Public Transportation

I was complaining to a good friend about how it is difficult to get around the San Francisco Bay Area without an automobile. I currently have my car here, but would like to drive it back to Salt Lake so my wife can use it to replace one of our dying vehicles. My friend only has one working car and suggested that he does quite well with the help of public transportation.

I have my bike that I can use to get to and from work, which is less than four miles away. Next to my office is a grocery store and so I can easily stock up on food (with the help of a backpack). The only problem I need to solve is how to get to and from the airport each week.

With the help of the Internet, I looked into taking a shuttle bus. While San Francisco airport is only a few miles from my office, Oakland is less expensive to fly in and out of. Unfortunately that means a round-trip $100 shuttle ride each week. It is only $25 to keep my car at the airport each weekend and so the shuttle bus is more expensive than just keeping my car here.

Thinking back to my good friend's comment about public transportation, there is the option of Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART. BART runs between Oakland and San Francisco Airports at a cost of about $9. My office has a shuttle bus to the BART station and so it is just a matter of looking up times and figuring out schedules. Once again, it is the Internet to the rescue. Looking at the BART website, the ride takes about an hour. I think I may have solved the problem. Now if I could figure out how to keep it from raining when I am on my bike . . .