December 19, 2005

The Octavian Deception

Anyone who happens to live in a part of the City of San Francisco that requires the often times laborious drive up Fell St. and down Oak St. to get from and to downtown and more importantly, 80-E, probably has rejoiced in past months since the opening of the Octavia / Market exit to the freeway. Benjy wrote about it last month, and I even commented on its benefits. However, having driven daily to Walnut Creek for the past two weeks, I'm no longer sure it's better; in fact, it may be dramatically worse.

Given the fairly reliable knowledge that I will be working in Walnut Creek for the next several months, I've been spending much of my daily 2.5 hour commute (1 hour there; 1.5 back) analyzing ways to minimize the time I spend driving (or rather, sitting in traffic), and maximizing my mental health. Obviously, there are many dramatic options available to me that would mitigate the tedium of the commute; I will discuss these later. First, however, I would like to turn to the small things -- taking Octavia versus 9th St./Civic Center, for instance -- and consider the options.

After noticing two weeks ago that the traffic jam on the Bay Bridge (and 80-W, in general) has everything to do with the bottleneck of the 101-S, I started to think that it might actually be faster to exit on 9th St. and drive through downtown, than to wait it out in the excruciatingly slow traffic to the 101-N exit to get on Octavia. Last week, I did some ad-hoc experimentation: Monday, I drove to the Octavia exit and noted that it took me 18 minutes from the point where I passed the 9th St. exit on 80-W to reach the intersection of Stanyan and Fell (near Golden Gate Park). Tuesday, I took 9th St., exiting at 6:45pm, and to my pleasant surprise, I was at the intersection of Fell and Stanyan by 6:54pm.

9 minutes? 9 minutes! That's 9 minutes of my life that could be saved, daily. Whoa! 9 minutes a day equals 36 minutes a week (I'm a consultant - you do the math), which means, instead of sitting mindlessly in traffic listening to brainless chatter on the radio, I could be spending my life on higher priorities, such as ruining my life. Fearing a statistical anomaly that erroneously got my hopes up, I repeated my experiment on Wednesday, and again to my surprise, it was exactly 9 minutes, from 6:28pm when I exited, to 6:37pm when I reached Fell and Stanyan.

There is obviously not enough evidence to properly conclude anything yet, but I plan to conduct a month-long study in January 2006. Every week, I will exit twice on Octavia, twice on 9th St. and carefully tabulate the time it takes to get to Fell / Stanyan. If you live in the city and would like to help me test the purported Octavian Deception, let me know - as you know, the more data, the better the conclusion.

Also, if you live in the East Bay (Berkeley folks, this means you) and wouldn't mind me sleeping/showering at your place Monday through Wednesday for an indefinite and undefined period of time, let me know as well. Every single day, the drive gets worse and worse, and another small piece of my sanity fades away. I'd be willing to do just about anything to avoid it ... if you know what I mean. Please?