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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

August 2001
Top Bay Area Congestion Hot Spots

If you like to trade commute war stories around the water cooler, now you have some ammunition: Caltrans has just released a list of the Bay Area's 10 worst congestion locations for the year 2000. It should come as no surprise that five of the routes go into and out of Silicon Valley, the region's economic powerhouse, and that three others involve approaches to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge -- one on the west side and two on the east. One of those approaches is the region's No.1 trouble spot: the morning westbound commute along Interstate 80 in the East Bay, which has been targeted for a congestion-busting blitz (see "Project CLEAR" story). Rounding out the list is a stretch of Highway 101 in Marin County. Overall, the daily hours of delay on Bay Area freeways increased by a staggering 38 percent between 1999 and 2000, the biggest one-year jump since Caltrans began collecting these statistics in 1981.

10 Worst Congestion Locations in 2000
2000 Rank Route, Direction, County Daily
Peak-
Period
Delay in
Vehicle
Hours*		 1999 Rank
1 I-80, westbound, a.m. - Alameda/Contra Costa County

Route 4 to San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge metering lights

 10,340 1
2 I-680, southbound, a.m. - Alameda County

Sunol Road to south of Route 262

 8,880 2
3 I-880, southbound, a.m. - Alameda County

South of Route 84 to north of Dixon Landing Road

 8,210 3
4 U.S. 101, southbound, p.m. - Santa Clara County

Fair Oaks Avenue to 13th Street

 5,510 8
5 I-80 and U.S. 101, eastbound & northbound, p.m. - San Francisco County

Army Street to west end of San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

 5,180 4
6 U.S. 101, southbound, a.m. - Marin County

Rowland Boulevard to I-580

 5,060 7
7 U.S. 101, southbound, a.m. - San Mateo County

I-380 to Hillsdale Boulevard

 4,520 13
8 Route 92, eastbound, p.m. - San Mateo/Alameda County

1.5 mile east of beginning of San Mateo Bridge to I-880

 4,230 5
9 Route 237, eastbound, p.m. - Santa Clara County

North First Street to I-880

 3,470 10
10 I-880, northbound, a.m. - Alameda County

0.5 mile south of Grand Avenue to San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

 3,380 15

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