When Millennials rule, will trains roll?

August 2, 2013 Updated: August 2, 2013 8:24pm

Can you imagine caring about the Bay Area in a year when you might not be here, but your children will be? Could you put up with some change or inconvenience to make the world a better place in that future year?

Not everyone can, but this question is at the heart of Plan Bay Area, the candid new study on what must be done to make the Bay Area livable, durable and environmentally responsible as its population grows to 9 million by 2040. It will take planning, investment and an openness to change, but if the Bay Area's people can meet those challenges, the region can grow even as it protects the assets of livability, beauty and vitality that have made it the envy of the world.

The most urgent need is to respond to the exploding demand for more compact urban living. The high cost of living in San Francisco is the market's way of telling us to build more places like it: compact housing and workplaces, mostly one to three stories but occasionally higher, on well-connected streets with abundant transit. We don't need to build that way everywhere, only in the places where transit can succeed. Centers that would receive this intensification are a tiny share of the Bay Area landscape, but they would absorb most of its growth.

Transit is the hard part, but a shift in priorities is inevitable. For too long, we have built transit for a car-dominated world, presuming that transit's benefits will be marginal and that its first obligation is to stay out of the way. Why do we still build rapid transit stations in remote freeway medians surrounded by parking, instead of in suburban downtowns that can generate all-day demand? Why does Marin County's transit backbone still consist mostly of lonely bus stops amid pedestrian-hostile freeway interchanges? Why does San Francisco, which proclaimed itself a "transit first" city in 1973, still expose most of its transit to disruption by private-car traffic?

By 2040, when the Millennials are the ruling generation, there will be less patience for this unconscious bias. The economy will function only if we use existing road space more efficiently, and that means giving precedence to the modes of transport that move more people in less space. This idea will eventually become routine, not just because of fairness but because it's the only way to deliver a transportation system that the economy can rely on. There still will be cars, and they'll still be essential for life at low densities, but as in Paris or Amsterdam, cars will be one of many options, not the one provided for by default.

Our current generation of leaders grew up with cheap gas, "free" freeways, and abundant land for suburbia, with a concept of security formed by the Cold War. For Millennials, the issues are economic insecurity and climate change, and they're telling us, in every way they can, that they are not as interested in cars. They are getting driver's licenses later in life, and buying cars later, if at all. They are part of why the amount of driving in America rose steadily until 2004 and has been flat or declining since then. It's easy for older people to pretend that their kids are like they were at that age, but the Millennials are not like their parents. Their formative experience is different, and so are their priorities.

In 2040, the Millennials will sit in the power-seats of government and business. Sooner or later, the world, and the Bay Area, will be governed according to their priorities. So in the end, it comes back to one of the great human questions that every ruling generation has faced: Can you listen to your adult children, and honor the ways that they differ from you? Can you see the value in smoothing the path toward the world that they will rule? Or do you want only to slam on the brakes, protecting your own habits and assumptions?

It's not an easy question, but it's the real question of all long-range planning. How Bay Area residents answer it will decide the future of their region, and possibly the world.

Jarrett Walker is a consultant in transit policy, and the author of "Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives," (Island Press, 2011). He blogs at humantransit.org Please submit your comments via our online form at sfgate.com/submissions/#1