Weekend Transit Hacking: Peninsula to Oakland

March 22, 2024

I have close friends who live in Oakland which is across the Bay from me. We generally meet in the city to hang out but occasionally, I make a trip out to their place. If timed right, this trip can take as little as 1.5 and at most 2 hours on a weekday by relying on the Dumbarton Express. This can be competitive with driving in the evenings. Unfortunately, even though the option exists, I find the Dumbarton Express is one of the most frustrating busses I have taken in the Bay Area because you’re usually stuck in traffic while all the single-occupancy drivers get signal priority and the DB Express is usually delayed with no real time data to let you know what is going on.

Weekday Google Maps screenshot — A screenshot of Google Maps showing the route to get from the Peninsula, across the Bay via the Dumbarton bridge to the East Bay. Travel time varies from 1.5 to 2 hours. Drive time is about 1.5 hours.

That being said, the Dumbarton Express does not run on the weekend and the same trip can take 2.5+ hours because you have to circumnavigate the Bay. Maybe this is fine and we need to accept that the travelling a large distance just takes time, but what really pisses me off is that the drive time is “just” 50 minutes.

Weekend Google Maps screenshot — A screenshot of Google Maps showing the route to get from the Peninsula to the East Bay. Generally involves getting to a BART station via Caltrain north or 2x Buses to San Jose Milpitas. Drive time is 50 minutes.

This whole situation makes me very sad, but I think there is a way to speed up my trip using the Brompton.

First, here are what I think are the bottlenecks:

There is no one-seat BART ride from Millbrae to Fruitvale (closest BART stop to my friends) which means I need to switch from the Red line to the Blue/Green line eventually.
Taking the BART from Millbrae involves waiting at the platform for up to 20 minutes if I get unlucky.
BART takes a detour to SFO.
Timing the bus from Fruitvale to their home.

My proposed itinerary involves:

Skipping the transfer at Millbrae and instead riding the Caltrain all the way to 4th and King.
Biking from 4th and King to Montgomery/Embarcadero Station.
Catching a Green or Blue line at Montgomery. These trains come every 8 minutes eliminating an extra wait from transferring from Red to Blue/Green line somewhere else on the system.
Bike from Fruitvale to their home

I ended up trying this out few weeks ago: I got lucky and caught a blue line train that had just arrived at Montgomery, my total travel time was 1 hour and 53 minutes — A time savings of about 44 minutes. On my way back I actually missed my Caltrain connection, so I just took the BART all the way to San Bruno and then caught an Uber. Sometimes you can’t win 🥲.

Ways life could have been different:

Caltrain was electrified: They estimate 25 minute savings end-to-end for the whole line.. Estimates from San Francisco to Palo Alto are around 48 minutes for the Local train compared to 1 hour 6 minutes today, so about 18 minutes faster.
Dumbarton Express ran on the weekend (or you know we had a 2nd rail connection over the Bay)
Caltrain and BART met up at San Bruno instead of Millbrae. These two stations are a 15 minute walk apart. This would give riders the choice between going to SFO or straight to the city. Here is some history on this topic!