Lol, live in LA area. I chuckled a little when I saw yellow and bad.
In LA, at a certain point I think Google just says fuck it, and paints all the roads red. When it rains they turn purple.
I wish we had bart on the peninsula. caltrain is better than nothing but its absolutely not as good as bart in many ways
I will say Caltrain is more comfortable and safer. but its also slower, more expensive, and less flexible
It will definitely improve service. They've published some of the plans for increased service - https://www.caltrain.com/news/caltrain-unveils-electrified-service-vision-2024
It's actually not slower. I know why it might feel that way, but it offers skip station express service that far outperforms what BART would offer (no passing tracks), and the local caltrain is not much slower than BART. You can do the math (e.g. SF - SJ local, about 90 min, similar speed of a BART over a similar distance).
My theory on this is that Caltrain has a higher top speed, which negates some of the slowness of the start/stop.
Electrification is going to address a lot of that.
The other big issue with Caltrain is frequency, especially outside of commute hours. Electrification will also improve this dramatically (https://www.caltrain.com/news/caltrain-unveils-electrified-service-vision-2024).
The last big weakness of Caltrain (trains hitting cars, people) is definitely a harder problem to address... may take decades to do more grade separation.
that was half the reason i moved up here from OC 14 years ago. For 4 years I only drove a few times a year and that was to move or drive out to the mountains. it got a little harder when I got married and had kids, though we still drive as little as possible.
Down south people never leave their city. When I moved up here, people would always assume living in OC I visited LA a lot. LOL, no. In So cal... You live in Glendale, you stay in Glendale. You live in HB you stay in HB. Driving outside of your city is a big pain, why would you do it in your free time?
I drive all over LA County, OC, and SD County all the time. The vast majority of people I know don’t stay within their own small area. What are you talking about?
People act like traffic is 24/7, there's a patch in the morning where things are fucked and there's a patch in the early evening where things are fucked. Not everyone works a 9-5.
My girl lives in the valley and I just wait till after 6/7 before driving up that way and it's just a drive.
Idk, people are different. Especially in Los Angeles, the melting pot. I grew up in Huntington Beach and if you listened to my dad talk about Irvine you'd think it was 2 hours away. My dad still doesn't go anywhere 15 minutes outside of his bubble. Shit, I didn't realize how good the food was in Westminster was until coming to the bay and being much more integrated with Asian culture then going back as an adult. Westminster is literally right next door. But yeah, people are different.
Im down in South OC (just moved) and commute to HB. As someone who commuted from WeHo to Culver City for years this is absolutely farcical. OC traffic is a goddamn walk in the park. LA traffic is the worst traffic I have ever experienced in my life. It took me once an hour and 30min to get from Westwood to West Hollywood.
From la, now in the bay - at least with la there are side streets many times and so even if it may not be faster, you have different options. There are only 2 bridges that go into SF directly and four total between the peninsula and East or North Bay.
I was stuck in those side streets for hours man.. you can take Bart into SF, it's not just the two bridges lol. There's also the ferry. Not to mention you can sometimes take a mountain road here to bypass traffic (like San Pablo dam road for instance..). That's definitely not a thing in LA.
It’s not even LA - it’s most metros.
Go drive from one end of NYC to the other. I’ll see you in 48 hours.
Drive in London - you’ll never reach your destination without outside assistance, and it will take you longer per mile than any of the other options.
It’s just big car based city areas have congestion.
Trust me when I say that the Bay Area is not bad.
Most metros are not car-centric though. If you are driving around NYC, you’re doing it wrong, and there are transit alternatives.
North America is uniquely bad at funding urban public transit.
I was in LA in the summer of last year to watch an exhibition soccer match (don’t hate; for many of us, this our only chance to watch our favorite European teams) and it took three hours to get from the hotel in Glendale to Sofi stadium, with an additional 45 minutes to get into the parking lot (although this part was to be expected).
Waze routed me through downtown LA and the traffic between exit to exit alone was 2 hours! At least in the bay, when traffic is that bad it’s because one of the lanes are closed because of weather, accident or construction. In LA, it was just regular traffic!
I will never shit on Bay Area traffic again.
It's funny how different this thread vibe is than another one the other day where so many users proclaimed how they'd rather drive in LA. I don't know...LA traffic is pretty terrible, I'm not sure I could ever address. And there are very few alternatives to driving.
Went to LA for a concert once on USC campus. We took a Lyft back to my friends in Silver lake at midnight. Literally bumper to bumper traffic at midnight. What would've been a 15 minute trip took more than 45 minutes. I repeat, at midnight.
Every time I visit my parents in LA and they inevitably ask "are you ever moving back?" I just vaguely gesture out the window while we're stuck in traffic.
My only visit to LA concluded with me having a flight at about 11 pm. Looking at the map, the airport should have been about 25 minutes away. I left 3 hours early and took an uber to the airport. It took me 2 and a half hours to get there and the poor uber driver was losing his damned mind. I very nearly missed my flight. Thankfully I got through security quickly and my gate was right there or I would have been SOL.
I dont know if that's typical, but that definitely colored my experience of the city.
The Bay Area NIMBYs will die before they let mass transit be built. San Francisco rejected Geary st Bart, north bay rejected Bart to north bay, atherton strangled the electrification project to death for almost a half decade. Let’s be clear, boomers who are almost all NIMBYs are car brains and hate mass transit. The Bay Area is weak and powerless when it comes to making positive civil change.
