San Mateo Patch/Renee Schiavone, 3/29/16. "Bay Area grows faster than 370 other US population centers.
| Bay Area population is growing in other cities. Will our City accommodate growth, if not what? |
.... The population growth is causing or exacerbating a couple of the area's challenges. Population has grown faster than the number of housing units, Hing Wong (Association of Bay Area Governments Senior Regional Planner) said, leading to what some have called a housing crisis.
Another challenge is the crowded transportation network, Wong said. BART, for example, has been breaking ridership records every year since 2012, BART spokesman Jim Allison said. That has led to some crowded trains. Between 2011 and 2015, average weekday ridership grew from 344,647 to 412,284, or 19.6 percent, according to Allison." Read more.
Related article. NBC/An Phung, 6/18/14, "Bay Area's Population Boom is a Bust for Housing Market." “ 'The biggest challenge for
policymakers right now is ensuring that people can afford to live in the
Bay Area and move around,' said Ratna Amin, Transportation Policy
Director at SPUR, a Bay Area think tank. Amin points to a
long-term plan that officials adopted last summer to drive housing
development towards urban areas near mass transit systems to stymie
suburban sprawl. The MTC and the Association of Bay Area Governments
approved Plan Bay Area
to put most of the 2 million additional people expected to move to the
region in the next three decades near public transportation. 'We need to focus on
building more compact communities where people can walk, bike, or take
transit systems for more of their trips instead of building more
highways,' Amin said. Real estate experts agree."
Note photograph rendering from San Mateo City Insider News and Events, "Community Development."
Posted by Kathy Meeh
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