(first posted 8/24/2016) Living in the San Francisco area has its undeniable charms and attractions, however the traffic is not one of them. In the late 1990’s to the mid 2000’s we lived in the East Bay while I worked in San Francisco, necessitating a long daily slog across the Bay Bridge.
The first house that we ever purchased was in Dublin, CA, exactly 37 miles from the office and eventually we moved to Oakland, bringing the commute distance down to 11 miles.
This doesn’t sound horrible on the face of it, but realize that on a normal morning, those distances generally amounted to a minimum of an hour in the car even for the shorter commute. On a rainy day or if there were accidents on the road (and there were always accidents on the road), this would get much longer.
One of the main reasons for this is the fact that to get to San Francisco from the East, one has to cross a bridge, namely the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. This is the same bridge that famously suffered a partial collapse during the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 and was found to be seriously deficient from a seismic viewpoint.
It is only in the last few years (some 20+ years later) that the eastern portion of the span has been replaced and nowadays the new span is experiencing its own structural issues to the surprise of few that are at all familiar with CalTrans and California politics in general.
When crossing the bridge from the East, every driver has to pay a toll. When I started regularly commuting across it in 1998, the toll was set at $2, currently it is $6 during commute hours. However the exception was/is for carpoolers, for which there was no toll charged at the time – nowadays a reduced toll is charged.
The toll itself was only part of the problem however. The bridge has five lanes heading into San Francisco. The toll plaza has over 20 lanes/booths, mainly due to the fact that three different freeways enter it at the same point (I-80, I-580/24, I-880) and it then widens to accommodate all the drivers having to pay the toll.
One would think that seems like a reasonable amount of lanes and perhaps it could be, but the bridge itself is very much a choke point, being five lanes on the span that at the end of it narrows again to three lanes where it enters San Francisco proper since the two outside lanes end up becoming off-ramps which slows everything down.
Electronic toll transponders were just being introduced when I began using the Bay Bridge but most toll booths still accepted cash, meaning that it was not much faster depending on the mix of cars ahead of you with cash versus transponders.
Every year since there have been more dedicated “FasTrak” lanes but even if you have a FasTrak transponder you then get stopped at the metering lights beyond the tollbooths before you can actually cross the bridge.
The metering lights control the flow onto the bridge and make for a fantastic launch pad as you are forced to a full stop until your light changes – after the launch your lane then merges with several others before actually getting on the span at which point the traffic is a total crapshoot. So whether one pays with cash or uses their FasTrak, during commute hours when the metering lights are on, there is not much of an advantage to either method.
Back to the carpool lanes. There are two dedicated carpool lanes that go past the toll plaza on the left side. You can see them in the picture above, just to the left of all of the traffic.
The big advantage (besides saving the toll) is the fact that there are no metering lights, so if you have a carpool you can save huge amounts of time (easily half an hour to over 45 minutes some days) by using those lanes. However, yet again, there is a “Gotcha” in that this is one of the few places in the state where a carpool has to consist of THREE people as opposed to the usual two.
The only exceptions are motorcycles, and two-seaters, defined as only having two seatbelts. So a standard Porsche 911 does not qualify, neither does a Ford Mustang, nor a Datsun 280Z 2+2, notwithstanding the fact that there is no real way to get an adult into those rear seats. A regular cab full-size pickup with three-across seating is perhaps a gray area but those are rare as commute vehicles in the area and it’s not worth the very real risk of getting caught.
A carpool violation carries significant fines and there is almost always a CHP cruiser stationed at the lanes and often very busy writing tickets. It was $271 when I lived there and I understand it is $481 nowadays. I believe that the amount and level of tickets very possibly exceeds the lost tolls due to carpooling.
It is amazing how many people chance it and there is virtually no way to be in the lane “accidentally” as it is very clearly marked with signage and coned off from the regular traffic lanes.
As an aside this is one of the many reasons that Hybrid and Electric vehicles are so popular in California, they are (well, were, in some hybrid cases) issued with stickers that allowed them to use the carpool lanes while only having a single occupant on board. Compressed Natural Gas vehicles are also issued with the same stickers, giving them the same rights and advantages.
I know numerous people who couldn’t care less about fuel economy, they just want to be able to get in the carpool lane. This is why you often see people in Priuses running at 90mph+ on California’s freeways, usually in the carpool lanes. A Prius could run on a mixture of twenty pounds of coal and three dead baby seals per 100 miles and they would have sold just as many.
Anyway, the scene is (finally) set. Carpooling is the way to go, right? The only problem is that you now need warm bodies in your car and your neighbors may not be needing to go to San Francisco at the same time as you or even at all. Additionally, parking in San Francisco is limited and expensive so many would rather not drive. Hence, an idea known as “Casual Carpool” was born in the ‘70’s.
The idea (and I know my mother was horrified when I first explained it to her) is that there are numerous semi-official collection points in the East Bay area where random strangers line up along with random cars.
Every car picks up either one (for two seaters or if there are already two people in the car) or two (to make three total) people in order to create a carpool only for the purpose of crossing the Bay Bridge quicker.
I first started as mainly being a driver when I was commuting from Dublin in the far reaches of the Bay Area. I would pull off the I-580 Freeway into a neighborhood and line up beneath a sign that designated it as a carpool collection point (the various cities do generally supply signage but don’t officially publicize or take responsibility for the activity).
The disadvantage of the point I chose as a driver (as with all of them) is that sometimes there would be more cars than people, so there would be several cars waiting, once at the front of the line often one person would get in and then we both waited for a second rider.
Once we moved into Oakland (closer to the Bridge) I sometimes drove but more often transitioned into a rider and would walk down our hill past the local bakery, buy a couple of fresh-baked rolls to eat while waiting, and head to the collection point in the parking lot under the I-580 overpass to stand in line and get into a random stranger’s car along with another stranger which is where I believe the above picture was taken.
