Rush hour traffic crawls along Highway 101 into San Francisco, California on Thursday morning, March 30, 2023. (Photo: Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

There’s a new mystery thousands of Bay Area commuters are trying to solve. Downtown offices that were once teeming with techies and lawyers are deserted. BART’s ridership is down 60% after many passengers fled the system three years ago and never returned.

So why are the freeways full again?

Radio stations ping with morning traffic jam updates: The MacArthur Maze is a mess, I-880 a nuisance, and the 101 a zoo — though remote working has led to a colossal shift in travel patterns and taxpayers have spent billions of dollars providing buses, Trains and other alternatives to driving. Ultimately, the long-term solution to resurgent congestion is perhaps the least-common idea yet: making it even more expensive to commute by car.

“It’s a paradox, isn’t it?” said Alexandre Bayen, an engineering professor at UC Berkeley who studies traffic patterns. “We’re busy. It may not be the exact same times, under the same circumstances. But we are working at full capacity.”

Commuters travel across the Bay Bridge towards San Francisco on Thursday, March 30, 2023 during the morning commute in San Francisco, California. (Photo: Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

Perhaps nowhere is this more visible than at the Bay Bridge. While overall bridge traffic is still down about 10% compared to 2019, morning commutes from Oakland to San Francisco are often worse than before the pandemic. Riders fill the bridge during rush hour, and morning travel speeds are 32% slower than four years ago, according to congestion data tracking speeds from Treasure Island to the Fremont Street exit in San Francisco. But the afternoon commute is still easier for many — speeds at the Bay Bridge average 34% faster exiting San Francisco.

Even reverse commuters feel some pain. Ian Brown, 47, is driving from San Francisco to Los Gatos for a job at Netflix. “You kind of got used to putting it in cruise control and going 75 mph,” he said. “Maybe three or four months ago you’ll turn the corner and the traffic will stop. It’s all about reactive driving again.”

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Regional data shows the return to traffic chaos. INRIX, a traffic analysis company, found that Bay Area congestion has fully returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2022. The region ranks 15th in the world for traffic congestion, with drivers spending an average of 97 hours in traffic last year. There is a caveat to the study’s conclusion: congestion on the city’s roads remains low, while the freeways have filled.

Increasing highway congestion is particularly confusing when you consider not only remote work but also historically high gas prices and recently increased bridge tolls, factors expected to discourage driving.

“I think traffic will only get worse,” said Bob Pishue, author of the INRIX study. “There’s a lot of demand and not enough street supply.”

Rush hour traffic crawls along Highway 101 into San Francisco, California on Thursday morning, March 30, 2023. (Photo: Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Traffic patterns also underscore a new system of winners and losers – at least when it comes to road transport – brought on by the pandemic. People who work from home, more often employees who can shop at lunchtime or hit the gym, see far less congestion. Workers who have to do their jobs in person — like plumbers, nurses and teachers — are back on congested roads.

But why do autobahns fill up so quickly?

Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, said Californians find many reasons to keep driving even as they commute less. One reason is that driving became even easier when COVID-19 and remote working emptied the streets. That only enticed drivers to fill the freeways until the congestion returned.

“Traffic jams aren’t just annoying — they’re a deterrent,” Manville said. “When the traffic eases, people will see that the freeway is empty and they will get in their cars and go somewhere else.”

At the region’s most notorious bottleneck, the Bay Bridge, commuters pack their journey into too few hours, exacerbating congestion. East Bay drivers driving down the peninsula from the Bay Bridge witness some of the region’s worst morning commutes, with westbound I-80 speeds dropping 44% compared to 2019 as they approach Highway 101 .

If upside-down work patterns can’t end traffic congestion, is there an answer to the region’s traffic woes?

Rush hour traffic crawls along Interstate 280 into San Francisco, Calif. Thursday morning, March 30, 2023. (Photo by Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

One solution to highway congestion is to get people out of their solo driving habits and into trains and buses, or carpooling. In 2018, voters across the Bay Area voted to increase their bridge tolls to now $7 on promises of freeing highways from congestion. Funds are flowing to send BART trains to San Jose, expand ferry service, and build a network of express lanes. These measures are intended to make the region’s ailing local transport system a viable alternative to car travel.

But changing driver behavior is a difficult task. A common refrain, supported by research, is that voters often approve public transit funding in the hope that others will use the system and make their commute easier.

