Bay Area Commuting

A word of caution - if you are used to the NYC system you may be a bit disappointed with the SF system.The trick is to figure out where BART (Bay area rapid transit - connects city's in the bay area) and MUNI (sf system) stop in SF. If you find a job in the south bay find a place near the cal-train station so you can easily walk or bike to that since it is really the only option for getting to silicon valley besides company sponsored buses (most of the big tech companies run these from SF)

Nice, it seems like you've found a good transit solution that works (which is rare in the Bay Area) and I'm happy. A couple of questions came to mind, and I mean them in the nicest way --1. Do you live in the same place that the accelerator is -- in Downtown Oakland? Is that considered a safe neighborhood? You compare that with your founder commuting from North Beach, which is not a business district, so he likely lives there. North Beach is good neighborhood that lacks an undergro

I've never lived in the Bay Area but I've visited a bunch of times. I've considered what I would need to do to live there without a car and it's difficult. Here are some glaring problems:1. Caltrain is dog slow, infrequent and doesn't tend to go to places you want. Santa Clara County actually runs what seems to be a fairly decent VTA light rail that will get you from, say, downtown Mountain View to tech companies east of Moffett Airfield (Lockheed Martin, Yahoo, some of Microsoft's buildings,

In the past three months I've lived in Palo Alto, SF, and now Menlo Park, and have been to just about every stop on the Caltrain from SF to San Jose.SF may be easier to get along without a car, but I don't find SV particularly difficult. Some combination of Caltrain + Zipcar + Uber + taxi + bus + bike + short walks is always available.

I have a startup in a solar accelerator program in downtown Oakland. Our building right around the corner from a BART stop. When I have a meeting in SF, it's only 15 minutes to get to Embarcadero. It takes my co-founder longer to get from North Beach to that stop.Also, Oakland is pretty flat, so riding your bike around is super fast and easy. You don't need a car at all to have an active social life. I constantly go to meetups all over the bay area, and the only time I drive is when

oakland to sf would be huge. compete with the increasingly overcrowded BART, especially on the pitt/bay point line, and the unreliable transbay buses. there's already a huge "casual carpool" culture you could eat into.

They do have high quality company buses between SF and Mountain View. I've been on them before. So even if you commute, at least you won't have to drive and can do something useful like reading or programming.Personally I'd prefer to live and work in Mountain View. I've lived happily in East Palo Alto before without a car. Just had to take a bus to the Caltrain a couple times a week or so for an event, but ate and grocery shopped within walking distance most of the time. Very cost efficient.

There are suburban "downtowns"/shopping districts near many BART and Caltrain stops where it's quite possible to commute and do most everyday errands on foot/bike/transit. Possibly even easier than a lot of the southwestern half of SF proper. (Having no access to a car at all - through friends or a willingness to use Lyft/Uber - does make some things harder). The older and higher-density suburbs tend to be better for this: for instance downtown San Mateo, Redwo

BART from Oakland to SF is OK. BART to Caltrain to Silicon Valley is a proper hassle. The two systems don't line up real well, you're liable to clock 4 hours a day commuting if you go all the way down to Palo Alto. Driving at an off-peak time is strictly better.

Speaking for the Bay area, public transportation here is shockingly bad, even for something as routine as getting to the airport. For someone living in the valley to get to SFO (about 40 miles), a taxi can cost anywhere from $50-$80, and the public transportation alternative takes anything between 2-2.5 hours, 1 bus, 3 trains, some distance walking with your luggage, and about 15 bucks. Oh, I forgot to mention that trains are once an hour, and there are a total of 3 distinct operators for the bu