You’ll note that the last two pictures above seem to show areas that no sane person would loiter in for any longer than absolutely necessary but think about it if it’s raining; under an overpass or a bridge makes for a much more comfortable(and drier) wait. Both those pictures were in Oakland, parts of which are quite rough but the unsavory types (if there ever were any) picked other, less populated places to be. Other parts of Oakland are extremely nice and very expensive but aren’t the parts that ever make the news unless engulfed in a massive fire such as the one in 1991.
Anyway, this was a more trafficked stop than the one I used to use but it was still somewhat hit or miss if there were more cars than people or vice versa. However, the wait was almost always far preferable to being stuck in the toll plaza as a solo driver.
There are several major unwritten rules to the process.
- Never are there to be more than three people in a car. Doing so would deprive others of the benefit. People will split up if they are a larger party, they all end up at the same place.
- One must get in the car that pulls up. There is no telling someone to go ahead of you to get into the primered Monte Carlo because you want to get into the new Mercedes S-Class that pulls up behind it. Luck of the draw.
- One does not speak to the driver unless spoken to first, beyond perhaps a perfunctory “Good Morning”. Most rides pass in silence.
- The driver controls the audio system and the only generally acceptable entertainment is NPR.
- The driver controls the HVAC. A polite driver will inquire as to occupant comfort, a rider virtually never asks for a change, even when asked.
- The driver should practice their best driving behavior and passengers should buckle up without being asked to do so.
Once the passengers are in the car, the driver pulls into traffic and onto the freeway, enters the carpool lanes in the toll plaza, crosses the Bay Bridge and exits at the Fremont Street exit for San Francisco (the first exit which is actually still on the bridge), dropping everyone off at the corner of Fremont and Mission from which point everyone makes their own way onward.
A particularly nice driver may state during the ride where they (the driver) is heading to, sometimes this is more convenient for one or more of the riders and thus works out for everyone but if not, the standard drop off point is the default.
Most passengers simply walk to their office (I myself faced a half-hour walk to the South Of Market office where I worked) and the drivers take their car to their parking place wherever it is in the city or beyond, oftentimes nowhere near the drop off point.
One of my most memorable rides included being a passenger in one of the first Toyota Priuses sold in California. I broke protocol by speaking and asking the driver all about it, she was thrilled to explain it all to me and showed me the screen that shows when and where the power was cycling to and from in the car and it was quite an enjoyable experience that opened my eyes to the near future.
Another time was less enjoyable. It was a typically rainy fall day and I thought I did well by getting into a Toyota Previa with lots of space in the middle row. However it became evident that the driver did not believe in ventilation and kept the fan in the OFF position with the selector on recirculate, thus making the van a sealed box.
With zero airflow it was quite warm, clammy and claustrophobic in the van and I was feeling decidedly queasy by the time the ride was over. To this day I absolutely require some sort of airflow in a car and usually prefer to even have my own window open as compared to just running the fan.
In general though it was just a lot of fun for a car geek like myself to be in a different car every day, especially newer or higher-end ones. If the car was mundane I’d just zone out, but more often than not it was interesting.
From the time most of us were little kids, especially in large population centers, our parents generally told us to not get into strangers’ cars and not to pick up random strangers. On the whole that’s probably good advice. There is the potential for many things to go wrong.
Casual Carpool, while not perfect and could technically be considered hitchhiking by a different name, does have a generally excellent safety record. There were/are however sites (as well as Craigslist) where people will post cars to avoid getting into, be it due to a bad or unsafe driver or just getting a creepy vibe etc.
Generally people will shy away from a white cargo van without windows and all of a sudden find reasons to leave the line and walk around the block, no matter how much free candy may be on the dashboard. I’m obviously exaggerating but you catch my drift. For the most part, it’s just regular people and regular drivers in cars both old and new, cheap and expensive, trying to get where they are going for either the least amount of money or using the least amount of time.
Coming home at the end of the day is a bit different. While Casual Carpool does exist, it is a mere shadow of the morning situation. One reason is there is no toll heading East across the bridge. Another is that all of the approaches are bad traffic-wise, even the carpool access lanes on the on-ramps (of which fewer exist).
As for myself, I generally just walked back to the TransBay Terminal and got on the next ACTransit bus headed for my area of Oakland. When I drove I never bothered with picking anyone up, there was no advantage.
The main reasons for taking someone with you would be if you were going further out along routes that have carpool lanes such as I-80 through Berkeley and beyond, for which there is a single pickup area with signage based on final destination, thus providing a benefit once more.
Overall it was a great option to have. I have taken BART in to the city (limited schedule, also cramped with poor ventilation and expensive), owned and ridden a motorcycle (fun but also often scary, a pain in bad weather, story is here), and driven by myself (boring and expensive).
I give high marks to Casual Carpool and while I no longer live in the area myself still have several friends that use it every day. If I was in the same live/work situation again I would certainly still use it.
That is…a really fantastic idea. I’m surprised it hasn’t caught on in more places.
In the Northern Virginia suburbs of D.C. it’s called “slugging,” and it’s built around the HOV-3 (formerly HOV-4) lanes on Shirley Highway (I-95 and I-395). It also originated in the ’70s, with people driving from Springfield, Va., to the Pentagon poaching riders from bus stops so that they could use the express lanes. There are now multiple slug “routes” to and from large employment centers and the suburbs south of D.C.
It’s interesting that the unwritten rules of slugging etiquette are almost identical to the ones in the Bay Area.
The key elements for making it work here are: 1) bad traffic, 2) lots of people with similar commutes, 3) free flowing express lanes with at least HOV-3 requirements (HOV-2 lanes on I-66 haven’t been enough to support slugging in the western suburbs), 4) public transit alternatives for slugs who aren’t able to get a ride.
