Commute from Sacramento to San Francisco... (San Jose, Oakland: rent, insurance, home)

[neilium]

I am looking at working in the Bay Area (Green St. & Front St.) and living in Sacramento. I need to find the best way to get there from Downtown Sacramento. I hear the drive is a pain in rush hour traffic. Does anyone make this commute? Whats the cheapest / best way to commute there?

Thanks!

[wburg]

The drive is a pain in any traffic. Plan on spending about 4-6 hours a day in the car, or on the train: when you add up the cost of gas, tolls, insurance, parking and your sanity, taking the Capitol Corridor train might be a much better option than driving, plus you can spend that 4-6 hours napping, reading, working on stuff or having dinner instead of cursing the taillights ahead of you.

If you live in downtown Sacramento it's pretty easy to get to the Amtrak station on public transit. Take the Capitol Corridor to Emeryville, they have a bus that runs over to San Francisco--the Ferry Building stop is an easy walk from Green & Front.

::: The Capitol Corridor: home ::: - Capitol Corridor website
Sacramento Regional Transit District Home Page - Sacramento Regional Transit website

[ukiyo-e]

I lived in San Francisco for 17 years and now that I live in Davis, I drive over every month or so to visit friends, and I don't even like doing the drive that infrequently. I can't imagine doing it every day. Unless your employer provides parking, that's going to cost an arm and a leg. The train is an option, but you have to switch to BART to get into the city or take the bus, and that adds time.

I don't think it's realistic to do it for very long, frankly.

[mattinsac]

I knew someone who commuted from Elk Grove into Santa Clara. If you are going to do it, get a motorcycle. It will save you a lot on gas and when traffic backs up, you can drive between the lanes. It may also be cheaper to park. The arrangement he had was to work 2 days a week at home in Elk Grove and three days a week in Santa Clara. He was also able to come in outside of rush hour. He also had a friend who let him crash on sofa a couple nights a week.

He did it for about 8 months until he could find a job in Folsom. That type of commute might be feasible for a couple of months, but it gets old really quickly. If the goal is to find cheap rent or housing, it might make more sense to look at some place like Concord or Pittsburg.

[cityx]

With so many people commuting to the Bay Area from the Sacramento region, I always wondered why some sort of rail, in addition to or instead of Amtrak, wasn't built to and from San Francisco. Like an extension of BART or something. About six years ago I had to commute to SF Monday through Friday for a month and it was a royal pain. The trains were so slow and departure times were too spread out. Either I got to SF an hour early or an hour late. Of course, the drive was even worse.
Looks like were years away from high-speed rail too.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by cityx

With so many people commuting to the Bay Area from the Sacramento region, I always wondered why some sort of rail, in addition to or instead of Amtrak, wasn't built to and from San Francisco. Like an extension of BART or something. About six years ago I had to commute to SF Monday through Friday for a month and it was a royal pain. The trains were so slow and departure times were too spread out. Either I got to SF an hour early or an hour late. Of course, the drive was even worse.
Looks like were years away from high-speed rail too.

Actually, there used to be several options: in the 1870s you could take a riverboat or a Central Pacific train to San Francisco (either via the peninsula or via a ferry across the bay.) In the early 1900s, an electric interurban (the Oakland, Antioch & Eastern) was built between Sacramento and the Oakland pier, again connecting to San Francisco via a ferry. Once the Bay Bridge was built, you could get on an electric train at 12th & Terminal in Sacramento, go across the Bay Bridge and arrive at the Transbay Terminal around 2-3 hours later--unfortunately, Sacramento Northern's passenger service ended in 1941 (but some portions of the SN in the East Bay were later used as BART right-of-way.)
There was also another steam railroad, the Western Pacific, that ran through Sacramento and terminated in Oakland, but without direct service to San Francisco.

Today, Amtrak uses former Southern Pacific (now owned by Union Pacific) right-of-way from Sacramento to San Jose--except for some short segments on the east coast, Amtrak does not own their right-of-way, they run on freight railroads (that used to do passenger service before Amtrak.)

