You guys in CA probably already know this but it amazed me

When, oh when, how far does it have to go (I wonder) before we are able to, before we do, rise up and demand it?

That’s more then any state. As far as the senate, it’s two per state. That will never change without a constitutional amendment.

this suddenly sprang into my head:

Has more population than all of Canada. Yikes!

Im hearing commute nightmares of colleagues that live in the Southland spending 1-2 hours in the morning and then again in the evening. Way too many people want to live in both the Bay Area and the LA region. The sleepy little California Central Valley agricultural town of Stockton where I was born now has a population greater than Pittsburgh, Pa and Cincinnati, OH (actual city population, not the metro regions) Most of the colleagues I work with in the Midwest and East Coast have never even heard of Stockton, Ca.

And I hear it constantly from her how absolutely horrible it is to get anywhere. It's like the first consideration in her mind which is so unlike her.

I didn't notice this very much at all north of la like Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez, north of Napa.

That's amazing about Stockton. Overall, love California though. The biggest thing that I couldn't get used to after living there for a couple months, was that when you wake up half of the major events in the US have already happened. Big deal if you're a News junkie

I seldom drove a vehicle during my bay area gigs.
Partially because I truly detest contending with traffic. Even when public transit wasn't tremendously reliable--- certainly several interesting stories to tell getting around on MUNI, including a racist driver who sped past stops if no passengers of color were waiting-- later in horror recognized me as his caregiver in a "come to Jesus" moment.
But it was there. Never saved any time-- but BART chattered along smoothly enough to provide many hours of study time, as well as a carefully timed excursions on the Concord line to break out into sunshine for a change and some Vit D conversion!
I remember seeing the newspaper articles in the 1960's about the "STOP BART!" committee who successfully halted BART expansion down the peninsula in favor of "expressways"- now veritable polluting parking lots from 5 to 7 p.m.. Grey haired old ladies long dead now who never had to contend with their backwards transit attitudes.
Public transit is far from a perfect solution but where the infrastructure exists it can end up salvaging us from the ignorance of exponential freeway expansions that's made greater L.A. a hair pulling nightmare.