Adventures in Public Transportation around the Bay Area
After spending the last month in Europe using public transportation, I am determined to use it more here in the Bay Area. Everyone always says the public transportation here sucks. I’m not so sure I agree with that. It may be limited but it doesn’t suck! For the last 2.5 years I took the bus from Marin to San Francisco 5 days a week and never had an issue. It was always on time, I always got a seat and the driver was super friendly.
Tomorrow I need to be in San Leandro at 10:30am. I used Google Maps to find out it would take me 45-60 minutes to drive there from my home in Marin. The thought of driving and sitting in traffic for an hour sounds dreadful to me so I decided to do a little research. I found out I can get there in about 1.5 hours using public transportation and my feet. I am going to be adventurous and give it a try. I will take a bus in to San Francisco and then take BART to San Leandro and then walk about a mile to my meeting place. Instead of spending 1 hour behind the steering wheel, I will be sitting on the bus and BART being able to use that time to read, check my email, tweet, Facebook, take photos, or even just space out while I get over this jet lag.
1.5 or so hours of public transportation and an opportunity to get in some exercise (more steps on FitBit) sounds way more appealing to me than sitting in my car, probably in traffic and very likely to get lost (I always get lost when I drive in the East Bay).
I will let you know how my little experiment with Bay Area public transportation goes. I figure if I can handle the metro in Spanish, French and Italian, I should be able to figure out how to get around in English!
Wondering how to get from point A to point B in the Bay Area using public transportation? Check out this handy little Website: 511.0rg
Other helpful resources:
GoldenGateTransit.org (bus and ferry info)
BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit)