As I've said elsewhere and literally forever, you will not get bicycle commuting until you get reasonable distances to commute.

It isn't as if this is a difficult thing. The San Francisco Bay Area is completely surrounded by cities but the businesses are focused in rather small areas distant from the bedroom communities. In my own town of San Leandro, this used to have an industrial area and there were four companies I worked at here within a couple of miles of my home that I have now. But the businesses other than one and two man types have moved to the industrial centers - San Francisco, the Silicon Valley centers of Milpitas, Mt. View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara etc. and some small number in San Mateo and Palo Alto/Menlo Park which is adjacent to Stanford University.

Before covid-19 the commute traffic to these locations was absolutely impossible. It is 25 miles to Palo Alto were I see my neurologist and the commute time was 1 1/2 hours. I could actually get there faster on a bicycle but only if I were willing to take my life in my hands with cars going 2x or more the speed limit every single day and the cops offering no amelioration. One cyclist I knew had a driver get mad at him and chase him off the road and up through a bamboo thicket breaking all of the bamboo down and screaming "I'll kill you". He happened to have a rear facing camera on his bike and had the entire thing on video. At the end of the thicket was the Highway Patrol station. And he went in and showed them the video only to be told, "We had to be there and personally see it."

The covid-19 BS hasn't improved things since with less traffic on the roads the cars go even faster. And they will take side roads when traveling on the freeway would be much faster. And in order to make up for the time they drive even faster.

You think that making bicycles as a healthier and saner way to commute is going to be necessary in the coming years? No way. The most dangerous drivers on the roads are Tesla drivers. "Get out of my way, I have money".

Do you think that San Francisco is going to give up their tax money from business centers? No, they will build ever larger skyscrapers, and more moronic companies will situate there regardless of crippling taxes. San Francisco is making more and more bicycle only streets but that is because that is the only way that buses can travel on the streets that cars would not allow to leave their stops. Bus drivers were always shocked that I would stop blocking the lane and allow their to leave and attempt to keep their schedules.

The other side of the Golden Gate Bridge has plenty of land and plenty of buildings to put business but they would rather commute. That way the President can live in a skyscraper apartment and pretend to be important in the scheme of things.

On this side of the Bay Bridge virtually all business has left except some small number in Alameda who will occasionally advertise for help, not even look at people like me and they go bankrupt because they can't get any technical people worthy of the name.

A couple of old bosses are interested but would put me beyond my commute limit. One perhaps is getting a new project at Lawrence Berkeley Labs and I could be interested in that. Though I don't know if some PhD candidate might not be a better choice since they are really cheap and I am really expensive. And they need the money and I don't.

The long and the short of it is that if you think that bicycle commuting is a necessity for the future (and I agree) you have to totally change corporate structure to place their facilities where people can get to them via bicycles. Not parking lots the size of Texas and 10 lane roads leading to them all in a concentrated area far distant from the people of needs must live to be able to afford housing at the rates you can afford to pay them.

As for California, as long as Nancy Pelosi, her close friends and family are running this state, business and people with skills and money will continue to leave. California has become the garbage state under Democrat leadership and that doesn't look to change as the streets become filled with homeless, the houses with three generations of illegals and pretty quick the only food available will be from MacDonalds.