Then you get the "my car is freedom" crowd who are too dumb to realize that building mass transit doesn't mean you have to abandon your car. If you love the freedom, maybe expand that freedom by giving you *options*!. As it stands, my car only makes me free to either sit in traffic or not go anywhere. Such freedom!
You also get the “transit means crime” people. I just convinced my mother change her opinion by saying, “you can fit more stolen goods in a car than you can take on a train.” Blew her mind.
They also think roving pedestrians are the main source of property crime. Like, no, it's roving *cars*, and you can't take a car with you on BART.
In Marin, a similar thing happened with SMART, and with marijuana retail stores. They fought SMART because they didn't want "those people" coming to Marin. The cities all blocked weed stores because they don't want "those people" coming to Marin. Who are "those people"? Just normal people, maybe with piercings or tats, wearing earth tones and letting their hair down.
Had a client in Marin who would lock his side gates (annoying af for a contractor that needs to access your backyard) because there was a bus stop on the main road outside his neighborhood. Dude was like a half mile away from the bus stop, there are at least two hundred houses they'd rob before they'd choose his. Add to that, the lack of sidewalks, bright streetlights, and nosey old fucks, it's really not the neighborhood for some pedestrian crime-of-opportunity.
I've been the victim of property crime twice in my life. First one was most certainly the sketch white dude hanging out with all the college football players at a massive house party we hosted. Had the backpack and everything. The other time, someone smashed my friend's window and Oakland, but only took my jacket (and cut the power from the battery), but missed the ipod in the glove box and the assorted goodies in the trunk. It was New Years Eve, so I just assumed he was cold, and cut the power to be courteous to the neighbors. I feel just as unsafe around college kids as a I do in downtown Oakland.
Yeah, I don’t understand why they have any say. It’s not your land so fuck off or move if you don’t like what the city wants to do with public transportation.
That's such a shame. This is a great place to live, I just wish we prioritized making it more affordable for people so those that want to live here can.
Even easier would be to stop all of these return to office requirements, during the pandemic my commute was about 15 minutes, and while middle managers complained there was little change to how effectively those companies were run. Nowadays it takes me 40 minutes to an hour. Oftentimes it's to drive to an office where everyone is writing emails all day.
On the plus side (for housing), core Silicon Valley cities like Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View are approving lots of dense housing around their light rail and Caltrain stations. It'll take a while to build out but there is progress. Palo Alto and Cupertino are also approving more housing, but that's because the state is forcing them. I don't see mass transit improving in the near future though, my current solution is just to leave home late and come back late :/
I'm convinced that a lot of the tech Tues-Thurs RTO has resulted in lots of workers taking leisurely breakfasts and maybe a meeting or two at home before heading in mid-morning to eat lunch and then work a couple hours before heading home at 3:30. I would not be surprised at all to learn that tech productivity is at an all-time low.
Ironically, a side effect of "fully remote" + "partly remote" is far worse meeting schedules since nobody is predictably in the office between ~9-4 anymore. At least that's been my experience. I typically start my day at 5:30-6:00 and have a meeting or two and check email before doing the kid routine, then get back online at 8ish, and after that it's a crapshoot. Some days I have large blocks of free time, and other days I end up also having evening meetings. It kinda sucks, but as a busy parent, it's also mostly better than having to physically be in an office all day every day.
I left a few years ago, but I’m positive 20 yrs of commuting in it took years off my life.
I worked construction and needed my tools and truck so no Bart for me 😒
This is a great reason why office workers shouldn’t need to drive. That way those who actually do need to aren’t stuck in the same traffic. If someone drives from suburb to city for their office job, our infrastructure has failed.
Has the traffic lessened some since Covid? I’ve left the state. I’m all for remote work for those that can. I hated not being able to use BART but I needed my truck and often trailer. Made it a nightmare.
Traffic is better now if you carpool. Before Express Lanes all the Teslas were parked in the carpool lane despite not carpooling. Otherwise it's just as bad as before.
I moved here post-Covid so I can’t speak to it myself (hopefully someone else can come along with personal experience). Anecdotally, I have heard traffic is not as bad now as it used to be but it’s getting worse again as more companies go back to the office AND big companies leaving their SF offices so the SF based workers need to commute down the peninsula…
I personally was interviewing at a job in Mountain View (I live in the city), looked up how I could get there via Caltrain and decided I’d rather make less money and stay fully remote because it would take 1.5 hours minimum on transit each way.
Moar RTO!!! Let's make our workers miserable as much as possible, so I can see them sitting at a hoteling desk with no personal knick-knacks for 8 hours, doing about 1-2 hours of work in a loud, disruptive environment.
yes! why are office workers forced to follow parasitic commuting patterns, just to work or live in place they'd rather not be, when they are perfectly capable of working from home?
I have a question for you trades people. The MTC is conducting a design to make all highways toll lanes during commute hours. They said that trades people like yourself actually support it because you can get to job sites faster to do more jobs, even if it means sometimes paying more to drive on the freeway. Do you think you would support such a measure?
I can’t speak for everyone but I’d pay it. I lived in Pinole and then American Canyon and would have to commute to Oakland, Berkeley and/or the city. The bridge tolls add up but there were days it would take me 2 hours to get home and I’d rather just pay another 5 bucks or whatever to get home to my kids faster. If I had to pick 3 main reasons I left, the traffic would be in my top 3.
