Our Threshold for Taking Public Transit

We try to take public transit as much as possible instead of driving - not only because it's friendly to the environment, but also because Kaiya loves riding the bus and train! For trips within ~ 15 miles of our home, it works out well especially since we have such great access to public transit in downtown Mountain View. Beyond that, it sometimes works out and sometimes doesn't.

Here is the thought process we went through a couple Saturdays ago when contemplating a trip up to Oakland:

• Saturday morning plans: meet our friend Marna at 10am near Lake Merritt (where she lives) for a stroll around the lake + farmer's market, roll over to Fenton's in nearby Piedmont for baby Vivien's first birthday party from around 11:30am til 1:30pm or so, and then back home with either a nap in transit back home or when we got home
• Public transit options: From our general knowledge of Bay Area public transit, we knew that I had two options - 1. Caltrain to BART (Mountain View to Millbrae) , BART to Oakland, bus from Lake Merritt to Piedmont; 2. Drive to Fremont, BART to Oakland, bus from Lake Merritt to Piedmont. With Google Maps very cool public transit option, we could figure out if either of these options were feasible.
• Option #1: We knew that we would have to deal with the infrequency (only 1 per hr) and slowness (no express trains) of the Caltrain on the weekends. What we didn't anticipate was challenging connections in Oakland - the closest BART station (19th St) was 1.5 miles from the Lake Merritt farmer's market, which would mean a 30 min walk or waiting for a bus (also ~ 30 min). Total trip time to get Lake Merritt: 2.5 hrs. We could either leave at 7:10am and arrive at 9:30am, or leave at 8:10am and arrive 10:30am. Yikes!
• Option #2: On the positive side, driving to the BART station in Fremont on the front end and walking from the 19th St BART station would eliminate the hassle of transfers. On the negative side, the 21 miles to the Fremont BART from our home in Mountain View is almost 1/2 the distance to Lake Merritt. 30 min drive to BART + 10 min to get tickets + 40 min BART ride + 30 min walk = 1 hr, 50 min total trip time. A significant improvement over the Caltrain/BART option and probably would have been okay on the way there (we both have lots of energy and the novelty of the BART and walk), but probably would have been a disaster on the way back (both of us too exhausted to handle a 2 hr trip home).
• Conclusion: Feel a tad guilty for driving all over the Bay Area, but feel better that we at least considered our options and gladly trade the convenience of a 50 min drive to/from Oakland (not to mention getting from Lake Merritt to Fenton's).
• For future reference: Getting to SF on the weekends is hard enough (1 hr 15 min to SF from Mountain View) via public transit - getting to the East Bay is nearly impossible. Best just try to make sure we take advantage of our time in the Oakland/Berkeley and combine visits (see multiple friends and/or make multiple stops).