Damian Writes About Stuff

tldr: I rode a bunch of transit so what? If you hate reading skip to the end for maps and other fun stuff.

So why did I spend an entire day riding transit? Last September the folks at Seamless Bay Area and SF Transit Riders held a Ride Contest as a part Transit Month 2023, which myself and some friends participated in. The purpose of this event was to encourage people to take more transit and to explore other transit operators they normally wouldn’t take. I enjoy challenges like this and am always on the lookout for more, which is why when I saw this article I knew I had to try it myself:

Total Transit final tally: 17 agencies, all 9 counties, 25 rides on an epic Bay Area transit journey.

A couple of writers from the SF Chronicle attempted to ride all 27 of the Bay Area transit agencies in one day and had documented their journey the previous year, their purpose was to “explore how we can build a better transit future”. This appealed to my twisted idea of what fun is and I’d been kicking around the idea of doing it for awhile. When I realized I had this Friday off and nothing planned I knew that it was the perfect time to attempt a run.

Part 1: Early Busses, Roaming Oakland at 6am : Starting off the day I took Muni bus 22, it showed up 5 minutes ahead of schedule but luckily I was at the stop early! One down, but then immediately encountered the first road block of the day. The next bus on the schedule was samTrans bus 292 which would have taken me to Salesforce Transit Center, I was at the stop early and was excited to see the bus driving up Potrero Ave except that it didn’t stop, and drove right on by the stop??? More on SamTrans later… For this first deviation I ended up taking a Lyft eBike as the substitute method to get downtown. After being confused what corner of First & Mission to stand on I heard the next bus pull in, AC Transit Route 800. This was the first of many crossings of the Bay, and this got me to Oakland.

Part 2: Beautiful Ferries and a SMART Train: Immediately after stepping foot in Oakland I was off to the Ferry Terminal to head back across the bay. I was treated to an absolutely gorgeous sunrise as we cruised over the bay, a regular ferry commuter commented: “I never saw people taking pictures of their commute on BART”. Another bonus is they serve free coffee onboard really making it a top tier experience. Next was a Golden Gate Ferry to Larkspur, a short Marin Transit bus hop to the Larkspur SMART Train Station, and finally a chill ride to Santa Rosa on the train. Going against the normal commute direction meant sparse people on board.

Part 3: The Border of Cow and Grape Country: As it turns out the Santa Rosa Train Station is not located at the Santa Rosa Transit Mall, go figure, but a timely city bus got me over there. I was hoping to catch a Sonoma County bus here while waiting but none left early enough so I deferred it until Petaluma which was the next stop. Here I rode both Sonoma County and Petaluma Transit buses. I went to the visitor center (also the train station) to hang out while I waited for my next bus, and the people there were lovely. They called Petaluma “The border of Cow and Wine Country” and I learned of the existence of the Chicken Pharmacy. I asked if there was any plan to develop the giant dirt lot between the Train and Bus Stations and got the response “what do you mean its already a parking lot” 😂. The next connection was probably the most important, an Amtrak Connecting Bus that runs like twice a day, which I only knew existed because of the aforementioned SF Chronicle article.

Part 4: Napa and Solano County: This section was straightforward: arrive in Napa, eat lunch, and get on VINE bus 21 to Fairfield Transportation Center. This bus was another key connection since it only ran once an hour even at peak times. From here I rode a FAST bus one stop to cross it off the list and took a SolTrans regional bus down to Walnut Creek BART. I couldn’t figure out how to get to Vacaville or Dixon in a timely mater so they are the first two agencies missed.

A note on how I’m counting rides is that I must take each form of transit at least one stop. What this meant was a lot of pointless rides (in a way they all were tbh) from various transit centers one stop then walking back to await the next. This is where https://511.org/transit/centers was really the MVP since it I could easily see what agencies operated at each transit center.

Part 5: East Bay and BART : Things really get goofy here, there are so many agencies still left in East Bay but there is a time constraint since last ACE train leaves San Jose at 6:40PM. This left around 2.5 hours to hit as many agencies as I could and then make it down to Santa Clara to catch it. Here I heavily leveraged BART to get as many one stop bus rides in as I could. I got County Connection from Walnut Creek Station, TriDelta Transit from Pittsburg / Bay Point Station, and Union City Bus from Union City Station. This stretch had the most running involved, since the BART trains were spaced ~10 minutes apart, just enough time to run out catch a bus and run back. There was an odd zero minute transfer suggested by Google Maps at West Oakland, which seemed not achievable, so I elected to wait 10 minutes at MacArthur. Schedules were actually pretty accurate to my surprise, maybe because the stations tend to be the starting terminus for most of the routes. I had the opportunity to take the Dumbarton Express, which isn’t actually included as one of the 27 agencies, but instead bought Girl Scout cookies saving me from death.