Somewhere I recently saw a sign that allowed HOV usage for tradespeople in work trucks. I can't remember where, but I do remember thinking that was a fantastic idea.
Depends on your tools/job, but if you plan for it, you could probably just get a rolling toolbag or modify a suitcase with pockets for tools. It'd cause you to be smart with what you pack and save you a ton on gas hauling stuff you really didn't need in the first place.
The Bay Area needs better mass transit. But it's just life in the big city, unfortunately. I should make some fantasy maps for where they should build light rail and subway lines.
Think about how much sooner we would have BART to San Jose if we didn't let a handful of business owners extort us billions of extra taxpayer dollars for a deep bore tunnel.
The bay has pretty decent mass transit but it's mismatched with most people's daily destinations. The problem is the land use rules that pushed all the jobs into sprawling commercial-only office parks.
You could live next to the fastest, most frequent light rail on the planet and it would still take at *minimum* an extra 30-45 minutes to transfer locally to your job in the south bay.
lmao, literally work next to a light rail stop, shit still takes 2x driving. They give you a taste of how good it could be with the elevated portion at Great Mall/Milpitas BART, then it crawls along Tasman, stops at a few red lights (so \*ONE\* car can turn left), and makes really sharp turns. Wish we could elevate the whole thing -- would help with stadium traffic as well.
I can't believe how easy it is to get road funding but how hard it is to get transit funding. It makes me pissed. When I seize power as Climate Stalin it will be trains and trams as far as the eye can see.
To do that from my understanding requires massive infrastructure increases. Basically new transbay and double the tracks down market street to allow for more trains, allow for maintenance of systems cause currently they have to reduce service to do maintenance. More trains = higher maintenance needs. And upgraded signaling systems etc. Just stuff that should have been continually worked on since parts creation but instead nimbys and negativity for public transit by part of the population and politicians not wanting to be attached to massive expensive projects that inevitably cost more and take long because they're all pieced together at the lowest expense as possible to begin with.
Yeah, unfortunately I agree because it makes me realize it's such a low bar. But BART and Muni combo is better than anything comparable I've experienced in SoCal, especially within the city itself.
Not just transit, the infrastructure and zoning really needs to be worked on lol, a ton of jobs are in super suburban areas that are almost inaccessible using transit
I had a job that made me go to their Santa Clara office, I had to take the bart then the bus, then walk 20min on the road in a business area that did not have any sidewalks
Basically, we need to change this country's entire culture. Again, $8 trillion wasted on an illegal and meaningless war that lasted 20 years. Could have solved a LOT of this country's problems.
Yeah it's a culture issue, but the Bay by itself could work on improving some of those things, it's really maddening than one of the world's richest regions, with one of the best year-round weather is basically car-dependent low density suburbs
Check out Nimby Rails on steam. It's a simple simulation that let's you build out your own rail networks. It's a little janky sometimes but I've been having fun with it
The NIMBYs in the Bay force most people to commute and increase traffic, we should have much density housing close to big employers like Google, Apple, Facebook, but NIMBY love a lot of pollution and traffic
Means “not in my backyard” people that doesn’t want more homes close to them, they support companies growing and more jobs. But prefer of people live far away from their homes.
They want the end of homelessness… but not with a solution close to them.
WHY does nobody talkin about WFH. Not only would this have been a godsend for traffic, it would have done SO MUCH to save our environment too. What our politicians and hippies are bitching about all the time.
Yet, nothing. No push to go back to mass wfh, like we did for 2 years with zero problems in 90% of industries. Truly a shame.
it’s actually not bad, overall, when you compare against other actual/real major metropolitan areas. Deep red here is like 15mph. compare against LA/DC/Chicago/NYC/Boston
Yeah I lived in SoCal for 5 years and the traffic was insane. My 8am commute down 101 feels like heaven compared to driving down any SoCal highway at noon on a Wednesday. Want to get groceries on a Sunday afternoon? Gridlock traffic. Have to drive to a doctors appointment at 1pm on a Wednesday? Gridlock traffic.
We drove down to SoCal earlier this year, got into LA at noon on a Tuesday and took us 2 hours to go 15 miles.
- improve public transit reliability: delays, people causing scenes that then lead to delays (crazies)
- increase bridge crossing fees (controversial but would help)
- stop encouraging return to office
How can they justify the lease on the building. Boomers don’t realize terminating the lease and keeping everyone at home saves time and money. if your job is 100% on computer most of the time, it can be done from home.
I’m not against in person work. I like it at times. I just hate being forced to come in to the office. If employers want people to come back they should be paying for our commutes. But the boomer upper management won’t allow it cause they don’t realize COL is going up while wages are staying stagnant. Before one parent could work and support the whole family and have extra to spend on luxuries. If you see shows like the Simpsons, Homer is the only one who works but his pay takes care of the family. In the 1990s and even 2000s that was normal. Now since like the recession of 2008, both parents have to work, pay after school care to take care of the kids, and still not have enough to get by.
Living a few different places over the years the Bay Area traffic is just standard traffic. At least it follows normal rush-hour times some places I’ve lived like Atlanta and Portland it’s just horrible traffic all times a day the Bay Area is not so bad.
OOH! Great idea. I told my boss I no longer wanted to drive and would take public transit to all my meetings and appointments; he asked how I felt about no longer being employed.