More here: http://www.slug-lines.com/Slugging/About_slugging.asp
Virginia also has (or had) hybrid exemptions similar to what is described in the article. This became very controversial as hybrids became more common — oftentimes, more than half of vehicles in carpool lanes were single-occupant hybrids. I don’t drive those routes any longer, so I’m not sure what the current status is.
Another quirk is that babies and kids qualify as occupants for carpool purposes. I used to take I-66 carpool lanes home after picking my kids up at daycare — many times I was stopped at police traps meant to catch carpool cheaters; when the officers saw the kids they would tell me to move on.
I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that nonsense any longer.
As Virginia converts old HOV lanes to new HOT lanes they’re finally ending the hybrid exemptions. I think I-66 is the only NoVa road where some Clean Special Use plates are still grandfathered in. That will end very soon when the toll infrastructure gets built on I-66.
For a year or so I carpooled on I-66. It never made sense to me that commuters could drive solo in giant Toyota Highlander hybrids that got worse gas mileage than my low-tech compact car — especially since traffic slowed to a crawl each morning between Falls Church and Fairfax Drive. All those hybrids meant an I-66 carpool commute wasn’t a big time saver vs. a singleton US-50 commute.
At least there’s always Metrorail for a fast, safe and reliable ride — oh, wait …
I think that the ‘freeloader’ aspect of hybrids/electrics is where a lot of the hate stems from. Me personally, it makes my blood boil that special priveleges are dangled in front of someone for toeing that line. A lot of that has been going away (at least the state/federal funded stuff), as well it should. And sales of those things has been plummeting now that many of the freebies and giveaways are drying up.
Yet some private companies are jumping on with this. Since my work installed an EV charging station with free usage (as well as a nice pompous writeup on the employee bulletin board blathering on about all the ‘great efforts’ of EV buyers), Ive seen a few more electric cars pop up here. I cant see taking on a fat payment for the illusion of getting something for nothing, myself.
I cant see taking on a fat payment for the illusion of getting something for nothing, myself.
Folks have gotten fantastic lease deals on Nissan Leafs, like $99/month (IIRC). Tesla just announced a $599 two-year lease on a Model S. There’s lots of great deals on EVs. For a commuter car, with free juice at work, it could be very compelling.
$599/mo for a LEASE?!?! YIKES. Granted, you’re talking about a $70k luxury car, but this more or less backs up my point which is that these cars are not all about saving money. Im no fan of the Teslas myself but I can appreciate that the car has appeal from an aesthetic and luxo-tech perspective. I highly doubt that anyone would pay half again a mortgage payment to avoid paying $150/mo worth of petrol.
I do remember in Atlanta you could get a Leaf for $99/mo by the time all the tax credits and rebates were in. A friend ‘s relative got one just because at this point it’s practically a new car for free. They MAY be that cheap now without subsidies just because gas is cheap(er) and econoboxes just don’t sell as well if fuel prices aren’t creating a panic mode.
Without making this a political debate, where is the $$ coming from to subsidize EVs? And when my company ripped up a good portion of the parking lot to install an EV charger (and dedicated 4 of the nice close parking spots which are conspicuously right in front of the building), I wonder how much all this cost? Now a total of about 6 employees out of 2000 are getting a freebie in the form of the company fueling their cars. I didn’t get any gas voucher. And this had to have cost 5 figures at least.
There’s something informal like this in San Jose del Cabo.
When I drive during the summer months (yes, Seattle does have summer), I drive with all the windows open a little bit with the A/C on. That provides some ventilation for a comfortable commute.
My complaint about carpool lanes◊ is, they often slow down to only a little faster than prevailing speed in heavy traffic, perhaps due to fear of the speed difference. Plus, there’s always someone behind me who wants to go 5mph faster even if I’m already over the limit. I don’t like people behind me getting angry. Given the lack of self-control that in recent generations has been taught as a virtue, we should not be surprised about the increase in Road Rage.
We’ve only used carpool lanes if we’re near downtown during rush hour on family trips. Not exactly the intended clientele here.
If seating capacity is defined by the number of seat belts, does that mean you can drive, say, a 1965 full-size car in the carpool lane with only a driver and one passenger? (1965 models were only required to have front belts in the U.S.) How about older cars that have no belts at all? I would expect in California this kind of question would come up more frequently than it does in the rust belt.
No, it’s really the official seating capacity. The number of seatbelts is the easy way to tell *in a newer car*. I wasn’t thinking of older cars which is a major oversight on my part in light of the website this is on so thanks for calling me on it! So don’t go driving on up there with your ’65!
I’ve got 2 front seat belts in my ’64 Falcon; none in the back. I reckon if I were a ‘Casual Carpooler’ I could tote 3 people easy enough to satisfy The Powers That Be.
It would be a big call for them to require people to ride without a seat belt, especially at freeway speeds.
The Eastern Freeway in Melbourne has a high-occupancy lane requiring 2 occupants in a car but it is moderately abused and moderately policed. I hate using that freeway unless I am off the end before 7am, because it stops and feeds onto surface roads and traffic banks back a couple of miles to get through the lights.
Every time I consider moving to a larger city I read stuff like this and lose all interest. No way I could deal with that crap on a daily basis.
Me neither; more trouble than it’s worth! I’ll stick to rural GA and stay out of Atlanta.
It’s less the size of the city than the Bay Area’s challenging geography that creates these choke points.
Despite the LA area being much larger and having legendary traffic, there’s no real need for this (and with LA’s diffuse commuting patterns, it wouldn’t work anyway.)
Traffic is a problem in every major city. It would drive me nuts. Wouldn’t live there for double my salary, too many other things I’d rather do with my time.
I have a ten minute commute. You can live in a big city and have a short commute – you just have to be smart about where you live, and have realistic expectations (no 3,500 sqft houses).