There really aren't that many regular commuters between San Francisco and Sacramento, at least not on a daily basis--there are enough to fill several Capitol Corridor trains per day, but it is still a long trip for a regular commute. Admittedly, the original steamboat trip (from the 1840s to the 1940s) took 12 hours, a lot longer than the later steam, electric or diesel-electric trains!

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by neilium

I am looking at working in the Bay Area (Green St. & Front St.) and living in Sacramento. I need to find the best way to get there from Downtown Sacramento. I hear the drive is a pain in rush hour traffic. Does anyone make this commute? Whats the cheapest / best way to commute there?

Thanks!

What a nightmare. Are you sure you want to do that?

[Jimbo15]

Originally Posted by cityx

With so many people commuting to the Bay Area from the Sacramento region, I always wondered why some sort of rail, in addition to or instead of Amtrak, wasn't built to and from San Francisco. Like an extension of BART or something. About six years ago I had to commute to SF Monday through Friday for a month and it was a royal pain. The trains were so slow and departure times were too spread out. Either I got to SF an hour early or an hour late. Of course, the drive was even worse.
Looks like were years away from high-speed rail too.

There is traffic spreading from Sacramento to SF during rushhour, but in practice you have very few people actually commuting from Sacramento all the way into San Francisco. Instead there is more of chain of commuting patterns. You have people priced out of SF who look for cheaper housing in the East Bay, say Oakland or Berkeley. You also have people working in the East Bay who are priced out of that and decide to move to Concord or Pleasanton. Then you have people working in Concord and Pleasanton who commute in from Vacaville and Fairfield to take advantage of cheaper housing in Vacaville and Fairfield. Lastly you have people who working in Vacaville and Fairfield, commuting in from Davis, Dixon and Natomas.

In each case people are commuting to take advantage of cheaper or better housing options further away from where they work, but very little of this traffic is through traffic.

High speed rail isn't going to help here with the commute. The current route looks like its going to go from SF to LA via Merced. After the main route is built, then they intend to run a route up from Merced to Sacramento. On the high speed rail map the estimated the time from SF to Merced is going to be 1 hour 14 minutes and the trip from Merced to Sacramento is going to be another 43 minutes. At a minimum high speed rail from Sac to SF would take 2 hours. The web site claims the cost to Merced would be 25 dollars and the cost of the trip from Merced to SF would be another 30 so you are paying 55 dollars for the priviledge of HSR.

Now compare that with current Capitols service. You can catch a train at 7 am that will get you to the civic center at 9:15. That ticket will cost you about 30 dollars right now. Are you willing to pay an additional $25 to save 15 minutes?

The reason they didn't pick a more direct route between the two cities is that the cost of building the system through urban areas with active earthquake faults and going over large water bodies is going to be pricey, so they are trying to shove all of the service along one line down the pennisula.

[jguillot]

Originally Posted by neilium

I am looking at working in the Bay Area (Green St. & Front St.) and living in Sacramento. I need to find the best way to get there from Downtown Sacramento. I hear the drive is a pain in rush hour traffic. Does anyone make this commute? Whats the cheapest / best way to commute there?

Thanks!

I agree with everyone else who has replied. It would be a NIGHTMARE to have that kind of a commute 5 days per week, even it you take the train from Sacramento to the Bay Area. You would be spending at least 25 hours per week just traveling to and from work. In the long run, you would be much better off renting in San Francisco.

[quasi888]

For a few months I commuted from Roseville to Santa Clara via Amtrak to my old job, 1-2x a week (I was able to telecommute the other days of the week), until I found employment here. I enjoyed the train ride itself -- I was able to nap or get work done -- but my days were VERY long: woke up at 5AM, stepped back in the door at 8PM. Of course, Sac to SF would be a shorter trip, but you still need to deal with the transfer to BART. And you WILL have delays on a regular basis: remember, it's the same track shared by freight trains, so if there's an incident somewhere down the line, all trains will be impacted.

I would NOT recommend this 5 days/week.