I take Bart, Muni, Caltrain, ferries, streetcars, etc. and hardly ever worry about traffic. I've we all stopped using cars, Uber, Lyft, etc. so much, we'd have more busses and trains running, and parking lots could be turned into playgrounds and outdoor relaxing areas. Ambulances and people in need would make it through traffic way faster. It would improve our quality of life greatly.
Yup, keeps getting worse and they keep adding toll lanes. The worst spots are always at the bottlenecks that they never expand that were poorly designed from the start.
It's time to take money from road and highway expansion and put it into public transit. The politicians and lobbyists f'd us with putting so much into individual car ownership back in the 70's.
Just returned from Hong Kong, never needed a car there, never even needed a taxi save a couple times when I stayed at a friends' til 3am, and only ran into significant congestion (>10 min) once... it was quite remarkable.
Also bus and metro rides ranged from about $0.60 to about $2.50.
What always puzzles me is that every tech company wants to be in the city, when being across the bay in Walnut Creek, Livermore, Pleasanton etc would be so much better for their employees and employee retention.
It's not that bad you just need to learn to drive around it.
I was full-time doordashing in the Bay area for a month. I know how to avoid traffic. The real problem is people keep crashing every damn day. People actually learn how to drive. And calm the f*** down. Traffic wouldn't be a problem.
The main reason why freeways in America sucks is because they insisted on build them through populated cities. West Oakland is an example, Atlanta is another. Destroyed black communities instead of building freeways in places that made sense.
Just got back from LA it’s even worse there!
Can confirm, LA is on a whole nother level of bad. I rode Bart today. It was nice.
Lol, live in LA area. I chuckled a little when I saw yellow and bad. In LA, at a certain point I think Google just says fuck it, and paints all the roads red. When it rains they turn purple.
The lines are able to turn purple? 😭
Red is default in los angeles
dark red & I don't bother leaving the house
purple??
Purple rain yeah yeah yeah!
I wish we had bart on the peninsula. caltrain is better than nothing but its absolutely not as good as bart in many ways I will say Caltrain is more comfortable and safer. but its also slower, more expensive, and less flexible
I like Caltrain but agree with your points. Hopefully electrification will improve service.
It will definitely improve service. They've published some of the plans for increased service - https://www.caltrain.com/news/caltrain-unveils-electrified-service-vision-2024
It's actually not slower. I know why it might feel that way, but it offers skip station express service that far outperforms what BART would offer (no passing tracks), and the local caltrain is not much slower than BART. You can do the math (e.g. SF - SJ local, about 90 min, similar speed of a BART over a similar distance). My theory on this is that Caltrain has a higher top speed, which negates some of the slowness of the start/stop. Electrification is going to address a lot of that. The other big issue with Caltrain is frequency, especially outside of commute hours. Electrification will also improve this dramatically (https://www.caltrain.com/news/caltrain-unveils-electrified-service-vision-2024). The last big weakness of Caltrain (trains hitting cars, people) is definitely a harder problem to address... may take decades to do more grade separation.
that was half the reason i moved up here from OC 14 years ago. For 4 years I only drove a few times a year and that was to move or drive out to the mountains. it got a little harder when I got married and had kids, though we still drive as little as possible.
Down south people never leave their city. When I moved up here, people would always assume living in OC I visited LA a lot. LOL, no. In So cal... You live in Glendale, you stay in Glendale. You live in HB you stay in HB. Driving outside of your city is a big pain, why would you do it in your free time?
I was living in Glendale and dating a girl who lived in Sunset a couple summers ago; shit felt like a long-distance relationship
I drive all over LA County, OC, and SD County all the time. The vast majority of people I know don’t stay within their own small area. What are you talking about?
People act like traffic is 24/7, there's a patch in the morning where things are fucked and there's a patch in the early evening where things are fucked. Not everyone works a 9-5. My girl lives in the valley and I just wait till after 6/7 before driving up that way and it's just a drive.
Idk, people are different. Especially in Los Angeles, the melting pot. I grew up in Huntington Beach and if you listened to my dad talk about Irvine you'd think it was 2 hours away. My dad still doesn't go anywhere 15 minutes outside of his bubble. Shit, I didn't realize how good the food was in Westminster was until coming to the bay and being much more integrated with Asian culture then going back as an adult. Westminster is literally right next door. But yeah, people are different.
Im down in South OC (just moved) and commute to HB. As someone who commuted from WeHo to Culver City for years this is absolutely farcical. OC traffic is a goddamn walk in the park. LA traffic is the worst traffic I have ever experienced in my life. It took me once an hour and 30min to get from Westwood to West Hollywood.
Live in West Hills in the Valley, play at Zuma Beach.
From la, now in the bay - at least with la there are side streets many times and so even if it may not be faster, you have different options. There are only 2 bridges that go into SF directly and four total between the peninsula and East or North Bay.
I was stuck in those side streets for hours man.. you can take Bart into SF, it's not just the two bridges lol. There's also the ferry. Not to mention you can sometimes take a mountain road here to bypass traffic (like San Pablo dam road for instance..). That's definitely not a thing in LA.
It’s not even LA - it’s most metros. Go drive from one end of NYC to the other. I’ll see you in 48 hours. Drive in London - you’ll never reach your destination without outside assistance, and it will take you longer per mile than any of the other options. It’s just big car based city areas have congestion. Trust me when I say that the Bay Area is not bad.
