I'm planning on relocating to the Bay Area this summer and would like to get a feel for the traffic from/to the San Francisco Bay Area from neighboring areas such as Oakland Hills (15.3 miles).<p>Any suggestions, tips, caveats?
Mention your planned commute endpoints and times for
better responses. Mention urban driving experience
locations for comparisons.<p>Traffic over the Bay Bridge (I-80W)
and its northern approaches (I-80W & I-580E) is quite
heavy at typical morning drive times. The rest of the
Bay Area is merely very heavy at those times.
BART is popular, but parking at BART stations fills early.<p>Useful traffic resources include Google Maps typical traffic:
<a href="http://www.google.com/maps/@37.7,-122.26,11z/data=!5m1!1e1" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/maps/@37.7,-122.26,11z/data=!5m1!1e1</a>
<a href="http://www.sigalert.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sigalert.com/</a>
<a href="http://traffic.511.org/index" rel="nofollow">http://traffic.511.org/index</a>
<a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/mr-roadshow" rel="nofollow">http://www.mercurynews.com/mr-roadshow</a>
<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/</a>
Edit:
approximate commute end points
Morning departure times: 8am, 10am
Evening departure times: 2pm, 6pm, 8pm
From Braemar Rd, Oakland, CA 94602, USA
To North Point St San Francisco, CA 94109<p>My urban driving experience locations are:
In/out of Washington DC 395N from Northern VA
459N Beltway
Richmond/VA Beach I-64
Baltimore
Pittsburgh
You might want to get a FasTrak (if you haven't already), if you are driving. It sure beats digging for change for the toll. :) Or if you carpool during certain commute hours, you can be in the toll-free lane.