate as urban driving.
No, it's not. It's significantly worse than what I've got now. Then again, the only urban driving that we do is inside SF, which is a small minority of our driving as we live in San Jose.
For some of the SJ to SF trips, Caltrain works for us. However, it doesn't a large fraction of the time.
I am seeing that urban transportation doesn't work because people don't use them, so they fail to make money and in the long run getting worse and worse.
I am guessing, if the gas price triples the same thing may not happen just as it is right now.
> am seeing that urban transportation doesn't work because people don't use them
The regions under discussion aren't urban so urban transportation simply isn't relevant.
Urban transportation requires a lot of density or a lot of folks going between common end-points. The latter is fairly rare and is very different from a lot of people going past a given point.
> Yes, but you've chosen those places due to the prevailing social norm in your society to drive all the time.
You've got it backwards. We chose those jobs because we like to make money. Driving makes it possible for us to earn much more money than we would if we didn't drive.
> Sunnyvale/Santa Clara/Cupertino, so that one of you could walk to work, and you wouldn't have to do too much urban driving to get to Monterey.
There's no "urban" driving between Sunnyvale/SC/Cupertino and Monterey. Urban is inside SF, Oakland/Berkeley.
> Unless I'm going somewhere obscure and far away, or travelling on Sunday, a train can normally get me to within 2 miles of where I want to be, within about half an hour of when I want to be there.
Middle of the day CalTrain schedules aren't every half hour and CalTrain isn't within 2 miles of everywhere I want to go on the Penninsula.
But, let's assume all that AND that CalTrain doesn't take any time to get between destinations. The half-hour schedule gap and 2 miles is an hour travel time.
Only one of our typical weekday trips are anywhere near that.
> That's plenty accurate enough, and certainly as accurate as urban driving.
No, it's not. It's significantly worse than what I've got now. Then again, the only urban driving that we do is inside SF, which is a small minority of our driving as we live in San Jose.
For some of the SJ to SF trips, Caltrain works for us. However, it doesn't a large fraction of the time.