[dgallagher]

From someone who lives in Massachusetts, how difficult is it to commute between Oakland and San Francisco? On a map they're about as close as Cambridge and Boston. Is there a huge difference between, say, driving a car and taking the BART?

[aaroneous]

< 15 minutes to downtown SF on BART, nearly the same drive if you're going off-peak.

[tingletech]

It is actually faster to get to downtown SF from downtown OAK on BART than it is to get to downtown SF from the Sunset, Richmond, or even lower Haight on Muni.

[zaidos]

This is very true. I live in inland east bay (Walnut Creek) and my BART commute is still a few minutes shorter than my MUNI commute from when I was living in the Outer Richmond district.

[codex_irl]

I cannot figure out why more startups are not based in Walnut Creek - lots of office space, a great downtown & there are two BART stations within 5 mins + the contra costa transit center.

[radley]

During non-peak hours. In contrast, it will take an hour or longer to drive over on a weekend afternoons.

[tingletech]

I said BART. BART is even faster from Oakland during peak hours because there is less time between trains. I gave away my car when I lived in lower Haight because I had no place to park.

[graue]

However I hear that because BART shuts down early every night, you can't go to a nightclub, or even out to dinner, or work late(!) on the other bay, because once BART's closed, you're out of luck. No bike or pedestrian access on the bridges.

Is this true in practice? How big of a hassle is it if you don't have a car (and don't want to spring for an expensive taxi/Uber ride)?

(This reputation is a big reason why I don't want to ever move to the Bay Area. I currently live in Brooklyn, and can easily get home from Manhattan in 20 minutes... at 3am if I want to. In Cambridge/Boston the T shuts down, but not until around midnight and you can still bike or walk.)

(Edit: I was misinformed. I'd heard the BART shuts down at around 10pm, but it seems it's actually more like midnight, similar to the Boston area, and I didn't know there were all-night buses providing service between SF and Oakland when BART is closed.)

[fourstar]

You could absolutely work late (not sure why you'd want to be at the office past 12, but whatever), The new eastern span of the bridge that went up put a pedestrian/bike lane on one side of the bridge, although it only goes to Treasure Island. The long term plan (apparently, which is a surprise to the taxpayers) is to put a connecting version of it on the western span, but it'll be about 500 million bucks and who knows how long. I've been to Brooklyn. It's what I liked most about visiting my sister in NYC, to be honest. It's the total beta city and Manhattan is the alpha. Oakland is the beta here, and obviously the alpha is SF.

You could take the all nighter AC transit bus (get a clipper card) http://transit.511.org/accessible/schedules/routeinfo.aspx?c... which runs from SF to the east bay.

[graue]

Nice. It looks like I was misinformed, and I now have much less reason to avoid the Bay Area. Thanks for clarifying.

Though biking a 5 mile long bridge with no bike lane on half of it sounds terrifying, so I'd probably consider it still not bikeable for now.

[bhahn]

I live in Emeryville and have the exact same concerns.

After midnight, I took lyft back from Polk for $35.

Around 11pm, I took uber back from Mission Bay for $29.

Around 2am, I took AC transit bus back. The people taking it were cool, but it was a hassle for two reasons: finding the right bus stop in the city (and timing it) and its stopping about 15 minutes away from my place (not ideal at 2am).

The regular transbay busses that depart from the transbay bus terminal are much better (the F stops right in front of my place), but they don't run during the wee hours of the morning.

That being said, I really like living in Emeryville because of the gentrification of nearby Oakland and Berkeley.

[wildgift]

There's a thing called a bus. Who the hell wants to bike across the Bay Bridge?

[steveklabnik]

There are actually bike tour rental things expressly for biking across the bridge, its their advertising.

[satyap]

That's the Golden Gate Bridge, which is shorter and has ped/bike lanes (separate from traffic, IIRC).

The Bay Bridge's western span has no such thing.