Believe me when I say we never had a 3500 sq ft house in California even with a long commute…But in the end we did move to within two miles of my most recent employer there, but it was in Belmont, south of SF (job and house) for four years. In SF itself was not realistic (and not desirable due to kids/schools/etc). That being said there are plenty of jobs/careers that will not have any kind of housing that is remotely affordable within ten minutes of it in quite a few areas of CA, especially SF, depending on the job description. Based on what I earned at that last job though, if it was offered back to me, I could not afford to move back to the area and live in an equivalent house to the one I sold at the time. (Management position, supervising approx 100 employees, effectively #2 on company flowchart)
So then the better solution for the individual in general is usually to reverse it and find a similar job near where the housing is affordable and the commute can be kept to 10 minutes like yours. If nobody wants to do those jobs anymore for what they pay, well, then that’s for the better-paid part of society to figure out and realize why it is that they now have to drive forty minutes if they want to go out for a nice meal because a restaurant can’t find a dishwasher willing to commute an hour anymore OR live in a nearby hovel that they spend 75% of their take home pay on… 🙂
Frankly I am continually surprised at the amount of people that have minimal but thus often very easily transferable skills but insist on living in areas that are not affordable (and complain about it constantly). I suppose they don’t have the resources or money to move somewhere else to begin with. It’s like all the people that graduate from college every year and get a McJob but insist on living in SF or Boston or Vancouver or wherever, instead of a more reasonable but still nice place to live. In the end I guess that’s what I did as well so maybe that’s human nature. 🙂 Frankly I wish I’d figured it out earlier, life is too short to spend much of it in a car inching along in traffic every day.
Yep, but as you allude to it requires other sacrifices I’m not willing to make. Some people are willing to, that’s fine, I seriously considered it when I was a single guy fresh out of college. But today that life is just not for me.
Jim makes some good points too.
The traffic here in Portland can be just as bad. It took me 2 hours once to get home from work. A whopping 13 miles.
Yessir! Here in Beaverton its downright brutal. From Tanasbourne to Washington Square you could be looking at 45 mins or more, which is barely 8 miles. It was bad when I moved here 10 years ago and steadily gotten worse.
That’s why I ride TriMet whenever I go downtown or when the Portland highways in Google Maps are all red. What irritates me are the people on I-5 south slowing everyone down because they don’t have lane discipline.
Commuting from Tualatin to the Portland Airport usually takes me 40 or so minutes and heading back to Tualatin is about 45-60 minutes. Sometimes I-205 is clear and I can get home in 40 or so minutes. My worst commute so far was 90 minutes or so.
I remember in the early 70’s my commute from the Hollywood area to my job around Canyon Rd & 217 was less than 20 min. Of course this was day when I made from Seaside to the Hollywood area in 55 min or regularly made the the trip to Lincoln City in 65-75 min or to Salem in 25 min. In 1962-65 model year cars. I would also get on the freeway at 39th and be exiting at Columbia Blvd in 7 min or less. Pipe dreams today, there was less traffic at rush hour then, than today at 3 am in the morning.
Thank you for the historical perspective. Portland Interstates were kind of functionally obsolete when they were built in my opinion, but now they are just overused usually. I-84 east to I-205 north is a good example.
If there was talking , it sounds like a writer’s dream way of collecting story material…
I used to pick up hitch hikers because I was one for most of the 1960’s but had to quit after too many bad people got into my vehicle .
This concept sounds pretty good to me .
-Nate
It’s coming up on the time here in the Middle West where I’ll likely get stuck behind a combine once or twice… I don’t think they ride share, though.
I am getting a mental picture of a line of Amish and Mennonites lined up to catch a ride in the lined up pickup trucks and Buick LeSabres so that they can legally drive in the “no farm equipment” lane. 🙂
Very nice mental picture! 🙂
Following a hay wagon , double bottom fruit / veggie hauler etc. isn’t so bad unless you have hay fever or hate Garlic .
Following a meat wagon , manure spreader or honey wagon , not so nice .
-Nate
While I don’t know how the casual carpooling goes now, I can tell you that rush hour traffic here along 580 in Dublin is getting worse and worse, and BART is SRO during morning commute before it even leaves East Dublin/Pleasanton (end of the line). And they keep cramming in more housing. The interstates are congested almost any time you choose; who cares about a fast car?
BART’s problem (when I was there) was that there were not enough trains running frequently enough from the outlying stations (like Dublin). If you’re just a minute late or can’t find a parking spot you’ve resigned yourself to a 20-25 minute wait for the next one, no idea if it’s better now. I suppose the TransBay Tunnel and SF Stations Bottleneck (where all the trains on the system pass through) limit the absolute total number of trains but when you live closer in (such as Oakland) you could get on either a Dublin or a Fremont train to get to SF, i.e. twice the default frequency from the get-go. But even in the SF stations it’s not as if there are trains literally every couple of minutes at rush hour the way other (rest-of-world) cities do it, such as London, Paris, etc.
BART runs on 15 minute intervals during the weekdays. They need to run 10 car trains (instead of 8 or 9) at increased intervals, but I’m not sure when that will happen. It is said that they will need a new computer system and more cars to run trains at more frequent intervals. As with most anything, it’s all about money, and where it goes.
Jim, you left the Bay Area, what, 3 years ago? Glad you left? If you haven’t been back to the Tri-Valley since, you wouldn’t recognize it now. They’re building like crazy, especially in Dublin.
We left just over SIX years ago, can’t believe it’s been that long already. The other day I zillowed our first townhouse that we bought in Dublin in 1998 for $231k, unbelievable what it’s supposedly worth now.
I’m VERY glad we left the Bay Area after almost twenty years there. It (and CA in general) is a great place to visit but I have little desire to move back (and actually work outside of the house for a living). Colorado has its issues as well, I’m not ignorant of that, but your money just goes so much further, taxes are so much lower, and the services that those tax dollars get you are so far beyond what CA provides (or doesn’t) that it’s astounding. Anecdotally speaking, the three states that I see most people moving here from are CA, TX, and especially IL over the last few years. Obviously they all have large populations and thus will be over-represented compared to people from Maine for example but they all give pretty much the same reasons for leaving.
