Things that made you frown today (Political Version)

[time4fun]

I live in NoVA, though on the outskirts because thats what I can afford. I bought my townhouse for 170k in Gainesville but if I went 15 miles closer to Centreville a condo goes for 300k+. Both of those are 1.5-2 hr solid to get to DC during rush hour. You have a choice if you work in the city, buy for a crazy price near the city, rent, or buy out of the city but have a long commute. The city can only support a certain number of people actually owning land in it. When you have companies with employees that have huge salaries this is exactly what happens.

If it really takes people in Newark 2 hrs to cross the bridge though and literally go 15 miles to work (I'm assuming facebook employees) then you have a separate issues.

Not everyone works at FB or Google or Apple. If the point you're trying to make here is that people who work at Facebook don't have it that bad, you're not going to find any argument. But there really just aren't that many non-FANG, well paying tech companies in the Silicon Valley area, and there are virtually none anywhere near Newark. They're mostly in San Francisco. Even most of the people at Facebook are commuting from the city or pretty far out in the suburbs. There's a Facebook shuttle that goes to Santa Cruz and back every day.


And look, I lived in DC for 5 years. I know the traffic is egregious, but- at least while I was there- there's just no comparing the two. And you have to admit here that there's a HUGE difference between paying $150-300k for a 1.5 hour commute and paying $1m for a 1.5 hour commute.

I don't even know how far out you'd have to go to find a $300k condo out here. And that's the issue.

Again, I'm not arguing that anyone should feel bad for someone who works at Facebook and has to commute 90 minutes every day, but the point here is that 15 miles is a big deal with traffic like this. And 40 miles (which is the distance between Newark and SF) is an even bigger deal.