nashvillwill

So i hope to be landing a job in the bay area soon, and since my commute is a deciding factor, i need to know if it is reasonable from those with more experience than me.

Job will be in Fremont (lower East Bay). Plan to live in San Francisco. Those factors are not really negotiable. So my job will be your typical 8-5. My job is only about 3-4 miles from the Fremont BART station and i know that BART limits bikes during peak hours. Would it be feasible to have a "home" bike in SF to ride to BART, and leave there, and then a "work" bike to ride to work from the Fremont station? This is assuming i could get a locker at the Fremont station.

Any thoughts? Is this a ludicrous commute? Would it be easier via car?

UmneyDurak

It won't be easy via car. The freeways are a constant charlie foxtrot around those times. Not sure about the bike, but folder is always an option. Not sure why SF is not negotiable, but I really recommend living somewhere in South Bay.

bigbossman 

Either way, car or BART, you're a better man than me. That would be a commute from hell. You'll be in a car or packed onto a train for ~3 hours a day.

Specialized2k10

You'll run a big risk of getting one of them stolen if thieves start noticing either bike unattended during certain hours. Why sf to live tho? Rent is crazy high, plus youll work in fremont. Move closer to work if you can.

pacifico

Living in Oakland with a job in Fremont would probably be easier.

ro-monster

I think a folding bike might be preferable to a bike on each end of your commute. I believe you can bring folders onto BART at all times as long as they are folded before you enter the paid areas. But, as others have said, that kind of commute is wearying after a while. I've done commutes of similar length at several different points, and eventually opted to move close to work so I could just ride the whole distance. A few of my friends have done the same thing. I miss living in San Francisco but I don't miss spending 3.5 hours a day going to and from work at all.

You need to be aware that only a limited portion of San Francisco is close enough to the BART stations to make commuting that way feasible; riding through the city can take longer than you would expect given the distances involved. The stations on the southern side of the city might as well be in suburbia, as the neighborhoods around them are purely residential, and lack city amenities. You may also be surprised at how expensive BART fares are.

Even so, it will be preferable to driving. The freeway on that side of the bay is hellish even outside of rush hour, not to mention the bridges. And unless you are rich, keeping a car in the city is prohibitively expensive. If you want to do that commute by motor vehicle, a motorcycle is definitely the way to go -- much, much cheaper to own, and you can legally ride right through the stopped traffic on the freeway. Since we don't have snow, you can ride all year.

pacificaslim

Even on motorcycle, I wouldn't cross the bay bridge and then try to go south down 880. I'd take 280 south out of SF to 84 and cross the bridge right into Fremont. But regardless, it's a terribly long commute.

UmneyDurak

Another advantage is that with motorcycle you can legally use a carpool lane, and with fastrack during rush hour traffic that will also mean smaller fees to cross the bridge. That being said commuting on a motorcycle during rush hour traffic is still stressful, and once the rain starts a pure misery.

Beaker

Folding bike is definitely the best option. Having said that, your BART ride will be counter commute, not sure if you might be OK with a regular bike - check www.Bart.gov and look at the specific schedule to be sure.

I have a trans bay commute and take BART 50% of the time between Orinda and Glen Park. It's always a better sanity maintaining option than driving. Trust me on that.

ROJA

That would be a really, really long commute by public transit and basically impossible by car during those hours.

Why move to the Bay Area with all it has to offer if you will be spending your life commuting? You are seriously looking at a 2+ hour commute PER DAY (and that's if you live near BART in SF, which can be tough to do, depending on your preferences). Just the BART portion is 54 minutes each way (from 24th and Mission BART).

Even if you think the city life is cool, it won't be worth it if you are spending only a few sleeping hours at home during the week. If your partner has a job in SF (I assume that is why you want to be there), then it would be possible (but still might be pretty miserable for one or both of you) to live somewhere in between, like Oakland.

Could you do it for a month? Sure. But long-term, I don't know why you would want to do this. If you do decide this is something you'd want, a folding bike would definitely be the way to go. I have a Xootr Swift and like it.

ROJA

The other thing is that the ride from Fremont BART to your job may not be very nice. The roads down there are pretty fast and open (not like city riding in Oakland or SF, which is pretty decent for cyclists). You might make sure that there is a safe route to and from your job that you'd want to ride every day.

mayukawa

As somebody who used to drive that commute (during the dot-com period), I have to say...don't do it! It was a nightmarish commute back then...though I don't imagine it would be much better these days despite the lousy economy. FYI, my commute times used to be 3.5~4 hours every day.

DiabloScott

Ditto everyone else.
It would suck serious.

Also, San Francisco homes don't have a lot of room for bike stuff - usually tiny with tiny garages if anything.
If I worked in San Francisco I'd pay extra to live there and not commute, but to pay extra AND have a sucky commute... that's insanity.