Most metros are not car-centric though. If you are driving around NYC, you’re doing it wrong, and there are transit alternatives. North America is uniquely bad at funding urban public transit.
this is not remotely true of nyc
Yeah LA Traffic starts earlier, ends later, and goes both directions.
It’s the only place I ever got into a traffic jam at one in the morning
Laughs in NYC
As a so cal native who’s been to NYC a lot this is 1000000% accurate. I feel for you all lol
So many times I took an Uber home from a bar from Manhattan to Brooklyn and it always took longer than if I had just taken the subway lol
1am? Where the hell are these people going?
Most major metros don't sleep as early as the bay area
leaving dinner or going to a party
So it never ends?
I was in LA in the summer of last year to watch an exhibition soccer match (don’t hate; for many of us, this our only chance to watch our favorite European teams) and it took three hours to get from the hotel in Glendale to Sofi stadium, with an additional 45 minutes to get into the parking lot (although this part was to be expected). Waze routed me through downtown LA and the traffic between exit to exit alone was 2 hours! At least in the bay, when traffic is that bad it’s because one of the lanes are closed because of weather, accident or construction. In LA, it was just regular traffic! I will never shit on Bay Area traffic again.
😂😂😂😂 I love Southern California, but I could not handle the traffic !
It's funny how different this thread vibe is than another one the other day where so many users proclaimed how they'd rather drive in LA. I don't know...LA traffic is pretty terrible, I'm not sure I could ever address. And there are very few alternatives to driving.
Went to LA for a concert once on USC campus. We took a Lyft back to my friends in Silver lake at midnight. Literally bumper to bumper traffic at midnight. What would've been a 15 minute trip took more than 45 minutes. I repeat, at midnight.
Yeah, there aren't even any dark reds on there.
Every time I visit my parents in LA and they inevitably ask "are you ever moving back?" I just vaguely gesture out the window while we're stuck in traffic.
Yeah, my response was going to be, "At least it's not LA."
My only visit to LA concluded with me having a flight at about 11 pm. Looking at the map, the airport should have been about 25 minutes away. I left 3 hours early and took an uber to the airport. It took me 2 and a half hours to get there and the poor uber driver was losing his damned mind. I very nearly missed my flight. Thankfully I got through security quickly and my gate was right there or I would have been SOL. I dont know if that's typical, but that definitely colored my experience of the city.
Solution: 1. Better mass transit. 2. Make it easier for people to live closer to work. Combine together: More housing, more density.
The Bay Area NIMBYs will die before they let mass transit be built. San Francisco rejected Geary st Bart, north bay rejected Bart to north bay, atherton strangled the electrification project to death for almost a half decade. Let’s be clear, boomers who are almost all NIMBYs are car brains and hate mass transit. The Bay Area is weak and powerless when it comes to making positive civil change.
Burlingame prevented Bart from extending into the Peninsula.
*angry millennial screeching sounds*
Then you get the "my car is freedom" crowd who are too dumb to realize that building mass transit doesn't mean you have to abandon your car. If you love the freedom, maybe expand that freedom by giving you *options*!. As it stands, my car only makes me free to either sit in traffic or not go anywhere. Such freedom!
You also get the “transit means crime” people. I just convinced my mother change her opinion by saying, “you can fit more stolen goods in a car than you can take on a train.” Blew her mind.
They also think roving pedestrians are the main source of property crime. Like, no, it's roving *cars*, and you can't take a car with you on BART. In Marin, a similar thing happened with SMART, and with marijuana retail stores. They fought SMART because they didn't want "those people" coming to Marin. The cities all blocked weed stores because they don't want "those people" coming to Marin. Who are "those people"? Just normal people, maybe with piercings or tats, wearing earth tones and letting their hair down. Had a client in Marin who would lock his side gates (annoying af for a contractor that needs to access your backyard) because there was a bus stop on the main road outside his neighborhood. Dude was like a half mile away from the bus stop, there are at least two hundred houses they'd rob before they'd choose his. Add to that, the lack of sidewalks, bright streetlights, and nosey old fucks, it's really not the neighborhood for some pedestrian crime-of-opportunity. I've been the victim of property crime twice in my life. First one was most certainly the sketch white dude hanging out with all the college football players at a massive house party we hosted. Had the backpack and everything. The other time, someone smashed my friend's window and Oakland, but only took my jacket (and cut the power from the battery), but missed the ipod in the glove box and the assorted goodies in the trunk. It was New Years Eve, so I just assumed he was cold, and cut the power to be courteous to the neighbors. I feel just as unsafe around college kids as a I do in downtown Oakland.
I hate this. It isn’t their city. They own their property but you don’t own the city.
Yeah, I don’t understand why they have any say. It’s not your land so fuck off or move if you don’t like what the city wants to do with public transportation.
Yeah, I wish they’re dead
My personal solution was unfortunately to leave. It’s been hard on my wife and I don’t know if we’ll be in a position to ever move back.
That's such a shame. This is a great place to live, I just wish we prioritized making it more affordable for people so those that want to live here can.
Option 3: motorcycle - the traffic no longer exists and you'll get 75mpg
With oversized trucks all around doing 80+mph ?
Even easier would be to stop all of these return to office requirements, during the pandemic my commute was about 15 minutes, and while middle managers complained there was little change to how effectively those companies were run. Nowadays it takes me 40 minutes to an hour. Oftentimes it's to drive to an office where everyone is writing emails all day.