Some public transport advocates say commuters’ reliance on one-person vehicles and aversion to public transit has hardened over the past three years. They point to concerns about the reliability and safety of BART, as well as an ongoing stigma that riding public transit poses a health risk. For others, commuting to work a few times a week means they’re more likely to grit their teeth in traffic, even as congestion mounts.

“People still commute,” said Emily Loper, vice president of the Bay Area Council, which tracks return-to-office trends. “You just choose to drive more than before.”

Now, transit planners in the Bay Area are landing with a controversial idea: Really reducing congestion is less about encouraging transit ridership and more about making it more expensive to drive.

At the heart of the plan is a two-year study commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission into imposing a per-mile charge for driving on freeways in the Bay Area. Some plans under study also include charging on roads adjacent to freeways or a toll for downtown access in San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland. The study should pave the way for the implementation of a new motorway toll system in 2035.

Without a new “stick” to add to the “carrot” of improved public transport, drivers will stay on the streets and the collective misery of congestion will only worsen, Anup Tapase, chief planner of the MTC, said during a meeting at the MTC Month.

It is a method of reducing traffic congestion that has gained traction among many experts.

But in the Bay Area, there are deep concerns about the potential impact of congestion charges on the region’s low-income communities. The move could also spark an uprising among voters who are already paying the highest gas prices in the country.

“The word freeway has a very deep meaning in Californian culture. People believe that driving on these roads is a right,” MTC committee member Frank Welte said at a meeting earlier this month. “Any motorist who now drives for free on a freeway, who starts paying a toll, will see it as treason and theft.”

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San Francisco dog owners love to joke that there are more dogs than kids in the city. But the often touted stereotype is actually true — there were roughly 150,000 dogs and only around 115,000 minors in the city in 2016 according to census data and San Francisco Animal Care & Control — and this number is likely way out of date since so many people got pets during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This makes the ongoing nationwide veterinarian shortage feel especially acute in the Bay Area — so much so that some clinics are flying in veterinarians from around the country just to fill shifts.

For Katie Corrigan, the chief financial officer at Animal Care & Emergency Services (ACES), a veterinary clinic in the Sunset District, the decision to use out-of-state workers was one of necessity. Aside from grappling with the nationwide shortage of veterinarians and veterinary technicians, there simply aren’t enough that want to live in the Bay Area, largely due to the high cost of living. She said a lot of employees already commute in from other parts of the Bay Area, and when the clinic was having trouble hiring, employees used their network to see if veterinarians in other states would be able to fly in.

In response to the cost of flights and hotels getting prohibitive, ACES set up its own housing, which it rents for doctors who “aero commute” in for a week or two at a time. Corrigan said they had doctors coming in from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Southern California and Texas and they’re continuing to talk to specialists who may be willing to travel. “It’s more alluring to people to spend a week working in San Francisco than a month living here,” she said. “… In order for the industry to keep moving forward and survive, we have to be able to deliver care.”

Corrigan, who’s been in veterinary care since 1996, knows this is not a long-term solution, but unfortunately, she doesn’t see one at all. “It’s hard to hire veterinarians,” she said. “There just aren’t enough to go around right now. The process of getting new veterinarians is them going through school so it’s just not going to catch up anytime soon.”

Plus, people are leaving the field altogether. “We’re facing the battle of burnout and compassion fatigue,” Corrigan said. “And we need to hire so we can have it so everyone isn’t working until burnout.”

Doctors and nurses are overworked and underpaid, she said — and they’re busier than ever.

Rakesh Tondon, a former investment banker and the founder of clothing service Le Tote, and his wife Hetal Shah, a former Google executive, call themselves a typical pandemic story. Like so many others, they adopted a puppy during the pandemic, but while experiencing veterinary services for the first time, the couple was shocked at both the quality and availability of care for their “third child.” They left their jobs to start a technology and preventative care-focused veterinary clinic called Dr. Treat.

“There is just so much room for improvement for the level of care and service that needs to be delivered,” Tondon said. “We’re taking a lot of learnings from human health and applying them to animal health.”

Tondon said most of the health care for pets is reactive care, but what pets really need is preventative care. He is a member at Forward, a tech-minded health care company, and seeks to bring Forward’s practices to Dr. Treat. The first step in evaluating an animal at Dr. Treat is administering genetic testing and a health evaluation, then having AI and machine learning use that data to help develop a curated health care plan for the pet.

