Ooops! Who needs to cross the bay bridge?

[bigiain]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/27/BAO81ABJTF.DTL&tsp=1

big

[mostrobelle]

Meh...I'll just take the Richmond.  It'll add 45 minutes onto my commute but that's probably better than getting pelted by falling bridge bits.   [moto]

edit:  Enzo just barely made it back across tonight!

[sroberts152]

This is going to be fun tomorrow.  Good on them for fixing this last month.

[MendoDave]

That big piece of steel came 5 feet from from my couch last night, it was really close. Phew! 
Let me turn to Channel 2 and check to see if it's still there...

Nope Gone.

[desmoquattro]

Astounding...just astounding.

[sfarchie]

I'm glad I take BART. I didn't even know about this till about 630pm last night. But more people on BART means it'll smell extra sour.

[desmoquattro]

I'm glad I take BART. I didn't even know about this till about 630pm last night. But more people on BART means it'll smell extra sour.

Good thing you ride opposite-commute

[mostrobelle]

OK, so the commute was a tad suckish this a.m.  It would have taken me about the same amount of time to ride BART, but going on the bike I don't have to worry about lice.   

[Drunken Monkey]

OK, so the commute was a tad suckish this a.m.  It would have taken me about the same amount of time to ride BART, but going on the bike I don't have to worry about lice.   

Hmmm. I guess she hasn't found the surprise we left in her helmet last z-night.

[Michael Moore]

Wow, Marin was teh suck at rush hour tonight. Fortunately I was on the scoot, but it took my honey >2 hrs to get home.

[sroberts152]

Closed through at least tomorrow afternoon:

http://www.ktvu.com/news/21444672/detail.html

[ducleaner]

OK, so the commute was a tad suckish this a.m.  It would have taken me about the same amount of time to ride BART, but going on the bike I don't have to worry about lice.   

I hate BART. It's loud, smelly, crowded, and marvelously inconvenient. Public transportation (and therefore SF) is just not for me. God, I wish I could find employment somewhere clean, pretty, and underpopulated. I'd settle for mildly overpopulated.

Sorry. This bridge closure has me in a bit of a mood. I feel better, though. Wait. 

Okay, now I feel better. All I needed was a minor contusion and a bottle of Caymus. Of course, I could use a  [moto] but the effing bridge is closed. Damn. I'm all worked up again.

[Michael Moore]

OK, a bit of a threadjack here, but I just got back from a vacation in Barcelona, and the differences between public transit there and here are striking.

First off, you can buy unlimited use tickets in 1,2,3 and 4 day increments, and I think there's a monthly option too. Plus it's pretty cheap, no doubt subsidized by the (gasp) government.

Second, the ticket works for all forms of transit. So you can jump from a commuter rail train, to the metro, to an above ground streetcar or bus.  Can you imagine one ticket working on BART, MUNI, the ferries and CalTrain?

Third, the longest we had to wait for a metro (subway) train was 2 minutes on the weekdays, and 3 on weekends. Most times there was a train there in under a minute. Plus they had little signs telling you exactly how long the next train was going to be.

Oh, and the stations were a little hot and funky, but once on the train it was clean and nicely air conditioned, and never super packed.

In addition to healthcare, I think the Europeans have got the transit thing pretty well dialed in.

[ducleaner]

In addition to healthcare, I think the Europeans have got the transit thing pretty well dialed in.

I think that's great but.... I think it's sad the number of people who don't find pleasure in being fully self sufficient. Driving/riding is a blast. Being on your own schedule is freedom. I believe in climate change and I'm all for going green. And I'm for providing a safe and clean alternative to personal cars/bikes. However, I am outraged that the 2 most expensive areas in the US don't deliver my most treasured personal liberty. The ability to drive (and park) wherever and whenever I want.

In most ways, I'm the most liberal guy you'll ever meet. I'm right on par with your namesake, Alec Baldwin, Keith Olberman, Ariana Huffington and Ward Churchill. I'm for alternative energy and I look forward to some of the cars coming up 10 years down the road. But I'm absolutely 100% against cities that don't provide the roads and the parking necessary to support demand no matter how high it is. And I'm so against public transportation that I get stressed out on elevators.

[desmoquattro]

I think that's great but.... I think it's sad the number of people who don't find pleasure in being fully self sufficient.

Self-sufficient? Not sure that's a good description for government-provided roads and law enforcement, free parking on public roads, (de-facto) subsidized gas prices, etc. It's just a matter of what we as a people choose to subsidize.

I get the part about being on your own schedule, but encouraging private car use makes a bad situation worse...and is subject to massive diseconomies of scale. Transit scales well, but comes with a lot of disadvantages...especially as it currently exists in the US. And I think we definitely need a pull factor for transit before we create the push factor of making driving eggregiously more expensive or difficult.

Oh...and bicycling is pretty cool too, if you can swing it. Low cost, fairly self-sufficient, and it takes care of the exercise quota.