October 25, 1989
Dear Everyone:
Welcome to
“Adventures in Commuting!”
There has been a massive campaign here to deal with
the problem of how 100,000+ people are going to get to work in the next
few weeks (or month). This
is approximately how many people cross the San Francisco/Oakland Bay
Bridge on a typical work day.
KPIX, the local CBS affiliate, kicked it off at
8:00 Sunday night, thus grabbing the lion’s share of viewers carried
over from 60 Minutes, plus
die-hard Jessica Fletcher fans.
They ran for an hour, commercial-free, to tell people how to get
to work on Monday
Their slogan:
Heart of the Bay.
They really do have an emblem of a heart with San Francisco on
one side and Oakland on the other.
It’s a rather blatant attempt to foster the Good Samaritan
Syndrome, trying to give everyone a good feeling about the mess we’re
in. You hear things like:
“Come on everyone! If
we pull together, we can make this work!”
“This” is, in effect, a triple by-pass of the
“heart”. If you have to
cross the Bay, go around, under or on it.
Car-pooling is being “encouraged” (“Driving alone is anti-social
behavior”). People are going
across the Richmond/San Raphael Bridge, then down 101 to the Golden Gate
to get to the City. Or south
to Hayward and across the San Mateo Bridge.
Or really south to the Dumbarton and across.
All bridge tolls have been suspended until further notice.
There is also a modest armada of ferry boats to
take people from Marin, Oakland and Alameda across the Bay and into San
Francisco. Boats have been
loaned from as far away as Long Beach and Seattle.
But most
people are taking BART. BART
has added 50 more cars, the equivalent of 5 additional trains, to the
system. They have suspended
parking restrictions, except Blue Zones (handicapped parking), which
means you can park in the Carpool lots without a pass, or park in a red
zone if you don’t completely block traffic.
They’ve also set up auxiliary parking in places
like the Concord Pavilion and the Oakland Coliseum, with shuttles to the
stations. And, of course,
the buses are running extra schedules.
All of this was arranged over the weekend.
It is a freely-admitted fact that it never entered
anyone’s head that the Bay
Bridge would be crippled like this.
They always figured the Bridge would stand and the on-ramps would
fail. They were prepared for
the on-ramps, in that they had contingency plans.
Nobody figured it would be the other way around.
(By the way, if you’re wondering why the Golden
Gate Bridge came through so easily, it was strengthened just a few years
ago.)
By 8:00 Monday morning, 57,000 people were riding
BART. I honestly don’t think
more than half of them were on my train.
By midnight, Monday, when BART went into 24 hour service, a new
record had been set for number of patrons in a single day.
By Tuesday night, that record had been broken.
I don’t even want to think about what it will be by Friday.
Monday morning (in a driving rain that we could
easily have done without – the drought can wait for a little while), I
got to the Concord station at 5:45.
There was plenty of parking available, I had a ticket ready (long
lines at the ticket machines), got onto a train and even found a seat.
I was one of the lucky ones.
By the next station, it was standing room only.
By Walnut Creek (third in the line), you couldn’t even squeeze
into the train. After that,
I read my paper (the San Francisco Chronicle never missed an issue,
although the first few days were done an a Macintosh running off a
battery) because the windows were so steamed up from all those warm,
wet people that you couldn’t
see where you were anyway.
Tuesday, “Rowena” and I went together to the BART
station. We had decided to
give a try to coming in and leaving an hour earlier than usual.
Us and a few thousand other souls.
What’s happening here is:
If you want to park at BART, you have to get there while there is
still parking available. So
everyone is coming in early.
The “rush hour” has simply shifted forward a couple of hours.
This leaves plenty of room on the trains for “latecomers”, people
who can rely on buses or have someone to drop them off in the morning
and pick them up in the evening.
This morning, I got to the station at the same time
as Monday. You know it’s bad
news when the cars in the farthest lot have been sitting there for so
long that they have dew all over them.
I parked across the street, legally (no promises about the
future).
Tomorrow (thank God!), I have a meeting in
“Livermore”, a straight shot down I-680, in the morning.
I plan to take enough work with me that I can stay on that side
of the Bay, probably working in Company Park.
Friday, “Rowena” and I will probably be working the 6:00-3:00
“shift” which means being at BART before 5:00.
Don’t ask what time I get up in the morning, because I don’t want
to talk about it.
So far, the Bridge doctors have refused to change
their prognosis of up and running by November 16.
If they’re right, we’ll only have to live with this a few more
weeks. However, don’t burn
your bridges before you get to them.
In the mean time, we’ll all pull together, even if we have to
kill each other to do it.
It really could be worse.
In the Santa Cruz area, carpooling is enforced by law.
They only let you through the barricades if you have 3 or more
people in the car and can prove you live in the area.
On a brighter note…
It’s coming!
It’s coming! The best
day of the year (after Christmas, of course), the last Sunday in
October, when the clocks are turned back and I get to sleep an extra
hour. This year, I’m really
going to need it.
Love, as always,
Pete
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