Bay Bridge Traffic

I HATE TRAFFIC. When I lived in Orange County, driving through the "the orange crush" where the 5, 22, and 57 intersect drove me crazy and don't even get me started on the 405. Moving to the bay area, I assumed that there would be less traffic than LA/OC because there are more public transportation alternatives (BART, AC Transit, Muni, etc); but it took me over an hour to cross the bay bridge (less than 5 mile stretch) on Saturday night. As I waited, I counted how many lanes feed the bridge. Going west bound, there are 5 total lanes. The toll plaza has 20 total lanes. Naturally, the optimal ratio would be every 4 lanes in the toll plaza feed 1 lane on the bridge. However, when you look at how the lanes merge, the planners were totally smoking crack. The 880N -> 80W interchange feeds the far right section of 3 toll lanes. These 3 lanes ultimately feed the far right lane on the bay bridge. The 580W -> 80W feeds the left side of the bridge and you can choose the 10 left toll lanes, including fast trak lane #5. The 80W (from Berkeley) feeds the next 7 lanes, including fast trak lane #11. If you take fast trak lane #11, there is only one merge (from the right) and you automatically become the center lane on the bridge. Depending on how aggressively people merge after the lights, the 7 lanes from 80 feed lanes #3 and #4 on the bridge. The 10 left toll lanes from 580 feed lanes #1 and #2. In summary, the 10 lanes from 580 feed 2 lanes (5:1), the 7 lanes from 80 feed 2 lanes (7:2), and the 3 lanes from 880 feed 1 lane (3:1). Also, as was the case on Saturday night, if one of the lanes on the bay bridge is obstructed, overall utilization dropped 20% because 1/5 of the flow has to merge to another lane. Depending on which lane this occurs (in my case, center lane), utilization from 80W got screwed because the 7:2 ratio evolved to 7:1, thus an hour struggle to cross the bay bridge from 80W.

I can complain all day about traffic, but whining won't help. As I sat through the grueling ordeal, I thought of ways to help alleviate the situation. Obviously to improve flow you have to reduce the number of cars on the bridge, and the only way to do that is to convince people to carpool. A unique carshare programming seems successful, where individuals who want to go to SF but don't have a car wait around at the BART station, and a driver who has room in his car that wants to use a carpool lane picks up the individuals from BART to drive them across the bridge. Reading testimonials from craigslist, this idea is brilliant! All parties have motivation to carpool and it is a win/win situation. City planners should adopt this carshare program and formalize it. Instead of wasting millions of dollars on empty buses with crappy schedules, they should spend the money organizing an official carshare program. The city can displace some bus drivers and their salaries to work at BART stations and set them up with a computer and a phone. Using the internet, they can help coordinate live ad-hoc scheduling needs so a commuter can know if he can get a ride with carshare. If it was free and faster, I would drive to BART and hitch a carshare ride to downtown SF versus sitting in traffic and paying bridge toll. People can call ahead or go on the internet to plan a specific route (crossing the bridge) and local government can even help promote this by giving a dedicated lane to carshare (beyond fast trak). For me, if I could get a free ride to downtown SF in 15 minutes vs 40 min, I'd leave my car at home.