Inrix, a traffic information company, reported that between February 2020 and February 2021 the number of trips into downtown San Francisco fell by 64% - one of the biggest drops in downtown district visits in the nation. Other analyses also show the deep declines in traffic from different angles.
#Bay area traffic full#
About three weeks later, during the first full week of April 2020, traffic bottomed out on the Bay Area bridges, according to toll figures. Traffic across all of the bridges followed a similar pattern through the pandemic, dropping sharply after county health officials issued coordinated shelter-in-place orders telling workplaces to shut down and people to stay home. was just 55% of what it was the same week in 2019. The analysis for the week of March 21, 2021, also showed that traffic volume crossing the bridge between 4 a.m. “Add in a Giants game and it would be even later.”Īn analysis of hourly traffic across the Bay Bridge backs that up. “By 6 o’clock or so, it’s pretty much dissipated, whereas in the before times, it would have lasted until 7 o’clock or later,” he said. The homeward-bound backup across the Bay Bridge - rated the Bay Area’s worst commute in recent years - still begins in the early afternoon, but tapers off well before sunset, he said. “Without question congestion is coming back - and you see it in all the old familiar places but it doesn’t last as long and it’s not as intense” as before the pandemic, he said. John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which operates the toll authority, knows congestion is returning - not just from statistics but because he’s been driving from his East Bay home into work at the Bay Area Metro Center in San Francisco’s Rincon Hill neighborhood. The Golden Gate Bridge has seen 83% of its usual traffic return. And San Mateo Bridge traffic is at 78% of its pre-pandemic level.
The Dumbarton Bridge, whose western landing is near the Facebook campus, is carrying just 68% of the traffic it did before the pandemic. While toll counts show a resurgence of Bay Area traffic, they also indicate that the South Bay, where tech giants like Facebook and Google have kept most of their employees working at home, may be experiencing less of a rebound. “And it’s in a lot of places, not just the Bay Bridge.” “It’s a lot more busy - a lot more,” said Cuauhtemoc Dominguez, 26, a contractor who lives in Richmond but traverses much of the Bay Area for work, including San Francisco, Concord and Sacramento. Pre-pandemic traffic figures were collected the week of March 1, 2020. One bridge, the lightly traveled Antioch, saw a 7% increase in toll-paying traffic since before the pandemic. But traffic is still flowing better than before the pandemic, according to traffic experts, though they warn that won’t last.įive of the Bay Area’s eight toll bridges - the Bay, Richmond-San Rafael, Benicia-Martinez, Carquinez and Antioch - all registered better than 90% of pre-pandemic traffic levels passing through their toll plazas as of the week of March 21 of this year. The increase is evident to anyone who’s driven Bay Area freeways in recent weeks. But as the Bay Area economy continues reopening, with more businesses, restaurants and museums welcoming back patrons, traffic is returning, too - at near pre-pandemic levels, a Chronicle analysis of Bay Area traffic data found.
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