Part 6: In Purgatory (Santa Clara County) This is the most train heavy portion of the day, starting off with taking VTA to the Great America ACE Station. I sorta got lost due to a bunch of constriction (Transit Oriented development niceeee) but found my way to the platform, which also serves Levi Stadium. ACE Train 10 arrives and I rode it one stop through the salts marshes back to Fremont. While I did grab an Amtrak bus earlier I wanted to ride an actual train so I got on the last Capitol Corridor heading south to San Jose from this same station. Here we get the most Amtrak thing that can happen:

So the operator tells us we will be stuck at the Great America Station indefinitely but almost certainly long enough to miss the Caltrain connection, I decide to gamble in the hopes of avoiding more time in Santa Clara. I run back to the VTA station and catch an Orange Line bound for Mountain View where there’s a zero minute transfer to Caltrain. I made it just in time and began the journey home up the peninsula.

Part 7: Homeward Bound and SamTrans lets me down one more time: Now on the long Caltrain ride up I reflected how everything went pretty much as planned and the day could be considered a success but…. I was still annoyed that the samTrans bus didn’t stop for me this morning but so I hatched a plan to check it off from the list at Millbrae. There was a bus perfectly timed to take and then get on BART back to the city. But when I got off and checked the departure time I saw it was running 15 minutes late. I gave samTrans one more chance… I rode BART to Colma and took the 130 bus route to Daly City BART finally being able to cross it off the list. The last ride of the night was a Blue Line train to 16th and Mission to end the journey where it began.

Final Thoughts: I had a lot of fun doing this, it was surprising how mostly on time everything was. The clipper reader was broken on like four busses and I didn’t even factor in I would get transfers. I really wanted to fit in cable cars somewhere but couldn’t make a schedule work 😢. Other random takeaways: take more ferries, you can get to downtown Napa via transit, and there should be trains in your Transit Centers 😉

Some stats:

• $100.06 Spent
• 336.5 miles on Transit
• This comes out to 0.30 $/mile (IRS rate is 0.67 $/mile)
• 17 hours and 17 minutes
• 9/9 Bay Area counties
• 22.5/ 27 agencies
• 29 total rides

Missing agencies for next time:

• WestCAT
• Vacaville City Coach
• City of Dixon Readi-Ride
• LAVTA (Livermore)
• Rio Vista Delta Breeze

Here’s my Clipper Card:

Agency Number	Agency Name	Route and Destination	Cost	Distance
1	SF MUNI	Bus 22 → 16th/Potrero	$2.50	1 miles
1.5	samTrans Lyft Bike	Bus 292 → SF Transit Center	$2.05 $7.37	2.3 miles
2	AC Transit	Bus 800 → 7th/Jefferson	$6.00	9.6 miles
3	SF Bay Ferry	Ferry OA → SF Ferry Building	$2.30	6.2 miles
4	Golden Gate Transit	Ferry SF → Larkspur	$8.75	12.8 miles
5	Marin Transit	Bus 29 → Larkspur Station	$0 Free Transfer	0.7 miles
6	SMART (Sonoma-Marin)	Train 8 → Santa Rosa	$4.50 Transfer Discount	39.5 miles
7	Santa Rosa CityBus	Bus 6/9 → One Stop	$0 Free Transfer	0.1 miles
–	Golden Gate Transit	Bus 101 → Petaluma	$1.10 Transfer Discount	17.7 miles
8	Petaluma Transit	Bus 11 → Transit Mall	$0 Free Transfer	1.4 miles
9	Sonoma County Transit	Bus 44 → One Stop	$3.00	0.1 miles
10	Amtrak – San Joaquins	Bus 716 → Napa	$7.00	24.7 miles
11	VINE (Napa Valley)	Bus 21 → Fairfield	$3.00	17.3 miles
12	FAST (Fairfield)	Bus 1 → One Stop	$0 Free Transfer	0.1 miles
13	SolTrans	Bus Route B → Walnut Creek BART	$5.00	29.7 miles
14	County Connection	Bus 4 → One Stop	$0 Free Transfer	0.1 miles
15	BART	Yellow Line→ Pittsburg / BayPoint	$2.30	13.0 miles
16	Tri Delta Transit	Bus 380 → One Stop	$0 Broken Clipper	0.1 miles
–	BART	Y/O Line→ Union City	$7.85	48 miles
17	Union City Bus	Bus Any → One Stop	$0.50 Transfer Discount	0.1 miles
17.5*	Dumbarton Express	Bus DB → One Stop	$2.50	0.1 miles
–	BART	Orange Line→ Milpitas	$4.15	18 miles
18	VTA (Santa Clara Valley)	Orange Line → Lick Mill	$2.00	5.4 miles
19	ACE	Train 10 → Fremont	$6.25	12.6 miles
20	Amtrak – Capitol Corridor	Train 547 → Santa Clara	$11.00	16.7 miles
–	VTA (Santa Clara Valley)	Orange Line → Mountain View	$0 Free Transfer	8.3 mile
21	Caltrain	Train 133 → Millbrae	$5.45	33.0 miles
–	BART	Yellow Line → Colma	$4.40	15.0 miles
22	samTrans	Bus 30 → Daly City BART	$2.05	2
–	BART	Blue Line → 16th and Mission	$3.60	7.8
22.5	28	Totals	100.06$	336.5 miles