Why I hate the Bay Bridge

YAY! I have another chance to rant. I’m sure this won’t bring about any changes, but I have to say that I absolutely, positively, HATE the Bay Bridge.

Why you may ask? If you haven’t had the misfortune to have to travel across the bridge you may not understand. It’s not so bad going over it unless you’re trying to during rush hour. The problem lines when you want to come back.

Now I can see why it’s free to leave San Francisco, but you have to pay to come back, after all, we’re San Francisco so we’re really cool and all that. We’re kind of like Disneyland with some gays and homeless people thrown in to mix things up a bit. The toll booths are managed very badly and there are even line ups to get through during the week day outside of rush hour.

Here’s an example. We decided to take a trip over to IKEA one day to get some new furniture. The drive over was about 30 minutes, but the return trip ended up taking us close to an hour and a half and this was around 12:30 on a Thursday. We were crawling along so slow it was ridiculous. Even the fast trak lanes weren’t so fast as you can’t go through the booth at 50 mph unless you’re a stunt driver. We don’t have much reason to cross the bridge so it would take us well over a year to finish off the original payout to get the fast trak device.

[mappress mapid=”24″]We tried a little experiment. There’s an IKEA down in Palo Alto. We decided to try that trip one day. Totally time down there: 40 minutes. Total time back 35 minutes and there was no toll. The big difference is not only in time, but the fact that it’s an 11 mile drive to Emeryville and a 34 mile drive to Palo Alto. Yet we were able to do it in a total of 45 minutes less driving three times the distance. Nowadays we’ve decided to boycott the Bay Bridge until they get things right.

Most of what we really need is in San Francisco and being in the Sunset it’s actually faster to get on the freeway going south than it is to get on the freeway going north towards the bridge. So unless it’s a major emergency, the Bay Bridge is out for us. Well unless it’s a trip to Treasure Island which you don’t need to go through the toll booth to get there or come back.