People also just don’t want to be stuck in traffic for an hour and a half. If 101 were as free flowing as it was in the mid 90s the desire for transit would be less but given arteries like 280, 101 in the SF bay area or 95, 90, 93 in the Boston area are perennially clogged the alternative is transit.
Meanwhile, we FLY down 101 every morning because reverse commute down the Peninsula into the valley. I don't think the people who complain about CA from what they hear online could even believe the speeds we manage.
So I'm lying, then. As are all of the traffic maps that show eastbound bridge traffic being wide open in the mornings, south 280 and 101 being wide open in the mornings, and the opposite in the afternoons?
It doesn't really take me 20 minutes to go 22 miles in the heart of Silicon Valley at rush hour?
My personal experience of driving south from ~San Francisco down to Sunnyvale along 101 in the mornings is that it takes me around 1.2 hours, on average. I'm not sure what traffic maps have to say about it, but every time I drive down I hit backups at Millbrae, San Mateo around 92, Menlo Park (the Facebook exit), Palo Alto which is just always congested, and Mountain View.
In fact, the traffic is the deciding factor for me in ruling out regularly working in the Peninsula.
Where do you start, and at what time of day, to get 20-minute drive times? I'd love to know the secret.
Ish. Actually I live pretty much right next to Facebook, so Facebook traffic is my traffic. Trust me, when I commuted from the north, I'd spend 3-5 minutes sitting on my own damn offramp just to go a few hundred feet to my house while all the FBers and bridge folk were trying to turn left onto a gridlocked overpass :)
There are choke points along 280, 380 interchange, 92, sand hill, and lots more going south, going north there are msny more, but you could have a commute such that you avoid those. I was more talking about SF to valley (at least PA) and likewise from at least PA to SF.
Moffet to Vallco Cupertino is a 13 minute morning commute. Cupertino to Moffet is a 27 minute morning commute, if not longer. Cupertino back to Moffet takes me 15 minutes in the evening, the reverse takes 31 minutes.
What times of day are you driving? I can tell you that when I drive 101 south, I get stuck at the construction chokepoint at the East Palo Alto IKEA (between University and Embarcadero), and that adds at least several minutes of slow-and-go driving compared to before the construction started.
The only way I'm driving fast down 101 south is if I'm there at 11 am. Which counts as morning, but is also unreasonably late even for salaried workers in a relaxed company.
I quit a job which took me from SF to the penn on 101. There were slowdowns at the 280/101, airport, 92, 84, university, oregon, etc... sure off peak is different, but that’s nin commute hours. The traffic going north has similar slowdowns. Now, there are a few exceptions here and there like if you’re going from Hillsborough to some parts of sandhill and such, but the longer SF-valley and Valley-SF is clogged during commute hours.
I don't blame you, that's a really long drive to do twice a day, any way you slice it.
I was trying to come up with analogous commutes in other areas, but even Everett to Seattle is "only" 34 miles.
I wouldn't recommend a >40mi car commute in any populated area, frankly. If you're not coming from a busy area or going to a busy area, you're at least traversing a busy area, and in this case you're talking about all 3. I'm not sure what you're expecting out of that kind of distance. Even at 2am you're probably talking at least 45 minutes by the time you get out of the city and get off the freeway into your destination.
When I think "bad traffic", I think of low average speeds, not just long commutes with a few bottlenecks.
If by "valley" you mean Palo Alto, yeah you'll be ~at the speed limit all the way.
101 South backs up from around Mountain View in the morning, in my experience. Not as bad as 101 North during those hours, but the 101-S traffic had a large effect on my last job search.