When we left Dublin in 2001 it was a sleepy town, they were just starting to build that huge development at the North End of Dublin just over the San Ramon border (on the road that connects you to the back of Danville, used to be a country road going past the Army base). I don’t doubt that it and the rest of the Valley has filled in a lot since.
Left So Cal 20 years ago for the PNW and never looked back.
Commuting on the freeways during rush hour on a regular basis ended in 2008.
Life is so much more relaxing now.
US 54 has two, four-lane bridges over the Missouri River on the north edge of Jefferson City. Currently, the westbound bridge is closed with all traffic running two lanes each direction on the eastbound bridge.
There was understandably a lot of concern about the closure of the bridge, which from all accounts has gone quite smoothly so far, despite the recent extension of the closure due to unforeseen needs for structural repairs (the bridge was being painted).
I can only imagine the angst and gnashing of teeth were a similar situation to happen here. For that fact, there is all of one toll bridge in this entire state and I bypassed it earlier today.
Jim, you have provided another reason on why living in California does not appeal to me! 🙂
You should at least go for a vacation in CA with your family. It is a great place to visit. Get a hotel in Oakland to save money, then catch a Casual Carpool in the morning into SF, it beats looking for and paying for parking (and lodging) there. In the evening catch the bus back. 🙂
The citizens of Jefferson City don’t know the definition of traffic if they’re used to TWO 4-lane spans over one little stream. Consider that the Bay Area has 4 bridges going to the SF/Peninsula area –
1. Golden Gate – 6 lanes total with a movable barrier to create a 4/2 split depending on commute direction. Used to just be cones (!) between two 50-60mph streams guaranteeing a head-on regularly as people take in the wonderful scenery.
2. Bay Bridge – 5 lanes on upper and 5 lanes on lower deck
3. San Mateo – 3 lanes each way (used to be two for half the bridge that then changed to three each way literally mid-span, how’s that for creating havoc?)
4. Dumbarton – 2 (might be 3 now) lanes each way.
Each of these serves distinct parts of the population and are not really interchangeable for people without major extra inconvenience/travel time. All charge in the Westbound (or towards SF) direction.
Would you believe I’ve been over this particular bridge? It was in 1993.
I have wanted to visit more of California, and did not take an opportunity in June to attend the wedding of my wife’s cousin in San Diego as a) Nashville sounded more appealing, and b) I’m not a big fan of attending weddings.
My life has been varied enough to quickly realize traffic issues are all relative and I’ve seen much worse. Convincing others it could be worse is the trick – and, in a way I’m impressed with those who are patient enough to withstand traffic such as this on a daily basis.
Oh, and that little stream is the longest river on the continent, not some piddly little isolated bay! Yea, yea, so it drinks 40% of the runoff in California…:)
“The citizens of Jefferson City don’t know the definition of traffic”
I’m always amused at how folks’ perception of bad traffic differs by region. We live in traffic-clogged Northern Virginia, but my wife is from Jefferson City. Last week we were there visiting… and knowing that one of the bridge spans was out, my wife (accustomed by now to DC-area traffic) expected a big delay leading into town.
I think if every vehicle in Jeff City were to cross the single span at once — that STILL wouldn’t equal a typical day’s traffic jam here in Virginia!
Traffic never stopped moving on the bridge — not noteworthy for us, but I bet plenty of locals groan about the crowded conditions on the bridge every day!
Why is California so expensive? Because it’s worth it.
I moved to SoCal from PA, experienced both rural and city life there, and there’s no comparison. I worked all over the South, spent some time in the Midwest, and I’ve never found anywhere is rather be. Colorado and Oregon are on my list to visit, but for someone who despises both humid summers and wintry weather, I’ve yet to find anywhere in the US I’d rather live. And the Bay Ara makes LA and Orange County seem like a bargain! 🙂
Wow! And I thought driving through the Harbor Tunnel (895) or Fort McHenry Tunnel (95) here in Baltimore was bad during rush hour. This is nuts. To have traffic problems so bad as to encourage you to get into cars with strangers? Man, I just can’t fathom it. I will say however that this is a rather ingenious solution to a tough problem though. My biggest fear would be getting into SF, and then not being able to get back across to Oakland at the end of the day due to less drivers as Jim says. Of course there’s always BART.
Note from the Author: I wrote this article based on my recollections and observations from the time that I used it (late 90’s-mid 2000’s) and this morning sent the link to a friend that still uses it and has used it for almost 20 years now and figured he’d enjoy it. He wrote me this reply which I’ve decided to share as it expands on a couple of points that I was not aware of, based at least on the location from which he uses it:
“Great article. A couple of notes that apply to North Berkeley Bart pickup location as time and economy have evolved, but maybe not the other locations:
With the disappearance of parking lots in SF, there is ALWAYS a line of people, not cars. I haven’t seen a line of cars in two years.
Because of the long people lines, we routinely put four per car- three passengers- when there is no car seat or dog in a carrier. Everyone seems to be fine with this.
You forgot to mention the awkward request from some drivers to “help out with the toll”. With three passengers, that makes $3, which is more than the $2.50 carpool toll, for a net profit. This request happens about once every two weeks. I moan and groan as I get my wallet out and dig up a dollar bill. Last week, I was asked for money, and honestly didn’t have any singles. The driver says, “I have change!” Man, was I irritated.
People can pass on a car if they don’t like the looks of it. Women do this routinely, if they don’t like the looks of the driver, or the car. There is a civic center driver whose car is covered in dog hair and the car is filthy. A lot of people won’t get in his car.
There is a guy in an old Saab convertible. The car smells horrible even though it looks clean. I hate that car- no rear seat head restraints- but I will get in. Then, he always asks for “help with the toll”. What a numbskull.”
-Jim’s friend
With all due respect to your friend, why is “help out with the toll” such a moan and groan worthy sore spot? It’s a freakin dollar, and you’re a stranger to the driver who’s covering fuel/insurance/taxes and maintenance on their car. Suck it up.
