I’ve only been back for a few days and I gotta say: the Bay Bridge is a f’in nightmare. I arrived home (to SFO) late Sunday evening, and by the time Geoff and I made an attempt by car to get me and my 200 lbs of luggage back to Oakland, the now-standard midnight traffic on the Bay Bridge was already terrible. We aborted, and I spent the night at their place in the city.

CalTrans currently reports:

I 80 [SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA] IS CLOSED TO EASTBOUND TRAFFIC FROM THE JCT OF US 101 TO 4TH ST /IN SAN FRANCISCO/ (SAN FRANCISCO CO) FROM 0001 HRS TO 0600 HRS 7 DAYS A WEEK THRU 6/2/06 - DUE TO CONSTRUCTION - A DETOUR IS AVAILABLE

… but because the detour used to start at 1AM, I have been operating under that assumption and heading home each night at around 12:15am. By then, traffic is already really bad, and tonight was no exception. I left San Francisco at 12:05am and wasn’t able to get onto the bridge for over half and hour. It gets worse. There was a surprise onramp switch (chaos!!), and the four-way intersection just before the onramp was completely jammed with cars and honking taxis trying to squeeze into the lane that would eventually lead to the bridge. People were pissed.

… but I suppose tonight was better than the first time I discovered the existence of the detour, which resulted in a 3.5-hour trip across the bay (home at around 4:30am!). THAT truly sucked.

Whoever is organizing the bridge construction is completely incompetent. Don’t even get me started on the weird-ass 5th-Street-offramp / bizarre-right-jog on westbound 80 just past the bridge. That thing causes traffic at nearly all hours of the day.

I’m tempted to move away — or back to San Francisco — until the bridge construction is done.