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.

[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.)

[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.

[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. :)