I’m surprised it only comes up every few weeks, I would have expected pitching in was a given.
It’s probably because the riders are already saving the driver $3.50 in addition to the time. Regular toll is $6, with carpoolers $2.50 so there is already a benny to both parties. And most people seem to not ask it, so the one guy out of ten that asks for it is the one out of the norm I suppose.
I can understand that initial perception but that’s still a bargain, as once everyone’s in the city and everyone splits up the driver is the only one who has a car to deal with there, and I imagine parking is it’s own (costly)adventure. I mean it’s the driver’s prerogative to drive their car into a congested area but the riders won’t be getting anywhere if it weren’t for drivers. It just seems extremely entitled to balk at that, I’d feel very uncomfortable not pitching in personally.
I’m the kind of person who would probably just offer a buck immediately, but would also kind of judge the driver if he outright asked anyone for toll fare. Kind of contradictory, I know…
The last time I was in the Bay Area & LA was 1964 as a wide eyed 13 year old on vacation with my parents. I thought the traffic was bad then. One of my dad’s relatives was talking about his 2 hr commute each way to work and back home. At the time it seemed like an idea from another planet to me.
So in essence it’s hitchhiking, meets uber, meets mass transit right of way, all tied together with a wild west like combination of unspoken rules and lack of vetting. Sounds fuuuun…
For the record I don’t dismiss the success or need for this, but as an introvert who is car fastidious, my god I couldn’t think of a fish out of water scenario for me. The funny part about adulthood is gradually realizing all the things adults told you not to do as a child, like not getting into strangers, has an asterisk, and scholars wonder why cynicism is rampant!
I don’t recall seeing these around. I lived in SF for a year, 1990-91 for a research fellowship at SF General Hospital. But I lived in the City, and took the MUNI and UCSF shuttle whenever I could, if I didn’t take my mountain bike. I’d drive out to Walnut Creek (east of Oakland) about every 2-3 weeks to see my faux aunt (and do my laundry and fix whatever she had) but only on the weekends (honestly, I don’t remember if there were tolls on I-80, but I do remember there were HOV-3 lanes). I remember the traffic was bad (but I’m from Atlanta and things are relative), but I found parking to be abysmal. To no surprise it has gotten oh-so-much worse. I’m still proud of the fact that I lived and parked on the street for a full year and never got a parking ticket (out of state plate and no area parking sticker). When I went to a wedding in 1996, what blew my mind was seeing more commuters LEAVING SF into the valley south than coming into the City in the morning. I loved living in SF as I remember all the vintage tin rolling around (more VW beetles than you can step on), but I guess the best time to live there was seen best in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) with all that stylish CCs rolling. I guess the Dirty Harry era of the 1970s wouldn’t be so bad, either. Still affordable and commutable then.
When we go back to the Bay Area, usually a couple of times a year, we pick our arrival and departure times carefully, so as to avoid the ever-longer rush hours. It was already epic when we left in 1993; now it’s even much worse.
A fascinating article.. I had never heard of casual carpooling. I was on a business trip to SF recently and I think parking in downtown (North Beach) was more expensive than Manhattan.
Wow, I could never conceive of a system like that and I live in Manhattan, which is constantly congested. I think, though, reading your article much of the reason for it is the lack of real alternate routes. I experience this on my commute downtown in the morning because the 4/5/6/Lexington Ave Line is the only game in town if you live on the Upper East Side other than taking the bus. So it’s shoulder to shoulder every morning, and often not much better heading back uptown if you leave the office before 7 PM….unfortunately the subway is already the best way to get downtown and the only other thing to do is cross town and take another line, which is 15 minutes or more out of your way.
Coming into the city we have more options…not only is there MetroNorth, LIRR, and NJT but express buses, a fair amount of parking just outside the city, and actually a decent number of in town garages…so while traffic coming in is certainly bad, I don’t think it’s generally like that bridge–at least, not without an alternative!
This piece was very timely as I will soon be moving from Sonoma County (GG Bridge commute) to Solano County (Bay Bridge commute). To my eye the emerging solution will be the extended range electric car. As of summer 2016 this isn’t a good option unless one can afford a Tesla or can charge at work given the long commutes most of us here face (50+ miles each way). The supposed slew of affordable 200+ mile all-electric cars due this fall may change things and I’m certainly eyeing this as my way into the car-pool lanes (and Jim’s right, if they let coal burning cars into the car pool lane, I’d be shoveling coal). But I do like the casual carpool concept. Just a few more points
1. most cities face major commute issues, this isnt just a bay area problem
2. parking and tolls in SF do add up – between gas, tolls, and heavily subsidized parking it costs me about $25 a day just to come to work
I lived in and grew up in Northern Virginia from 1969 through 1997. I saw WDC and it’s suburbs grow from chaos to a total nightmare. I have since moved to Albuquerque, NM and have lived here for the past eighteen years. I have driven in Alexandria, VA and Baltimore, MD several times since moving and I will never move back!
Jim: a very enjoyable and interesting read, and your follow-up responses and comments were helpful in further understanding the situation. I vote for more of these stories from other urban areas to provide a window into the way people live and commute.
I had an engagement to meet someone in downtown LA yesterday at 5:30PM. The roughly 16 mile drive from the coast took one hour and 45 minutes, leaving at 3:30PM. Any later departure time would have added a disproportionate amount of commute time. This scenario is fairly typical for SoCal and everyone is constantly calculating commute times for work, meetings, theater and dinner engagements, etc. Light rail networks are being expanded and provide some relief here and there but the system has limitations, especially given the way it was developed on the cheap, with insufficient cars, lines often directly intersecting with traffic, and travel not much faster than by automobile. Subway development, delayed for decades, is extremely limited and while it may be accelerated if LA is selected for the 2024 Summer Olympics, will still be inadequate for years to come.
