I travel on 580 going west in the evening once every other week. Without fail the other side of the freeway, 580E, is always packed solid. That’s the portion past Livermore heading towards Tracy. That leads me to wonder, how many people commute from Tracy and even Stockton to Bay Area everyday for work? The extremely long commute is back in vogue it seems.
I hope they work in Pleasanton and Dublin and not in SF or the peninsula. Otherwise that 5-hour roundtrip will drive people over the wall…
The self-driving car future can’t come fast enough.
No, it has essentially been like this for a long time. I recall having a business meeting way out there and we had to drive out there pretty darn early and you could see the headlights for miles heading west. Of course, on the way back from the meeting and it was relatively early or not yet at commute hours you can see the return traffic going out there to home for these folks. I get it, you have a nice suburban home, with a lot of space, probably nice weather but the commute is a killer. Literally.
Weather is too darn hot past the Alameda county line. Perhaps we can track the rise and fall of the super long commute with the house price in Mountain House. Its a man made town in the middle of nowhere. Anyone visited there recently?
Funny you mentioned Mountain House. I had a coworker who bought in MH when it pretty much first started. Beautiful, mansion sized home for cheap. It got to the point that he had to find a new job cuz the commute (and this was to Oakland at the time) was too great. Yeah, hotter than heck out that ways…
LLL and Sandia had 10,000 employees at one point not long ago. Many rather well compensated scientist/engineer researchers. Many chose to live in Brentwood, Discovery Bay, Mountain House. Vasco Road was/is a nightmare during peak periods.
At one point, we ran two express buses down from East County through Mountain House and on over to the Hacienda Business Park. We had no trouble filling them at $10 fares. But, there is a tremendous backhaul form there with no revenue service.
But, in the downturn, when AT&T closed shop in Hacienda, we had to reconsider and finally eliminate the service.
580 is already a very wide freeway. I think at Altamont Pass it has 4 lanes each way. Any plan to widen it further?
Despite many people’s dislike of rail (I seem to be the only one who like it here…) I think that’s the only viable solution available now. Until we have mass adoption of self driving cars which could be decades away.
I work in SSF and commute from Pleasanton (take company bus) and that commute is long enough but I have a coworker who has commuted from MANTECA to SSF for the last 10 years - she drives to the bus stop in Pleasanton and does this 4 days a week (not Fridays) - I find it insane…
oh yeah for sure there are plenty of people doing that commute - and all the south bay / peninsula companies buses pick up in Dublin/Pleasanton - Genentech, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Visa, Amazon, etc. My bus even picks up from Livermore before it comes to Pleasanton.
How’s Manteca? Don’t know nothing about it… Looking it over on Redfin it seems schools are lackluster, mostly in the 5-7 range, and a 3/2 house can be had for around 300K. Seems a bit cheeper than Tracy, maybe 10-20% cheaper?
