Commute from South San Jose to Redwood City

[Lanienguyen]

My wife works at BMY in RWC. We are living at Berryessa. She leaves home early 6:40 and arrive at 7:10. It takes little longer to get home, ( leave the company at ~3PM).
If you are living in the South, you can consider alternative route, 85 and 280? I am sure that there is no traffic at 280 from 85 junction. More miles but shorter in time.

[cardinal2007]

Originally Posted by cbone4

do you know where the traffic usually starts? or is it the entire commute up? I'm asking because I'm wondering if its better to drive from my house on Cottle to a Caltrain station more north (like Tamien) that would take me right into RWC?

From there you will probably be taking 85 to 101. I only know my route, in the morning if I want to avoid most traffic I take 280 to 85 to 101, and try to be at the office by 7am, I still have to deal with backup around 280 going past 880. The stretch of 85 between 280 and 101 is free flowing before 7.

That is as far as my knowledge goes, to get to Tamien you would have to take 85 to 87, then take Curtner to Almaden Exwy, then go on Alma to Lick and park there, but that is free parking. 14 minutes without traffic, but I have no idea if 7:56 is early enough for that, probably not, you would have to take the train 1 hr early at 6:56, and that probably is early enough, but I don't know.

Sorry, I live downtown, and work in downtown Palo Alto, so I don't know much about traffic further out.

[bobby_guz_man]

Caltrain. Caltrain. Caltrain. Don't even bother attempting the drive, it's madness.

Doesn't matter if you take the baby bullet or not, Caltrain is the way to go. You also need to see if the company shuttle from Caltrain station will work for those time though. Just time your Caltrain arrival to the shuttle if you can.

Once again, I cannot recommend it enough: use Caltrain, especially since you live near a Caltrain station (and a lightrail station, where you can time it to go to Tamien to take the bullet if you want). I would just take the Blossom Hill train straight through RWC, no transfer, save the hassles.

[sonarrat]

Originally Posted by cbone4

They did say they would be flexible with hours if I wanted to start early and leave earlier or start later and leave later. Would this make a difference on the commute?

You can to some extent mitigate the morning commute, but the afternoon commute is very difficult to avoid unless, as I said, you are leaving after 7 pm. Then the carpool opens up. So the ideal hours would be something like 10 am to 7 pm, taking I-280 both ways. That would cut the drive times to only about an hour.

There is train service from the Blossom Hill station to Redwood City, but the station is not convenient to most employers, and the BH station, like all stations before Tamien, is only served limited hours during commute times. At least parking is free. If you are only going during normal commute hours, that could be a good option to avoid having to go through downtown SJ.