[Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)]: An
analysis by the University of California, Berkeley, shows that without
BART traffic jams from Bay Area bridges would spill back to most of the
East Bay and San Francisco street networks. Drivers would spend one or
two hours just getting to the closest freeway and an extra few hours in
freeway traffic.
Half hour to one hour commutes turn into three to four hour commutes! I
can’t speak to the study methodology, but it sounds pretty compelling.
For my part, in addition to ditching car for mass transit as much as
possible, I find that biking cross-twon (Berkeley CA, ~120,000 people)
takes very little more time than driving — if any — and is much more
fun. I discover parts of this town that I’ve lived in for two decades
— sights, sounds, smells — that I never encountered before.