The Bay Area was smart to have built BART early on but, according to a friend who has worked for BART for many years, devoted far too few resources to it and is now paying the price for delayed maintenance, etc. (as is also true of the Washington, DC Metro system).
Not being deathly afraid of poor/non White people means it’s possible to live well within an Urban area .
I live about 15 miles from downtown Los Angeles , a place I lived in once and hope to never be forced to again but my crappy little 1,158 square foot house in the Ghetto is nice enough and no one ever stole one of the vehicles we used to park on the street .
If a home is important to you (moreso to me than most imagine) , stop crying and make it happen .
If having a flashy ” front ” is all that you care about , shaddap and go rent one in the hip part of town .
pretty simple either way .
-Nate
In San Francisco and Oakland, the urban areas generally ARE the expensive areas. I’m not sure of your point but please don’t confuse people having/choosing a crappy and long commute due to factors such as A) the other members of the family’s job locations, B) schooling issues/locations, C) desire for specific recreational opportunities, D) desire to not spend as much on housing and E) whatever else, with a case of being afraid of poor or non-white people, that has nothing to do with anything.
This was simply an article about how some people found a creative way to deal with a traffic situation. Notwithstanding that I think some people just don’t want to deal with ANY traffic which is fine too and expressed that by saying they wouldn’t want to live there or anywhere similar. Rush hour traffic within urban SF is horrible too as it is in the cores of many/most large cities that actually have a core/center and is a perfectly valid reason for choosing to live and work in a less densely populated area.
Jim ;
I hear you ~ I used to have a horrible commute too, no fun trying to buy food and diapers and not get shot simply coming home. BT , DT , still living there .
I have an ex lady friend who lives in Oaktown , not the rich part , I was amazed at how few (basically none) white people would live there when they could have a vastly better commute to S.F. if they did .
Every word of what I said remains true .
Look at Hell’s Kitchen , the Bronx etc. ~ in Harlem there are older Apt. Buildings that have HUGE apartments , only Puerto Ricans live there tho’…
-Nate
As an Oaklander, I pass two of these lines every day I go to work. I don’t use them…my commute is Oakland->Oakland and 15 minutes. They usually have more people than cars, but rainy weather will affect the ratio.
A similar system exists in NJ coming across Washington Bridge into NYC. When there’s a will, there’s a way.
I complain a lot about living out in the middle of nowhere, but “traffic nightmare” is definitely not something I have to worry about. Other than during harvest season, then I might get stuck behind a 2-lanes-wide combine…
I do have a 50+minute, each way commute, but that’s because living here, unless you want to milk cows, you have to drive into the city for work. But 99% of the time, I’m the only car on the road. (Getting off work at 11pm does wonders for lowering traffic levels)
Despite being a lifelong resident of the Bay Area, though for the last 12 years closer to the other bay (Monterey) I have never used these. When I briefly lived near the corner of Oakland Ave and Grand Ave in Piedmont, I first saw one these stops at that intersection … I don’t think they were signed yet but quite busy. Just FYI, the current Bay Bridge toll is $7, or $3.50 with 3 or more occupants. There are no toll takers any more on any of the seven trans-Bay bridges. FastTrak transponders or license plate cameras and mailed invoices to the registered owner are used to collect tolls.
I’m just a few months shy of 50 years as a licensed driver here. Traffic has of course gotten worse, but the dynamics have changed. With new and/or widened freeways and interchanges, some pinch points have actually gotten better. Work from home, especially in mid-2020 though late 2021, was of course dramatic and some of that has persisted on some routes. On the other hand, holiday get-away or get-home traffic has gotten much worse and extends into once quiet rural areas. Onramp metering lights can make a short and otherwise easy drive miserable. And inconsistency between high-occupancy vehicle lane policies, such as hours, number of occupants, and whether they’re free or merely discounted, is getting worse. But I suspect none of this is unique to California … and the positive side of it is all the great CC’s one can see while stuck in traffic.
Hey dman! Born in Walnut Creek in 1960 and finally left CA for good in 2016. At that time, my 3 mile commute was a 30 min affair on a good day, weekend travel to my friends/relatives just outside the bay area was more trouble than it was worth and it became obvious my 60 hour work week was never going to drop to a reasonable level. Sure was a great place to grow up, though, and I’ll always miss that.
I have been driving the Bay Area and the Bay Bridge ever since 1972. So I know the traffic patterns really well over those 50 years. For perspective I could get on the Central Freeway, at Broadway on the Embarcadero, drive across the Bay Bridge and end up at our house in Orinda in 30 minutes leaving at 4:30 in the afternoon. The toll was 0.75 cents. Mostly though I was at SDSU till September 1977. The traffic as it was didn’t bother me except at the Caldecott Tunnel but there was a way around. There was also a back way to the Bay Bridge that very few used until the early oughts.
I lived in the City from 1988-98 and did the reverse commute to Danville in Contra Costa County. Very few actually did that so the drive always went very quickly except Friday at 6-7 PM given that it is now party time. By late 1998 I could see the pattern changing as more people worked in the East Bay than ever before so I left the City for Concord and a 14 mile commute. Generally, if one can avoid the 680/24 interchange mix in Walnut Creek between 3-6 pm you can do pretty good and luckily I can avoid it.
As for California I have no intention of leaving despite costs. I left the East Coast in 1966 and am no fan of hot humid summers or cold snowy winters. The South is absolutely out of the question as I call them the crazy states. In fact the only two states I’d consider, if forced, would be Oregon and Washington as they fit my attitude. Yet California has far too much here of me and my life so I don’t feel like starting new anywhere else leaving everything and all behind. Not good for one’s mental health.
Whenever I get stuck in (what passes for) Las Vegas traffic, I think about tales like these.
