On Revisiting the USA: Crime, CBDs, and Commuting in the post-Covid era.

Some random, but related thoughts …

A Report from San Francisco

I haven’t spent any real time in the City of San Francisco in years, probably the mid- 2000s. I have of course read the online discourse. I wanted to see for myself.

After TRB my son and I visited San Francisco for 3 some days on the way back to Sydney to see some family and friends and show him one half of SanFransokyo.

We stayed in the North Beach neighbourhood, proximate to the Ferry to Alcatraz and the Exploratorium, nearer to Fisherman’s Wharf and the once hot Ghirardelli Square, with good transit access to the city replacing the removed Embarcadero Freeway.

As one does, we visited the local pharmacy. In North Beach, the neighborhood Walgreens drug store fit the bill. It suffered attempted shoplifting two times while we were there (i.e. within a single 15 minute span, two separate individuals, probably on drugs based on observation, tried to shoplift). The vigilant store manager defended the property and saved at least one tub of Oreo ice cream. But I am sure it took a loss overall. Walgreens should promote him. I assume the police in the San Francisco have mostly retired, though a few were out defending society from the Pro-Life march (or vice versa) in San Francisco later that week.

The transit access was largely provided by the MUNI F tram. On Saturday, there was tram-replacement-bus. An apparently homeless man was barred from riding this tram-replacement-bus because he wanted to carry all of his stuff with him. He had unkind words for the intersectional driver who closed the doors on him, and many objects were thrown at the vehicle.

Relatedly, a faithful reader has passed along a link. In short, Minnesota’s Twin Cities Metro Transit posts a code of conduct. This has gotten some bad publicity in the conservative blog-o-sphere. Though the code of conduct is a good code to follow, we sort of wish the passengers already knew that and didn’t have to be reminded. But like contracts, codes of conduct are there to remind us of what we agreed to. As more and more people who need not ride transit don’t, only those without the option of working-from-home remain. So you have a greater share of less than “upright” persons on the vehicles (they are not working from home, and probably not working at all), and fewer “upright” persons to keep them in check.

My experience riding transit in DC Metro and San Francisco suggests demand is way down from the before-times. Neither the DC Metro nor SF BART were busy during what we used to call rush hours. Not even as busy as Sydney Trains, which are still down 20-30% from pre-COVID.

Good news! San Francisco finally has a unified a transit payment system. But compared to systems around the world, Clipper is sad. Its app is sad. And that it took so long to implement is also sad. Based on our observation, it works about half the time. (Compared to say Sydney’s Opal with a 95-100% success rate.) (Fares are also high in SF and DC, enhancing the transit doom loop.)

There is no avoiding the fact that transit is in real trouble in the US. The CBD commute, the core of the radial rail transit market in American cities is in trouble. The streets in downtown DC and SF were emptier than I remember. Neither Market Street in San Francisco nor the streets of Washington DC were busy during a the middle of work day while school was in session. DC was a bit of a ghost town, San Francisco only a bit better (and of course it was winter in DC).

The museums were doing ok in terms of crowds. The displays were good.

San Francisco still has surface parking lots a block from the Bay. This should be the second densest city in North America (after NY). Even today it has the bones of an excellent transit network: bus, trams, BART, and Caltrain are more convenient than almost anywhere else in the US, and the wastes that to provide storage for cars.

North Oakland and Berkeley seem to be doing better. Moe’s Books, one of my favorites, is still there. The same categories of books seem to be on exactly the same shelves. I would not be surprised if some of the same books from 25 years ago are still on the same shelves.

People’s Park has finally been fully seized by the state (i.e. “we the people”) from the “people”, and one hopes housing will eventually be built for Berkeley undergraduate.

In the Bay Area, stores are now only open at 11 or Noon, and closed by 5 pm. (Don’t stores normally open at 9 or 10 in the rest of America, that’s what I remembered … what is this Germany?) This seems a new thing, I assume something about labor regulations, but I don’t know the details.

People’s Park has been Containerised.

Work-from-Home has killed the 20th Century CBD.

Perhaps this is obvious, but I still see people trying to restore Mr. Dumpty to his pre-gravitationally induced state. Covid-stimulated work-from-home has relieved millions of commuters of millions of wasted hours. The cost of this is life in the CBD. Place-based interests (local government, real estate, department stores, newspapers, universities, professional sports teams, etc. in short the growth machine) will fight this. Prior to 1920, most Americans lived in rural areas. Urbanism and moving to the big city is a relatively new phenomenon.

And certainly there will be equilibration, empty offices will see their rents drop, and some suburban firms may take advantage of now cheaper CBD space to relocate. The oldest and most dilapidated office buildings will just be torn down. A few buildings, where the architecture and design permit, may be converted to housing, as many people still like urban consumption amenities. But just as 1946 was the peak of the previous urban cycle, before the suburbs exploded and the peak of public transport use, 2019 will mark a similar high point in the US, and it will be a long time, if ever, that CBDs regain their status in an absolute or relative sense. The Urban Doom Loop: declining demand, declining transit service, increasing crime, fewer reasons to be in the city if no one else is there, repeat, is in full force.

Is America’s Callousness the Secret to its Success?

Despite all of its problems, which are real, from an economic perspective America is still an economic powerhouse in ways. Maybe it is the callousness of the US, the source of many problems (violence, indifference, low life expectancy, deteriorating trust, absolutism), which is also the secret of its success?

Neil Stephenson when describing the Deliverator in Snow Crash said:

There's only four things we do better than anyone else

• music

• movies

• microcode (software)

• high-speed pizza delivery

Stephenson wrote that 30 years ago, and rather than a warning, America built the torment nexus, viewing Snow Crash and other Cyber Punk literature as an instruction manual. We have only become better at software (this was written pre-Web, pre-Internet, pre-GPT). The violence and indifference to our fellow man, coupled with committee meetings, are embedded in the national sport (NFL), which like the country as a whole, seemingly embraces the lagging and remarkably shortening of lifespan as a way of saving on future welfare costs.

But by not worrying about equity or social outcomes, efficiency is gained. Efficiency and equity are often at odds. A dollar reallocated from the productive individual to the unproductive reduces incentives.

This only holds so long as revolution can be avoided. The idea that “Taxes are the price which we pay for civilization,” or, more cynically, the bribe to keep those with otherwise no stake in the system in check, has not been taken to heart. Those who feel they are without stakes in the US system are not going to remain in check for much longer. I sensed this much more in California than DC.

The shorter lifespan doesn’t affect the productive elites, who can continue to collect rents on investments, code software, drink and snort coke, while popping Adderall, while living in isolated compounds (so long as they don’t try to interact with the City of San Francisco or its public transport).

The United States Suffers “The Curse of the First Mover”

It has been long observed that public works in the US are getting a bit long in the tooth. The US was in better shape than its allies and enemies at the end of World War II. As a consequence, much of its infrastructure is older. Not only that which survived the war, but also the things built thereafter. While other countries had to rebuild, the US forged new paths. The US Interstate, now approaching 70, was built before similar networks in most other countries. Many of its subways date from the first half of the twentieth century. Similarly, airports, while they have been modernised and rebuilt, are older (less advanced) and more rundown than those in developing countries. (Compare e.g. vs Sydney which opened its most recent tunnelled motorways in 2023, gleaming new metros in 2024, and modern airports in 2026).

This is not to say the US has not underinvested in recent years in public works, but while depressing, is not of itself a measure of decline. The investments it has made are overly expensive, as has been observed multiple times.

If infrastructure remains functional even while it is technologically obsolete, the earliest adopting countries may not upgrade — and thus have older infrastructure than less wealthy but later mover nations. The benefit of upgrading the infrastructure is marginal (obsolete to non-obsolete, not non-existent to functional), while the cost is real.

In the Global Context

There are now several more wars going on now than just a few years ago. The enemies of the US can sense the domestic weakness, and seek to take advantage. The US is not in the mood for overseas adventures, (though I think it will be once the country is attacked - recall December 7, 1941 or September 11, 2001 for turning points). A series of aging leaders domestically and abroad are making different calculations than you or I would. We are much closer to WWIII than most people recognise. Contrary to expectations, I suspect it will only be a little bit nuclear. We have gone without any kind of nuclear war far longer than me or my classmates expected in the 1970s and 1980s. I don’t know how long that luck can be pushed.