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

[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.