commute from Sacramento to Mountain View (San Jose, San Francisco: house, construction, living in)

[RandomGuy101]

Hello All,

My wife and I will be moving up to Sacramento soon and she will begin her new job near downtown Sac. I am currently working in Mountain View and I do not want to leave my job at this time because I like it a lot and it pays well. They have agreed to let me work from home twice a week. I will have to commute down from Sac to Mountain View at least once a week.

For the first week I was considering trying the following schedule and would appreciate some feedback for people who know the commute:

Mon: WFH
Tues morn: Leave Sac by 5:30 am to hopefully get to Mtn View by 8:00 am or so
Tues night: Leave Mtn View around 7:00 pm to get home around 9:00 pm?
Wed: WFH
Thurs morn:Leave Sac by 5:30 am to hopefully get to Mtn View by 8:00 am or so
Thurs night: Sleep at parent's house in the south bay (they have agreed to let me crash there whenever I want)
Fri morn: Commute to Mtn View from south bay (should be short commute)
Fri night: Leave Mtn View around 6:00 pm to get to Sac by 8:30 ish (how bad is the traffic Fri night?)

Would public transport be an option at all?

Thanks,
Soon to be Sacramento resident

[wburg]

A lot depends on where you live in Sacramento. If you get a place downtown/midtown you will be on the western edge of the city, if you get a place out in the suburbs you will most likely be farther to the west. (edit: I noticed in another thread you are looking at 1801 L Street downtown. This puts you at the western edge of the city.)

2 to 2.5 hours is the very optimistic end of the trip time...I'd count on 3 hours giving a small margin for error. The closest thing to a public transit option is taking the Capitol Corridor trains to San Jose, then Caltrain to Mountain View. That's about 3-4 hours, not counting the trips from your home to the Amtrak station downtown, and from the Mountain View Caltrain station to your workplace.

Checked the schedule: In order to make it to the Mountain View Caltrain station by 7:57 AM, you would need to hop the first Capitol Corridor train west from Sacramento. It leaves at 4:30 AM. There are no local buses or light rail at 4:30 AM, which means you'll either have to walk a mile or so through downtown Sacramento at 4:00 AM or drive there and pay to park at the Amtrak lot.

[Mossy]

No way would I do that. I traveled to downtown San Francisco for 3 months from Sacramento and that was a complete nightmare. By the time I got home at night, I had to trun around and go to bed to be up in 6 hours for public transportation. I wouldn't travel that for any amount of money unless I had a private jet.

[d_deathrage]

Mass transit just about always takes longer than driving because you have to catch a bus or catch a train. All mass transit will need to make a bunch of stops to pick up passengers.

Its probably much faster to drive than to take mass transit when commuting this long. Especially when you will need to leave really early.

Driving might work in the short term, but I wouldn't want to do this commute on any type of permanent basis.

[RandomGuy101]

Thank you all for the input! We plan on living in midtown, looks like i am looking at around 2 hours with no traffic but at least 3 hours in traffic. Public transport does not look like an option.

I am going to try doing the commute twice a week to start. If that is too horrible then I will have to go down to once a week and spend more nights at my parent's place in the south bay.

I'll let you know what the driving times are like when I start this commute.

[Mr. Ozo]

Traffic on 680 will be hell. Good luck.

[Ludachris]

That's one hell of a sacrifice. I can't imagine staying away from my family like that for a job. I guess if you have absolutely no other choice, you do what you have to do. It doesn't really sound like that's the case though. Are you sure you want to lock yourself into a situation like this?

Best of luck. Let us know how it works out. I'm curious.

[Upsilon]

I live in El Dorado Hills and my company had me working in Santa Cruz last summer for a project we had going on down there. I would leave EDH Sunday afternoon, sometime around 4-5 to arrive there at 7-8 (of course, this is Sunday afternoon so there's really no backup for the most part unless there's an accident somewhere). Typically, I would alternate between going down I-5 to pick up 580 going into the Bay region and just straight 80 WB to 680, both seem to take the same amount of time, but both can be bad if there's heavy backup. I would have to travel back home from Santa Cruz Friday afternoon at 4p.m and it didn't matter which route I took, I was sitting in traffic for hours.

Considering you're working in Mountain View, you have access to quite a few different routes and I've travelled all of them, here's some of the better ones I found...

I. 101 > 84 or 92 > 880 > 24 > 680 > 80 (I found 24 to be considerably faster than staying on 880 and merging with 80 due to the population density in that corridor). Just make sure you have money for the toll in Martinez or have one of those Fast Trak things. (It's $4)

*There's a lot of construction going on at the 92, 880 merge so there will be considerable backup, be sure to stay in the center lane as the right will eventually go to 880 S and the left turns into a city street up in Hayward. This might have changed since the last time I was there (which was December).

* Traffic backs up in Fairfield at the 680>80 merge

II. 237 > 880 or 680 (you want to get onto 680 so get directly on 680 or use the Warm Springs detour although I wouldn't recommend that) > 80 (goes through Martinez so prepare for the toll)

* Traffic backs up near Fremont and the Warm Springs district

* Traffic backs up in Fairfield at the 680>80 merge.

III. 237 > 680 > 580 > 205 > 5

* Traffic backs up near Fremont and the Warm Springs district.

* Prepare to be stuck in traffic around Pleasonton, Dublin and Livermore for the majority of the trip and once you're over the hill you'll get stuck in Tracy for a little bit longer, but once you're on 5, it's a comfortable trip.


This route may be a bit longer than the others, so I put it last.

I can't say I can recommend any of these routes, they're all really bad on Friday nights, although perhaps since you're leaving at 6p.m instead of 4p.m, you may be catching just the back end of the major traffic. Google Maps traffic is a great feature to use if you're wondering which route would be the best to take as it shows real time traffic speeds in most major metropolitan areas in the United States. I would check just before I got on the road to plan accordingly and prepare myself for the inevitable. It would take anywhere from 3.5 to 4 hours to get back home on Friday nights, of course, I have about 20 to 30 extra minutes on top of what you have since I live on the extreme east side of Sacramento.

[Curmudgeon]

If you don't already have one I'd consider a GPS for your car that's Blue Tooth capable and can be set for traffic reports of slowdowns, accidents, road construction, etc. and re-route you if they're severe.

[RandomGuy101]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for some more input!

Upsilon - I really appreciate the routes and detailed info on traffic.

Curmudgeon - good idea on the GPS with real time traffic. I will need to look into that.

After all of your guy's input I am considering only doing the commute once a week. I would work from home Monday, drive down Tuesday morning (leave really early), stay at parent's house Tuesday night and Wednesday night, drive back up Thursday night (leave late, maybe around 7pm), then work from home on Friday.

The worst part will be being away from my wife for two nights but I think it will be OK.