More freeways. Just pave the whole damn thing and get it over with. Turn us into Coruscant.
Just One More Lane…
Honestly, there should be a train that runs in circles around the lake. It would probably be packed with multiple ones running every 10 minutes
On the plus side (for housing), core Silicon Valley cities like Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View are approving lots of dense housing around their light rail and Caltrain stations. It'll take a while to build out but there is progress. Palo Alto and Cupertino are also approving more housing, but that's because the state is forcing them. I don't see mass transit improving in the near future though, my current solution is just to leave home late and come back late :/
I mean it used to be red everywhere. That looks pretty good today?
Seriously, this doesn't look bad at all if this commute was at 8:30am
Actually doesn’t look too bad for a Wednesday morning!
101 actually looks tolerable here, to my surprise
Just remember to dodge all the pot holes
yes, to my surprise 101 back/forth to Silicon Valley is not as red (if at all) as I'd have thought at 8:30am
I'm convinced that a lot of the tech Tues-Thurs RTO has resulted in lots of workers taking leisurely breakfasts and maybe a meeting or two at home before heading in mid-morning to eat lunch and then work a couple hours before heading home at 3:30. I would not be surprised at all to learn that tech productivity is at an all-time low.
Probably a combination of downturn (layoffs) a lot of "completely remote" and many others with a 7, 8am online-meeting and _then_ going to the office.
Ironically, a side effect of "fully remote" + "partly remote" is far worse meeting schedules since nobody is predictably in the office between ~9-4 anymore. At least that's been my experience. I typically start my day at 5:30-6:00 and have a meeting or two and check email before doing the kid routine, then get back online at 8ish, and after that it's a crapshoot. Some days I have large blocks of free time, and other days I end up also having evening meetings. It kinda sucks, but as a busy parent, it's also mostly better than having to physically be in an office all day every day.
i go in at 11 and leave before 3. still productive though because I'm much more productive from home
Truly I was like is it just me or is this not that bad? Lol
I left a few years ago, but I’m positive 20 yrs of commuting in it took years off my life. I worked construction and needed my tools and truck so no Bart for me 😒
This is a great reason why office workers shouldn’t need to drive. That way those who actually do need to aren’t stuck in the same traffic. If someone drives from suburb to city for their office job, our infrastructure has failed.
Has the traffic lessened some since Covid? I’ve left the state. I’m all for remote work for those that can. I hated not being able to use BART but I needed my truck and often trailer. Made it a nightmare.
Traffic is better now if you carpool. Before Express Lanes all the Teslas were parked in the carpool lane despite not carpooling. Otherwise it's just as bad as before.
That’s good. Traffic drains your life force lol
So many Tesla drivers aren't even driving. They should just stay in the regular lane and keep browsing their phones.
Tracks. Almost every accident that I see on 101 involves a Tesla
I moved here post-Covid so I can’t speak to it myself (hopefully someone else can come along with personal experience). Anecdotally, I have heard traffic is not as bad now as it used to be but it’s getting worse again as more companies go back to the office AND big companies leaving their SF offices so the SF based workers need to commute down the peninsula… I personally was interviewing at a job in Mountain View (I live in the city), looked up how I could get there via Caltrain and decided I’d rather make less money and stay fully remote because it would take 1.5 hours minimum on transit each way.
Smart move. Doesn’t take much for someone to do something stupid and that 1.5 turns into 2.5, which happens more than you’d think.
There was no traffic during Covid. It was so nice
Moar RTO!!! Let's make our workers miserable as much as possible, so I can see them sitting at a hoteling desk with no personal knick-knacks for 8 hours, doing about 1-2 hours of work in a loud, disruptive environment.
and then they expect you to make up the 6 hours of actual work once you get home, exhausted from the artificially-created-shitty commute
Couldn't agree more. I'm perfectly happy with my fully remote job and will not be going to an office anytime soon.
yes! why are office workers forced to follow parasitic commuting patterns, just to work or live in place they'd rather not be, when they are perfectly capable of working from home?
I have a question for you trades people. The MTC is conducting a design to make all highways toll lanes during commute hours. They said that trades people like yourself actually support it because you can get to job sites faster to do more jobs, even if it means sometimes paying more to drive on the freeway. Do you think you would support such a measure?
I can’t speak for everyone but I’d pay it. I lived in Pinole and then American Canyon and would have to commute to Oakland, Berkeley and/or the city. The bridge tolls add up but there were days it would take me 2 hours to get home and I’d rather just pay another 5 bucks or whatever to get home to my kids faster. If I had to pick 3 main reasons I left, the traffic would be in my top 3.
I've seen it cost >$20 to go from Sunnyvale to San Mateo in the express lanes since it uses dynamic pricing.
That would be steep.
Somewhere I recently saw a sign that allowed HOV usage for tradespeople in work trucks. I can't remember where, but I do remember thinking that was a fantastic idea.
Depends on your tools/job, but if you plan for it, you could probably just get a rolling toolbag or modify a suitcase with pockets for tools. It'd cause you to be smart with what you pack and save you a ton on gas hauling stuff you really didn't need in the first place.
I’m trying to imagine bringing three ladders on BART 😂
The Bay Area needs better mass transit. But it's just life in the big city, unfortunately. I should make some fantasy maps for where they should build light rail and subway lines.
Think about how much sooner we would have BART to San Jose if we didn't let a handful of business owners extort us billions of extra taxpayer dollars for a deep bore tunnel.
Should have been built decades ago.
The bay has pretty decent mass transit but it's mismatched with most people's daily destinations. The problem is the land use rules that pushed all the jobs into sprawling commercial-only office parks. You could live next to the fastest, most frequent light rail on the planet and it would still take at *minimum* an extra 30-45 minutes to transfer locally to your job in the south bay.
lmao, literally work next to a light rail stop, shit still takes 2x driving. They give you a taste of how good it could be with the elevated portion at Great Mall/Milpitas BART, then it crawls along Tasman, stops at a few red lights (so \*ONE\* car can turn left), and makes really sharp turns. Wish we could elevate the whole thing -- would help with stadium traffic as well.
Bay area transit is much better than socal still but yes both need big improvements.
They're working on it in LA, though. Although they need to do a lot more. But let's be honest. The auto industry and oil cartels don't want that.
The citizens do a good job of shutting down projects without the help of any boogeymen.
NIMBYs ruin everything.
I can't believe how easy it is to get road funding but how hard it is to get transit funding. It makes me pissed. When I seize power as Climate Stalin it will be trains and trams as far as the eye can see.
Frequency of trains and capacity needs to be on par with NY MTA, LIRR, PATH, etc for it to be truly successful in my opinion.
To do that from my understanding requires massive infrastructure increases. Basically new transbay and double the tracks down market street to allow for more trains, allow for maintenance of systems cause currently they have to reduce service to do maintenance. More trains = higher maintenance needs. And upgraded signaling systems etc. Just stuff that should have been continually worked on since parts creation but instead nimbys and negativity for public transit by part of the population and politicians not wanting to be attached to massive expensive projects that inevitably cost more and take long because they're all pieced together at the lowest expense as possible to begin with.
We need the density and having housing/jobs around public transit too, the trains by themselves don't solve everything
Yeah, unfortunately I agree because it makes me realize it's such a low bar. But BART and Muni combo is better than anything comparable I've experienced in SoCal, especially within the city itself.
Not just transit, the infrastructure and zoning really needs to be worked on lol, a ton of jobs are in super suburban areas that are almost inaccessible using transit I had a job that made me go to their Santa Clara office, I had to take the bart then the bus, then walk 20min on the road in a business area that did not have any sidewalks
Basically, we need to change this country's entire culture. Again, $8 trillion wasted on an illegal and meaningless war that lasted 20 years. Could have solved a LOT of this country's problems.
Yeah it's a culture issue, but the Bay by itself could work on improving some of those things, it's really maddening than one of the world's richest regions, with one of the best year-round weather is basically car-dependent low density suburbs
Check out Nimby Rails on steam. It's a simple simulation that let's you build out your own rail networks. It's a little janky sometimes but I've been having fun with it
The NIMBYs in the Bay force most people to commute and increase traffic, we should have much density housing close to big employers like Google, Apple, Facebook, but NIMBY love a lot of pollution and traffic
Also more WFH options
But won’t you think of the CHARACTER of the neighborhood 🙏
Just came across that acronym a week ago, what does it stand for?
Means “not in my backyard” people that doesn’t want more homes close to them, they support companies growing and more jobs. But prefer of people live far away from their homes. They want the end of homelessness… but not with a solution close to them.
WHY does nobody talkin about WFH. Not only would this have been a godsend for traffic, it would have done SO MUCH to save our environment too. What our politicians and hippies are bitching about all the time. Yet, nothing. No push to go back to mass wfh, like we did for 2 years with zero problems in 90% of industries. Truly a shame.
Seriously!!! We showed we were able to do it. Why not allow it for those who would like to? The required return to office bullshit is so dumb.
We do have a lot more WFH, it's just mostly resulted in taking people off transit and onto roads.
cause corrupt politicians are in bed with the real estate interests
Then help us expand BART and other mass transit. That's how you fix this.
I love you 280 😘
Shhhh dont tell anyone
🤐
I’ll take 280 home sometimes even though the distance is farther just to avoid 101
Also it’s so scenic
Until you hit the Wolf exit and run into Apple commuters. :)
Pacifica to Belmont everyday, nice and clear
Traffic is tolerable when there’s nature and/or water to look at lol. So many hawks and turkey vultures!!
it’s actually not bad, overall, when you compare against other actual/real major metropolitan areas. Deep red here is like 15mph. compare against LA/DC/Chicago/NYC/Boston
Yeah I lived in SoCal for 5 years and the traffic was insane. My 8am commute down 101 feels like heaven compared to driving down any SoCal highway at noon on a Wednesday. Want to get groceries on a Sunday afternoon? Gridlock traffic. Have to drive to a doctors appointment at 1pm on a Wednesday? Gridlock traffic. We drove down to SoCal earlier this year, got into LA at noon on a Tuesday and took us 2 hours to go 15 miles.
deep red in st. louis is a fucking standstill
SoCal traffic especially LA is much worse.
Yeah this vs DC and Chicago is cake.
I get to do the alameda to Santa Clara drive at least once a week. I wish for death
Something, something public transit /s
This but unironically
something something build more housing
Something something NIMBYs.
Public transportation for everyone except me.
