Alameda (San Jose, Oakland, San Mateo: house, safe area, schools)

[carolemary]

Moving to bay area . Found a house in Alameda is it a safe area and easy to commute to Burlingame ? is it safe and family friendly ? I been looking at photos of alameda and it looks very beautiful. How about schools, good ?

[worktolive]

Alameda is a very nice. Its biggest problem is that commuting to places other than SF and the inner East Bay is a bit difficult. There are a couple of bridges connecting Alameda to Oakland, but it can take 15-20 minutes just to get to the freeway. Once you are on I-880, you need to go south to the San Mateo bridge, cross it, then head over to Burlingame. At commute hours, I'd estimate this might be at least an hour's drive - maybe more?

[carolemary]

ok thanks good to know..........for me it is to long you probably mean by car so by train or fery even longer then. I presume its better for me to find sth nearer for x in Mountainview or Pacifica

[sonarrat]

There's no good way to do Alameda to Burlingame by train.. even if you can take a shuttle from the Millbrae BART station, as I do, you're still looking at over an hour end to end and probably closer to two hours.

[worktolive]

In general, if you have to drive, you'll be better off if you can avoid including a bridge in your commute. I like Pacifica, but it can get pretty foggy by the coast, so if gray days bother you, you might not be happy there. Half Moon Bay which is farther south is much smaller and fairly isolated, but a friend of mine who lived there said they had less fog than Pacifica. On the other hand, San Mateo, Redwood City, Mountain View, etc. are shielded from the fog by the coastal mountains and get progressively warmer and sunnier the farther south (towards San Jose) you go.