A giant tunneling machine dubbed Elizabeth is burrowing under London, part of a $25 billion regional train line scheduled to open in 2018. The finished product is intended to to alleviate suffocating traffic, ease pressure on housing costs and share growth across a booming urban center, not just the inner core.
Those problems, if not the solution, should get the Bay Area thinking. Our locale shares London’s anxiety about the future and the next steps to improve livability.A giant tunneling machine dubbed Elizabeth is burrowing under London, part of a $25 billion regional train line scheduled to open in 2018. The finished product is intended to to alleviate suffocating traffic, ease pressure on housing costs and share growth across a booming urban center, not just the inner core.
Costly housing and inadequate transit are concerns that occupy Bay Area residents nearly every day, topics taken on in The Chronicle’s “City on the Edge” editorial series. As the expansive London plan shows, these shortcomings can’t be isolated to the big-city center. They’re regional concerns, taking in dozens of communities.
Other areas — notably the vast region surrounding New York that includes New Jersey and Pennsylvania — are moving in the same direction as London. It’s time there, as well as here,