Bay Area Traffic Is Awful

Ok, so Seattle has some pretty healthy choke points to delay you in getting from point A to point B (see 520 West over the bridge at 5:30 on a Friday, yum!). The thing about Bay Area traffic that just wins (where winning is a bad thing) is its scope. I was 45 miles away from SF today when the stop-and-go traffic began. For those familiar with the area, I was just south of Vacaville, coming in from I-5 when the brakelights began. The sprawl of it is what's astounding to me.

Later on, I passed one of the dynamic billboards that's used for posting information about traffic flow. It indicated a 20 minute travel time to Berkeley, and a 98 minute travel time to downtown SF. For contrast, if there's no traffic, I can get from my door in Albany (which is further than Berkeley) to downtown SF in 15 minutes. I can only imagine that it was holiday travelers returning from Tahoe or something, but in any case, it was horrible!