what is wrong with you, California?

we've moved a lot the past couple years, and with a job in the tech industry, a move to San Francisco is always in the background.  it's casting a closer shadow than it used to because he just got a contract gig for a major company out there, with the possibility of full-time hire at the end of the year.  he said to  me, would you mind moving to California?  and i said no, not really.

and then yesterday i discovered the state of mass transit out there.  and now i'm not sure i want to move.

what is wrong with you, California?

i already knew LA had a pitiful system, but i thought, you know, maybe that was just the sprawling LA, movie-star-and-cars thing.

but damn, Google Maps estimates it will take him 25 minutes to drive from SFO to the office, but it will take 2 hours on the train.  what the fuck?  no, seriously.  here on the east coast, commuter trains to the suburbs are just about equal with driving, especially when you consider rush hour traffic.  i know, i've done both.  the time difference is negligible and the trains deliver you right to the city center and connect you with the subway.  which is another thing about SF - the BART system is weird.  i took it when i was out there last fall and it seemed like huge sections of downtown SF aren't accessible by rail at all, which is another weird thing.  you can get all over the major areas of Boston, NYC, Philly, and DC by rail; again, i know this because i've done it. 

i can totally see why Californians are skeptical of their state's high speed rail plans; they've never even experienced normally functioning commuter rail. 

i don't know if the lack of mass transit options help to encourage or buttress the silicon valley tech insularity, but i rather think it does have something to do with the culture.  in the major east coast cities, mass transit is used by everyone, regardless of age, race, or class.  the business exec in the expensive, perfectly tailored suit is riding the subway or the commuter train next to the homeless person, the grad student, the software developer, and the corner store employee.   public schools hand out bus/subway passes to their students.  an east coast subway is a cross section of humanity.  i rather get the impression that this isn't quite the case in SF/silicon valley.

in an ideal world, instead of sending buses for their employees, the deep-pocketed tech companies would be backing new rail construction and upgrades, but that won't solve the problems that the buses are causing anyway.  rail construction requires land, which means moving people off of it and in the very densely populated bay area, that would probably end up impacting and evicting the same lower income residents that are already suffering negative impacts and evictions from the company buses.

on the other hand, rail infrastructure upgrades to let more trains run faster don't have that kind of problem.  the land and right-of-way are already owned by the transit companies.  and electric rail doesn't pollute like highways do.

i guess the west coast cities were smaller and rougher when the great mass transit construction projects were being done on the east coast and in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  poor California.