Bay Area Dopers--how has your commute been affected?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I live in Oakland (near Lake Merritt) and work in Marin, so the commute this morning (which is usually never a problem now that the Richmond Bridge work is done) was unaffected, aside from the rubberneckers looking at the damage (and boy, howdy, it was a sight! I don’t blame anyone for doing a double take).

But I’m not looking forward to the commute back, since the destroyed 880 connector is going to syphon all that traffic somewhere along the 80/580 Eastbound corridor (and the frontage roads, too, I’m sure, along Berkeley & Emeryville).

Me? I’m going to get off in El Cerrito, take Solano all the way up 'til it connects to Shattuck, and run along the length of that 'til I hit the 24/580 onramps (beyond the destruction area), which shouldn’t be too bad to take home (though obviously lots of stoplights along the way).

But at least once a week, I go to SF after work (this week, it’s Tue, Wed & Thur), and that is going to be ugly. Yesterday I was in Millbrae around 5 before I heard the extent of the damage (I don’t have a radio in my car), so I took the Dumbarton to the 880, crossed over the 238 to the 580, and got home in an hour (which is actually really good for a weekend). Aside from a mile worth of slowdown near Hayward, it was problem-free, so I’m thinking of doing something similar if I end up in the City in the evening (I’d replace the Dumbarton w/the San Mateo, of course).

Given how horrible the Bay Bridge Eastbound back-up can be under more casual circumstances, the idea of stop-&-going along that route only to have to do additional switchbacks and side detours once I’m across the bridge is too much. I’ll cover the additional distance rather than face that particular hell.

Glad nobody was killed, and maybe CalTrans will be able to get it fixed sooner than any of us expect, but I’m not holding my breath. Yikes.

So how is your day-to-day going to change now?

p.s. I should note that public transit doesn’t go to where I work, so that wouldn’t be an option even if my job didn’t require me to have a car for transporting items regularly, which it does.

2

I drive about 10 minutes down El Camino to get to work, so…not at all :smiley:

3

I live in El Cerrito and take the casual carpool to downtown SF. I left early this morning because I was imagining massive backups.

Got on the road at 7am and it was a breeze. Heading “south” on 80 we just hop into the carpool lane and that feeds right into the flyover which was unaffected by the fire. There was a lot of traffic in the left-hand lanes that exit to Oakland/Alameda but that’s to be expected, I was happy that it didn’t clog the rest of 80 up.

Noticed that the toll plaza was nearly vacant; whether that’s because everybody is incredibly delayed or because they are taking mass transit/telecommuting/burning vacation time I don’t know.

The only slowdown I noticed was that everybody was slowing down on the flyover so that they could rubberneck at the downed overpass.

Total time in from Potrero onramp to exiting the car was 20 minutes. Noticeably faster than normal.

Going back today may be a mess though, have to see how that plays out.

4

My commute to get to work: unaffected.

My ability to go visit my cute toddler cousin in Oakland: Potentially seriously impaired.

5

Commute on the way back to EC from SF:

Fastest it’s ever been (AC transit).

Nobody on the road with us, basically. Heading south on 80 was a different story.

I was talking to one of the AC transit managers and his opinion was that an awful lot of people stayed home today, they’ll see on the news how traffic was generally flying and they’ll all hit the road tomorrow, resulting in a gigantic mess.

I’m gonna give it a week and see how it sorts itself out.

Oh and while I’m glad that the driver isn’t seriously injured, I want to hand him a dustpan and a broom and tell him to start cleaning up the damn mess.

6

I’m totally fucked. I commute from Albany (just north of Berkeley) to Fremont along 880. My route from 80 to 880 is now gone.

So, I’ll be crossing town for 40 minutes just to get on the fricken 980 at the end of MLK Blvd. What used to be a 1 hour commute will now be 1h30-1hr40. Fuck that.

Today was nice though. Everyone just bagged it completely so the roads were empty. NICE. But I expect things to resume their usual “edge of insanity” levels within a few days.

My alternative is a bike/BART/bike adventure that is going to cost me at least 2 hours. God damn it.

7

A lot of people took yesterday off when they heard about the crash. It will be interesting to see what happens to the commute today. I bet it gets a lot worse.

Which is why I’m happy to work at home. :smiley:

8

Bumping this to see how the week went (plus come on–nobody’s been affected?!?)

I have to admit that getting from the City to the East Bay wasn’t as bad as I expected. Yes, I have to go to/through Emeryville and around before I can head back in the right 580 direction, but that’s not so bad and still better than the “Detour” that runs me down the entire length of West Grand Ave.

I also have to say Thank God for 511. Friday was my first normal commute home, and the little auto-godsend told me the stretch from University to the Maze was running 0-15mph. 'Nuff said! I’ll be doing the Albany/Berkeley route pretty much daily I suspect (or at least until they get that 880 connector fixed; they’ve already got quite a bit up from what I saw today so maybe it’ll be up and running next week. Wow! :cool: )

So, any observations on how things have changed for you in your commuting patterns now?

9

I don’t even cross the Bay, and my commute has definitely gotten worse. I go from SF <–> San Mateo at off peak times. I used to never have traffic, but now there is. Also, it seems that more people are using the San Mateo Bridge as an alternative, which increases the backlog when it intersects with 101.

10

I suspect that a lot of traffic has been diverted to the San Mateo and San Rafael bridges. I’ve started getting up earlier in Albany, heading south on San Pablo then east on Alcatraz to MLK, then south to the 980-to-880 ramp. From then on it’s the usual clusterfuck all the way to Fremont.

I remember how we adjusted back during the Quake, and this is similar. Amazing how tolerant we are. I should quit my job, but hey, what’s an extra hour and a half a day?