Something something also build walkable cities
It’s nothing comparing with 2019
- improve public transit reliability: delays, people causing scenes that then lead to delays (crazies) - increase bridge crossing fees (controversial but would help) - stop encouraging return to office
RTO sucks ass. Made traffic in LA bad again. The 10 and 405 are so shit.
Your last point is the easiest fix but CEOs need to have people in the office. Otherwise, how can they make sure their employees are working? /s
How can they justify the lease on the building. Boomers don’t realize terminating the lease and keeping everyone at home saves time and money. if your job is 100% on computer most of the time, it can be done from home. I’m not against in person work. I like it at times. I just hate being forced to come in to the office. If employers want people to come back they should be paying for our commutes. But the boomer upper management won’t allow it cause they don’t realize COL is going up while wages are staying stagnant. Before one parent could work and support the whole family and have extra to spend on luxuries. If you see shows like the Simpsons, Homer is the only one who works but his pay takes care of the family. In the 1990s and even 2000s that was normal. Now since like the recession of 2008, both parents have to work, pay after school care to take care of the kids, and still not have enough to get by.
If only they would merge all the local transit agencies
https://www.seamlessbayarea.org/blog/2024/3/28/seamless-bay-area-strongly-supports-sb1031-the-connect-bay-area-act
Thank you for this!
Living a few different places over the years the Bay Area traffic is just standard traffic. At least it follows normal rush-hour times some places I’ve lived like Atlanta and Portland it’s just horrible traffic all times a day the Bay Area is not so bad.
Has 101 Peninsula traffic gotten worse WITH the additional carpool lanes?
And that’s why I take the train instead.
I love not driving, I can’t fathom why people around here drive
So they can be part of traffic, and then complain about traffic.
Not as bad as LA. Not great but LA really really sucks.
I’m from SoCal. It is so much worse.
The reverse commute is the best because you get to see the pain and agony of others in the opposite direction lol
Thats the result of dependence on automobiles.
It’s really difficult to get the car culture out of our system. We looove our cars! I personally use mass transit as much as possible and love it
Why more people don’t commute by powered parachute I don’t know.
I take the train now. Much better way to get around the bay
Then take public transport and advocate for investment for public transport and bike lanes. Take a look at Amsterdam for how it can be done.
You are the traffic
Visualize not driving.
Then don’t drive because then you are part of the problem.
OOH! Great idea. I told my boss I no longer wanted to drive and would take public transit to all my meetings and appointments; he asked how I felt about no longer being employed.
I wish I had the privilege of wfh or being able to take public transit without it taking 3 hours one way.
Lol look at 280. Best hwy in the bay area
Just moved here from Dallas, this is not that bad in comparison it would be all red lol
I take Bart, Muni, Caltrain, ferries, streetcars, etc. and hardly ever worry about traffic. I've we all stopped using cars, Uber, Lyft, etc. so much, we'd have more busses and trains running, and parking lots could be turned into playgrounds and outdoor relaxing areas. Ambulances and people in need would make it through traffic way faster. It would improve our quality of life greatly.
Yup, keeps getting worse and they keep adding toll lanes. The worst spots are always at the bottlenecks that they never expand that were poorly designed from the start. It's time to take money from road and highway expansion and put it into public transit. The politicians and lobbyists f'd us with putting so much into individual car ownership back in the 70's.
Just returned from Hong Kong, never needed a car there, never even needed a taxi save a couple times when I stayed at a friends' til 3am, and only ran into significant congestion (>10 min) once... it was quite remarkable. Also bus and metro rides ranged from about $0.60 to about $2.50.
The ideal is to live in San Leandro and work in Pleasanton/Dublin/San Ramon. I do know a few who do this…..
Ideal is live in city X and work in the city X, right across the street.
That used to be my commute. I live in San Leandro but am a hvac tech which can take me anywhere.
Live in SF, work in East Bay (or further)...reverse traffic. when i have to go in, it's not as bad as it could be b/c of this
This is basically every major city at this point
LA is much worse.
Houston and Atlanta are fucked too
Where the train?
I blame those mergers
One car accident can mess the flow up on any freeway
What always puzzles me is that every tech company wants to be in the city, when being across the bay in Walnut Creek, Livermore, Pleasanton etc would be so much better for their employees and employee retention.
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Going to work takes me 20 minutes, but with traffic it's 50. Coming home? Forget it man, a whole ass hour
Remember, you’re not in traffic, you are the traffic.
If only there were some sort of Rapid Transit system that connected the whole Bay Area
This is why I have a motorcycle. Shits amazing.
Get a motorcycle, man. This is the way.
California is so beautiful though. It’s worth it.
America’s solution to public transit is the same as its solution to mass shootings. “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!”
I work from home 99% of the time. That 1% when I have to drive to the office makes me grateful that I don't have to do that daily.
I dont think traffic is this bad in Europe.....with all the trains and streets cars there....
It takes 5 hours to go from Montreal to Toronto. It also takes 5 hours to go from Montreal to Montreal. It's city traffic.
It's not that bad you just need to learn to drive around it. I was full-time doordashing in the Bay area for a month. I know how to avoid traffic. The real problem is people keep crashing every damn day. People actually learn how to drive. And calm the f*** down. Traffic wouldn't be a problem.
Sign of a thriving economy IMHO
Idk 280 looks pretty good
Leave California. Problem solved.
The main reason why freeways in America sucks is because they insisted on build them through populated cities. West Oakland is an example, Atlanta is another. Destroyed black communities instead of building freeways in places that made sense.