The company will focus on cats and dogs initially but has plans to expand to birds and reptiles eventually. He said with their approach and the most recent technology, they’ll be able to accommodate 50% to 70% more patients than a typical clinic.

Corrigan said the lack of preventative care for animals is a leading problem, and if more clinics we able to focus on it, it would help keep more animals out of emergency care. “The preventative care is what’s really going to help with the long-term issues if you catch them early,” she said. “That way you’re not coming up in the middle of the night not knowing what’s going on.”

dr Treat has enough veterinarians to open, Tondon said, but hiring has been difficult. “The vet shortage existed prior to the pandemic, but the pandemic made it significantly worse because people went out and got more pets,” Tondon said. “We’ve seen roughly 45% to 48% of households in the US have pets, now it’s over 72% of households have pets. The number of vets that graduate from school every year is roughly 3,500 and the number of vets isn’t growing at the same rate as people adopting pets.”

One barrier for veterinary clinics, Tondon said, is they often use antiquated technology, making it difficult for even receptionists to do their jobs efficiently. Though he admits the adoption of better technology and the opening of his new clinic certainly won’t solve the vet shortage for the Bay Area, he hopes increasing efficiency helps.

“​​One clinic is not going to make a difference, but as we continue to grow the company this should be a game-changer for the industry,” Tondon said. “We want to be the company that not only does well ourselves but shares the prototype for what we’re doing and others should do it too.”

the first dr Treat is slated to open in the Marina this summer, with a membership fee starting at $250 annually. Plans are to eventually expand throughout the Bay Area and nationwide.

dr Treat isn’t the only tech-forward vet company opening up in the Bay Area this year. Modern Animal is opening an office at 401 Divisadero St. this year, replacing an old Chase Bank, and others in Russian Hill and Mill Valley are expected by the end of 2022. The company also promises a more modern experience, with chic office space and 24/7 telemedicine, a mobile app and unlimited visits. The company already has four clinics open in LA, many of which are at capacity, with more expected to open.

The introduction of telemedicine, something both new companies promote, was rarely used in veterinary care until the pandemic. While Corrigan said it is a difficult replacement for an office visit in the animal world — your dog can’t exactly rate his pain on a scale of 1 to 10 — it at least helps triage whether someone needs emergency care or not.

Emergency care is still hard to come by in the Bay Area — the list of clinics offering 24/7 visits is sparse — but care is even harder to get if you don’t know where to go or can’t afford it. For the past three years, pets of unhoused people have been able to get care for free from The ElleVet Project, a nonprofit developed in response to the pandemic. Co-founder Amanda Howland, her partner Christian Kjaer and their team of veterinarians packed an RV for the first time in 2020 and have been traveling the country to places with large unhoused populations and offering care including general checkups, vaccines and emergency surgeries. They spent two days in the Tenderloin and two days in Bayview this summer.

Howland said that in the past, local veterinarians have been eager to help out with the project, but this year it was especially difficult to find volunteers. Their work schedules simply couldn’t accommodate it, she said, or they were just too burned out to work another day. “Compassion burnout is really high. Working long hours and being overworked and working with difficult pet parents is hard,” she said.

Howland said that anecdotally she’s heard of people leaving the profession because of burnout. She said the industry needs to make the working environment better with shorter days and higher pay. But there’s still no solution in sight, so in the meantime she tries to educate people about the stress on the veterinary profession.

“Be kind to your vet. They’re doing an incredible service,” Howland said. “Remember that it’s a tough job.”

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The Golden Gate corridor refers to all means of travel between Marin and Sonoma counties to downtown San Francisco.

It’s served by Highway 101 and the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District. The world-famous bridge is the most prominent portion of the route. While most travel the corridor by auto, the Bridge District’s bus and ferry services play a major role in facilitating corridor mobility.

I recently spoke with Dennis Mulligan, the district’s general manager. The San Francisco native is one of the top public-sector managers in the Bay Area.

Much work has been accomplished installing a wire rope netting for the state of the art suicide barrier in a project now predicted to cost at least $206 million. It’s expected to be completed in November of 2023. Crews are working 24/7, including double shifts in the evenings. To see an already erected barrier segment, go near the bridge’s northwest end and find the Marin Headlands parking area overlooking the bridge.

