Driving advice?

[brooksmoses]

suzimoses and I are driving up to Santa Rosa at 8pm this evening for a concert, thanks to some tickets that were a Christmas gift from my brother.

Google and Mapquest suggest that I should take 101 up to 380, go across to 280, up 19th and across the Golden Gate Bridge to get to 101 north.

Yahoo, on the other hand, suggests that I should take 101 up to 80, go across the Bay Bridge and then across the Point Richmond / San Rafael bridge to 101 north.

Given that we'll be doing all of this around 6pm on a Friday afternoon, I suspect that both of these bits of advice are probably wrong, and that the thing to do is to start out on 280 and avoid 101 as long as possible. What I'm not sure about are the bridges; either way seems likely to be a mess. (And I think that the same trip a decade ago is when my brother sideswiped someone driving my car through the Golden Gate bridge tollbooths....)

Suggestions/recommendations on the best way to go?

Also, advice on how much extra time to allow for traffic? All of the sites are saying about an hour and 45 minutes of driving time.

Thanks!

Comments

[trom.livejournal.com]

Allow more like 3 hours on a Friday, last week it took us 2.5 hours from S. San Francisco to Napa. Also avoid 19th Street. Take 101 to 80, go up Van Ness and across the golden gate.

[brooksmoses]

Thanks!

That's definitely a useful warning. Now that I think about it, my brother and I (doing the same trip ten years ago) had planned to have dinner somewhere near the theatre when we got there, and were rather glad of having planned that, since traffic ate up all the expected time for dinner.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Recall, also, that it being the last Friday of the month, Critical Mass is likely to be out on the streets of San Francisco with unspecified consequences. I think they tend to stay confined to the downtown area, though, to it may be moot.

I can't be much practical help (and I don't recall exactly where you're coming from other than somewhere on the penninsula), but my general principle is to avoid downtown SF around rush hour (esp. on Fridays) like the plague -- and that includes the freeway-only 101 to 80 route. Would it involve too much backtracking to take one of the more southerly bridges across to 880 and proceed from there? I do think the east-bay-to-Richmond-Bridge route has advantages despite the extra mileage involved. You can get major traffic foo on that route, but with anything going through SF, you will get major traffic foo.

(Hint: the section of I-80 between the Maze and the 580 split-off to the Richmond Bridge will feel like hell, but once you split off towards the bridge it should lighten up immensely.)

[brooksmoses]

That's definitely another possibility. My recollection from visiting my brother in Berkeley is that 880 heading northbound towards the Maze is slow bumper-to-bumper pretty much all the way up at that hour, though.

Thanks!

[brooksmoses]

Oh, another question: Thoughts on how to get through the Maze? Normally I'd take 880 all the way up to it, but Google is suggesting taking 980 over to 580 and then going through that way....

[echristo.livejournal.com]

i did this trip fairly frequently for faire a few years back. we always did the route that google is suggesting and it worked out pretty well. it's not a fun drive no matter what though.

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

I would take 237 to 880 to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

(maximize carpool lanes)

I know that when brian1789 had a sweetie up in Sonoma Co., he'd take that route, too.

I've usually hit a lot of traffic between Petaluma and Santa Rosa.

[brooksmoses]

Cool; thanks! I hadn't thought about taking 237, since it's a few miles south of us, but I do remember it being pretty sane in that direction even at rush hour. (The other direction, though, whee!)

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

according to my nav system, its about 6 miles longer to take 237, but I got in the habit of it because of the carpool lanes plus no tolls headed west. (Even if the road speeds are the same, I'd rather have $4 than six minutes)

[brooksmoses]

Now that I think about it, though, aren't the carpool lanes on the East side of the bay 3-person, rather than just 2-person? (Sadly, we have no carpool-lane-enabled Prius.)

[hopeforyou.livejournal.com]

I second this. I think 101 N will be incredibly dense, and while 880 can be, if you hit it earlier and use carpool lanes, it should be much easier.

I also find 80 to the Richmond-SR Bridge far less congested to not congested than I would find 101 all the way up to Napa. It's taken me many hours to get anywhere on 101 N past the GG Bridge on the weekends... Even the weekend DAYS.

[brooksmoses]

Thanks for the advice! That's probably what I'll end up doing.

[mschlock.livejournal.com]

Hm. It regularly used to take my friend an hour to get from Alviso to Union City on 880, but then, she couldn't use carpool lanes. Of course, 101 is frequently evil anyhow. Can't tell ya.

237 heading towards the East Bay almost always looks like way more ass than the other direction when I leave work at night, FWIW.

Oh, and allow an extra hour for rain-induced accidents...

[11011110.livejournal.com]

I usually take the Golden Gate rather than the San Rafael, but either way will work. As for how to get to the Golden Gate from the peninsula, either 280 to 19th or 101 via Van Ness will work; the last time I did it I took Van Ness north and 19th back south. 19th may be a little longer but I think it flows a little better when traffic gets heavy.

[ladycalliope.livejournal.com]

I hope you made it! The rain caused so much flooding, that traffic was pretty bad starting early yesterday afternoon. I had to pick Birdie up in South San Francisco -- normally a 20 minute drive -- and it took 40 minutes to even get onto 280 from one block north of City Hall at 3:30pm. I heard on the radio that 101 northbound was pretty clogged all the way up the Peninsula, and that the 280 extension in SF was heavily flooded (I noticed that at 10:20am, so it was definitely going to be much worse by the afternoon).

That 237 suggestion was probably a good one. :)