My first day of my first (summer) job in ’79, I was offered a lift from the bus stop at Seminary Rd & I-395 to the Pentagon Metro station (only a couple of miles, but awful traffic in the non-HOV lanes). I was already a bundle of nerves and declined, but other people got in to fill the car.
Mpls MN chiming in. I like this idea but with such severe temperature swings very few would be willing to wait outside even if covered from the elements. Our HOV lanes require just a single passenger to be free. Single drivers are permitted but subject to variable rates. We have no toll roads or bridges as people go full Mad Max just mentioning them. That brings me to this question. Has any US city imposed a toll with the promise of eliminating the toll after a specific date or fiscal goal is met AND actually removed the toll permanently?
They got rid of the tolls on I-95/85 between Richmond and Petersburg VA after many decades, but I don’t know if it was planned that way. Traffic got so bad, despite most locals moving E-W, and they didn’t have room to add lanes at the urban toll plazas. I wonder if they have more accidents in the twisty bits through Richmond, now that people don’t have to stop. The 4-5 tolls added up to around a dollar (3 or 4 quarters and a dime [I-85], IIRC) for years, which hardly seems worth the trouble after decades of inflation. They’d also added a free eastern bypass (I-295), which is miles longer but uncongested and much less nerve-wracking.
Hah, our tolls just go up and up. Decades ago, we couldn’t understand why the eastern US had toll roads when our only tolls were for bridges. Now miles of Bay Area freeways have the so-called “Lexus Lanes”; HOV lanes which provide a discount for 2 or 3 occupants, but allow single occupant cars for a higher toll, the fee determined by location and traffic density, and charged to a transponder which has a switch to select whether there is one, two or three occupants. Some of these pseudo-HOV lanes charge tolls 24-7. At least outside of the bridges, we can still drive for free and often the Lexus Lane isn’t much faster despite charging a hefty toll. By the way, I suspect if the Japanese and US industry and brands had taken different turns in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, these would be Lincoln Lanes; equally alliterative and suggestive of people who can afford to pay more to get to their destination faster. I suspect Lancia Lanes or Lotus Lanes, let alone Lada Lanes, would never have happened except in some weird alternative automotive history.
I wonder if anybody has been sneaky to put Hybrid badges on something like their 2014 Tahoe(yes they made a Tahoe hybrid, it was crap) or regular Camry so they could use the hov lanes.
I dunno how that works but here in Nashville the fast lane is the HOV lane, but only during morning/evening commutes, mon thru friday. Its not seperated from the other 3 lanes, no special exits or anything.
Everybody ignores it and drives in the HOV lane solo because the law is never enforced. Our local/state government obviously only put up the HOV signs so they could collect more federal road money.
It’s not the badge that gets (got) you access but rather a special sticker (actually a set of 3 or 4) that you could apply for from the DMV and were applied to the rear end and the sides of the bumper so that it was easily visible. There were various types/colors for hybrids, CNG, etc. Someone currently in CA probably knows more about what’s still available etc.
These have now made their way pretty much across the country as the owners/cars either moved or were sold and then resold all over the place. Keep an eye out and you may see one sooner or later. The stickers are sort of a reflective foil type that was more or less impossible to remove. For a while I would occasionally see an early Prius or Civic Hybrid out here in CO or other states with them, now it’s fairly rare again to see them here.
The CHP traffic patrol is pretty savvy, and I believe the current penalty is $490 in CA (someone will correct me if I’m wrong) for a carpool violation. I’d regularly see CHP pull people over, especially at the Bay Bridge, normally they’d have an officer stationed at the toll plaza and he just wrote one ticket after another, it was quite the cash cow I’m sure and kept him busy.
Gaaaah! Why in the screaming yellow zonkers do people do this?!
God, I’d forgotten all about the “Casual Carpool” thing. Never did it so it wasn’t high on my radar, but seemed interesting. I’m on the far outskirts of the SF Bay area so it’s a non issue for me, but as much hitchhiking as I did in the 70s I’d have probably given it a try.
Is it still a thing? I haven’t heard about it in years now.
A few years ago a similar thing called The Hitching Post was started between Worcester VT (pop 964) and Montpelier (pop 7434). Basically people would raise a flag on the hitching post outside the general store, then a passing vehicle would offer a ride. It seemed to take off but then COVID came and people were leery about enclosed spaces.
My worst commute was when I was working in NYC for 710 WOR and CBS Radio – M-FM I would drive the 30 minutes to Metropark from my parents in Clarksburg NJ, take the NJ Transit train to either Newark Penn or into Manhattan. For WOR, I would take the PATH train from Newark Penn to World Trade and then walk over to 111 Broadway. For CBS Radio, I would go all the way into New York Penn and take the 1 subway train downtown to Houston St and walk over to Hudson. On a good day, that was a 2+ hour commute.
On a bad day, like when a snowstorm rolled in and I had to ride in the vestubule on NJ Transit…it could be 3. Or if there was an accident on the Turnpike getting to Metropark.
On the weekends, I could park on the street – it was a smooth hour ride from door to door since I worked the early engineering shift and parking on the side streets was free. I still have my Port Authority EZ Pass tags – you get a discount on the bridges and tunnels by having one from them vs the NJ Turnpike Authority.
My other commute from hell was when I lived in Bridgeport CT and had to commute to White Plains NY – the Merritt Parkway was a disaster, and if you didn’t hit it at just the right time you were screwed.
Here in Pittsburgh, traffic can vary from “meh” to “7th circle of hell” depending on where you live. The Fort Pitt & Squirrel Hill Tunnels, despite being in existence for generations, seems to mystify people . So if you live on the east side or west side of the metro, and have to use 376 (aka, “Parkway East/West”), life is hell most of the time.
But where we live in the North Hills? Downtown (or “dahtahn” if you are a Yinzer), is a quick 15 minute trip down 279. And I can be in the airport in 30 minutes (or less!) by taking backroads.
It was nice to say I worked in radio market #1, but I don’t think I could do that commute again. At least not for less than six figures a year…