In 2021, 223 people tried to commit suicide by jumping off the 1.7-mile span. Of those, 198 were dissuaded due to Bridge District staff’s valiant efforts. The barrier is expected to save 30 lives a year. Past experience indicates of those dissuaded from suicide, few make a second effort whether by jumping, pills, gunshot or other easily available means.

Transit patronage, bridge traffic and related revenue were decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic. When the coronavirus hit in March 2020, most of us were terrorized. The idea of ​​going to a downtown San Francisco office, dining out, meeting friends or attending cultural and recreational events seemed foolhardy.

Bridge traffic immediately decreased by 70%, ferry patronages dropped by 99% and bus ridership declined by 90%.

With the introduction of lifesaving vaccines, the “when” and “how” of work is slowly moving toward a new post-pandemic reality.

Along the corridor, auto traffic within Marin has returned to pre-pandemic levels. Likewise, midday and weekend Golden Gate Bridge auto traffic is back to its pre-pandemic volume. It’s the traditional morning and evening commute that’s dramatically declined, particularly on Monday and Friday.

Twenty percent of San Francisco office space is vacant. The other 80% tends to be underutilized. Office denizens – particularly finance and technology – have multiple workplace options. Many have opted to work from home at least two or three days each week, leaving the old Financial District and South of Market’s high-rise buildings desolate.

That trend is reflected by bus and ferry ridership. Like most urban transit systems, the pillar of Golden Gate ferries and buses was the five-day-a-week peak commute from the suburbs to the city center and back.

On pre-pandemic weekdays, the Golden Gate ferry’s Larkspur to SF Ferry Building route ran 42 trips per day. Mid-pandemic, that was down to 14. Even now, only 22 trips are scheduled.

As Mulligan says, “People are not lining up to go to San Francisco.”

Another example is the Route 4 express commuter bus from Mill Valley to downtown San Francisco. Until early 2020, it made 25 trips a day. The line was terminated during the pandemic. Now, under Golden Gate’s new renumbering scheme, Route 114 makes just four runs each weekday. The decline is similar for all Marin and Sonoma express bus commute routes.

While work habits changed, the recreation-based travel market is returning. That’s reflected on Golden Gate ferry routes from the San Francisco Ferry Building to Sausalito and Angel Island.

If the shift to remote working becomes permanent, its financial impact will be disruptive. Bridge District toll and transit revenue is down by $1 million a week. Even with right-sizing bus and ferry trips to cut costs, Golden Gate was dependent on one-time federal pandemic relief to balance its books.

Until the workplace’s new normal becomes clear, transit management, employees and passengers will have to wait two or three more years to learn how they’ll emerge from the (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime global epidemic.

Resources: Marin’s suicide prevention and crisis hotline is 415-499-1100. Grief counseling is available at 415-499-1195.

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June 7, 2022Updated: June 7, 2022 7:34 am

A fatal crash led to a brutal morning commute in San Francisco Tuesday morning.

MediaNews Group/East Bay Times via Getty Images/MediaNews Group via Getty Images

A fatal motorcycle crash in San Francisco early Tuesday impacted traffic on the connector ramps to and from the Bay Bridge, creating a traffic nightmare officials said.

The ramps from southbound 101 to eastbound 80 and from westbound 80 on to southbound 101 remain closed as of 7:30 am

“Lanes are blocked,” officials said. “Expect delays and use alternate routes.”

KCBS Radio described the commute as “brutal” as traffic from Oakland into San Francisco was backed up across the Bay Bridge.

The crash occurred at 3:28 am when a man was thrown from his motorcycle on the Central Freeway southbound 101 to eastbound 80 and landed on top of a moving vehicle westbound 80 to southbound 101, the California Highway Patrol said.

“We’re unsure if it was a solo vehicle collision or if there was another car involved,” CHP spokesperson Mark Andrews said.

The motorcyclist sustained fatal injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene, Andrew said.

Check https://511.org/ for real-time traffic and transit updates.

Amy Graff is the news editor for SFGATE. She was born and raised in the Bay Area and got her start in news at the Daily Californian newspaper at UC Berkeley where she majored in English literature. She has been with SFGATE for more than 10 years. You can email her at agraff@sfgate.com.

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