Your Life:
Traffic, road rage, potholes and parking. We put up with a lot in the Bay Area. Our readers offer solutions to the madness.
We love living in the Bay Area. All 7 million of us do. We must, right?
After all, we’re willing to put up with crazy horrible traffic every day, every road, every highway, everywhere ... argh! There’s pothole pandemonium. Road-rage ruckus. And the parking? Painful. Plus BART’s packed, Caltrain’s packed. To help, carpool apps, parking-space apps, ride-share apps emerge faster than your morning merge onto I-880 — so much faster. Self-driving modules and people movers may be coming around the corner, yet still off in Tomorrowland.
Until that future becomes Todayland, some commuters are taking matters into their own hands, going the extra mile with creative methods to navigate the mindnumbing madness. So we asked readers to share some of their solutions. They’re doing things like this:
A group of friends in Berkeley “own” a car together — basically their own car-share program, trading off payments and maintenance expenses and drive times. BART riders often “upstream” — taking a train back one or more stops away from their destination, then crossing the platform to board an emptier train. Some residents of San Jose take three kinds of public transit to get up the Peninsula. One guy has built his own “Mad Max” version of a cargo bike he can fold up and take on the light rail or Caltrain.
Whatever the method, we have to get resourceful, people; it’s only getting worse. More humans are jamming into our nine counties and 101 cities and driving on our 1,420 miles of highways and 19,600 miles of local streets. According to commute-assist site 511.org, estimates have Bay Area population reaching 8.7 million by 2030. Yikes.
Veronica Marian, 34, of San Jose, knows the traffic slog has gotten worse just in the past few years.
“When I moved here from Southern California in 2008, I thought the traffic was a dream,” she said. “But it progressively became terrible. By 2012 or 2013, it was definitely more like L.A. And now, well . ... ”
To get around, she and her husband engage in a complex commute that sounds more like a top-secret plan for a clandestine spy rendezvous, which is, sadly, not that uncommon in the Bay Area. Here’s their method. Try to keep up:
She and her husband both work in Palo Alto, but can’t afford a house there, so they live in the Cambrian Park area of San Jose. Their daughter is in preschool in San Jose, so Marian’s husband leaves home about 5 a.m., drives to the Winchester VTA light rail station, parks, takes light rail to the Diridon Caltrain station, takes the train to Palo Alto, then takes a shuttle to work. Marian leaves home at 7:15 a.m., drives to drop off her child at preschool, drives to Diridon, finds street parking, gets on Caltrain to Palo Alto, walks or takes a shuttle to work. Getting home is reversed, except the husband picks up their child after he picks up his car.
“However,” she said, “occasionally I have to drive in to work. So instead, he does the same as above and I drive in. When he leaves work, he will pick up my car, drive to the Winchester light rail, park, get in his car, drive to get the kid, goes home. When I leave work, I take shuttle to Palo Alto Caltrain station, take Caltrain to Diridon, then take light rail to Winchester, pick up my car, drive home.”
Confusing? Yes. Exhausting?
“It can be quite exhausting, for sure,” she said. “But for me, it works to do the complicated commute. I’m much less stressed than when I drive.”
The revolution will be cycled
It’s not unusual to cycle to work. But Michael Norris is taking it a step — or in this case, a revolution — further. He Frankensteined his own version of a cargo bike, welding parts of eight recycled bikes into one long bicycle with a storage area that can carry heavy loads and can be folded in half to take on transit. He calls it his Mad Max bike.
“I made this bike that could fold up so I could bring it onto VTA,” he said. “Its ugly appearance is its own anti-theft device.”
Norris has long been a big bike advocate, running his own biking blog www.diybiking.com and recently buying a cargobike rental/sales business.
“I’m counting on more people to look around and see just how insane/silly/ out-of-date driving a car is for small trips,” he said. “It just amazes me that people go to work every day out here thinking they’re building next-level stuff at their keyboards, but they think little of averaging 9 mph driving a car to the office.”
He and his wife have been married 12 years and have owned only one older car between them the whole time. When they moved to the Bay Area from Connecticut a few years ago, Norris was thrilled with the bike-friendly culture here, where most public transit provides bicycle parking and allows bikes on trains and buses.
“I can’t believe more people don’t take advantage of it,” he said. “The weather out here is absolutely beautiful. Most parts of the Bay Area are relatively flat. There’s also a good amount of cycling infrastructure. Between Zipcay and Lyft and everything, owning a car won’t even be necessary pretty soon.”
Walk a mile in their shoes
Sondra and Scott Weber of San Jose are taking transportation a step back — to the oldest travel method in the book: Using their legs. They walk everywhere they can. They’ve even walked home from the airport.
“We’ve walked to San Pedro Market for dinner, to Willow Glen to visit friends and up and down The Alameda to support our local businesses. We’ve walked home from
the airport. We also cycle to the grocery store, the dry cleaners,” Sondra Weber said. “When a Costco run or a Mount Tam hike is in order, we rent a car for the day. It’s $15 if we’re flexible. We signed up for Zipcar, but the $11.50-an-hour price point makes renting a car the better option for us.”
The Webers moved to Silicon Valley just two months ago after a 15-year stint in Singapore, “a futuristic microcosm of a model society, with employees jogging, cycling or riding personalized electronic vehicles to and from work using park connectors,” Sondra Weber said.
Here in the Bay Area, Scott Weber’s Sunnyvale company gives him a $20 lunch credit for every 10 days of cycling to and from the office. He takes the Guadalupe Trail and makes the 26-mile round trip much faster than a car can get him there.
“If the office was a little closer, he’d probably ride his Ninebot to work from time to time,” Sondra Weber said.
Scott Weber said he loves helping to preserve the environment with the concept of “walking softly and leaving no tracks.” Plus he enjoys learning more about an area on foot or bike, rather than in a car.
“I have lived in Chicago, Atlanta, San Antonio, Austin and Dallas and I think the Bay Area blows them all away though in terms of liveability,” he said. “Simply put, we love it here and are thrilled to be part of the community.”
Try these commute-assist organizations for info on driving, parking or taking public transit in the Bay Area:
• 511.org provides commuter assistance with info on carpooling, public transit, Clipper Cards, cycling organizations, maps and trails and more; www.511. org.
• Spare the Air Commute Tips is a resource for commute and transportation maps and incentives in all Bay Area counties. Find the most convenient way to avoid traffic and reduce your commute and travel time by joining a carpool or vanpool, taking transit or biking; www.stacommutetips.org.