SlowRoller

I have friends who do something similar, using BART bike lockers on each end of their commute. Check to make sure you can get one in Fremont and one in SF and you should be good to go, although I do think a folder would be your best bet. I have a 2-hour and 20-minute round-trip mixed mode (bike and train) commute and I love it. It's the best part of my day, and I say this as someone who likes their work, likes their partner, and likes their social life. The bike ride in wakes me up, and the bike part home lets me wind down. The train rides are nice quiet times when I can do a lot of reading, catch up on some work, or zone out listening to music. Just my two cents.

bigbenaugust 

You may want to rethink the living in SF as being non-negotiable thing (unless of course there's a woman involved or something).

There are better/closer places to live. Even without BART, Amtrak and the VTA bus approach Fremont from the south, and there are a million closer places in the BART system.

x136 

Lordy, I'm in San Jose and I wouldn't want to commute to Fremont.

If your Points A and B are as non-negotiable as you say, I'd agree with those who vote folding bike. Doing the Bike In Every Port plan seems like a lot of hassle, and I'd be paranoid about theft.

nthach

AC Transit does offer a Transbay "Express" SB commuter bus between Fremont and the Transbay Terminal at Main and Howard - but that's a looonnnggg bus ride on the Nasty Nimitz.

Personally, I would look for a place to live between San Leandro and San Jose. You can also do Pleasanton/San Ramon/Dublin as well. That way, if you have no public transit connectivity via BART/AC Transit/VTA the commute down 880/680 is probably a 1 hour ride in bad traffic via car. I live in Contra Costa County and I commute into SF for school via commuter bus or casual carpool. I do want to bring my bike along for the ride - not my road bike though.

davids0507

It's really late here so I'm not completely sure what the original poster is asking, but you're commuting in the opposite way from most people -- you're living in SF and going to Fremont. I think it's ok to do that with a bike. You can't do the opposite though -- you can't go into SF during the morning rush hour with a bike. They do ask you to get out at Embarcadero in the evening on your way home, but by that point you're already close to home.

Check here: https://www.bart.gov/guide/bikes/bikeRules.aspx

pacificaslim

You don't necessarily need to live in the east bay either. You could live on the peninsula, in redwood city or palo alto and then bike across the bridge to fremont. That'd be a 20 mile ride, with about 5 of it on the bridge. Or take caltrain down or drive to a park-and-ride lot and then take your bike and ride across the bridge.

SesameCrunch

Your best bet is the folding bike. The Brompton is the smallest fold of the bunch. Folds into a tiny package in about 1 minute. Rides pretty nice too.

Dchiefransom

Riding in Fremont should be no problem. Lots of bike lanes and wide outside lanes around here. What area of Fremont, or what street, will your job be on?
I don't know if the Fremont station has bike lockers. I'll go look around and find out. I think you'd need a keyed single use locker that you rent out. The folder suggestion is probably the best one.

nthach

The only BART stations/parking lots with BikeLink lockers AFAIK are El Cerrito Plaza, Ashby and the Hercules Transit Center. I use the ones at HTC, I'd trust them.

Dchiefransom

There are 17 keyed bike lockers on the west side of the BART station in Fremont. You'd have to call the number on the BART website to check for availability. https://www.bart.gov/guide/bikes/index.aspx It looks like it would cost $30 for the locker for a year, plus a $25 key deposit. The BART office for this stuff is inside the Lake Merritt BART station.
They have wavy "U" type racks outside, also. There were 7 bikes locked to those, of which 5 were complete bikes, and the other 2 were just frames-no forks even. That could have happened since Friday. The U-locks were not cut on those 2.

With your needs, I'd say look for a keyed bike locker on each end, or get the nice folder pictured above. The advantage of the folder is that you can also take it on the ACE train, AmTrak, and CalTrain.
I checked the current fares and from Civic Center in SF to Fremont would be $11.20 per day round trip. The toll on the Bay Bridge would be $5 normally, but $6 with congestion pricing, so figuring in the price of gas would bring you about even in cost, without considering wear and tear on a vehicle. The schedule page shows this as about a one hour trip on BART each way. I don't know about SF, but Fremont is the beginning of the line here, so you should be able to get a seat for the ride home. Sit on the opposite side of the train from the sun.

goodtimes5

BART doesn't really enforce the no bikes on BART during peak hours rule. I've done it many times, and I've seen others do it without issue. And I'm talking about full road or mountain bikes. My advice for this is to get on the last few cars where people are less likely to be. That way there's more room for your bike, and you won't feel rude having a bike up someone's rear.

Beaker

I've seen quite the opposite - several times the train operator has refused to leave a station until a bike was removed from the train.