Originally Posted by
bryanwallace
would staying near the airport and driving down to fishermans wharf early morning (6am or so)to do the cable car both ways be a better option?
that way would we miss the queues at fish wharf if we took the cable car from there first rather than other way round?
I think I would still stay in the city near Union Square. If a weekday, you'll be going with commute traffic from the airport area into the city, though 6am is a little early for the commute to really get bad.
Originally Posted by
bryanwallace
also,any idea how long it would take to get to the airport from fish wharf by car at around 5pm weekday?will it be very crowded?
Oh yeah. I would plan an hour plus to be safe. Again, that's commute time. Others that are more familiar with the city streets can chime in on routes through the city, but there are two main freeway options getting from SF to the airport. The most direct route is to take Interstate 80 (which comes from the Bay Bridge) to US 101 south. An alternate option is to take Interstate 280 south to Interstate 380 east to the airport.
US 101 and I-280 cross each other on the south edge of the city, so you can switch from one to the other there if you need to.
Couple resources:
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511.org is a good website for seeing traffic conditions. If you want to play around with it during commute times, the morning rush would be approximately 6am-9:30am (1300-1630GMT), and the afternoon rush is approximately 4pm-7pm (2300-0200GMT) Monday-Friday.
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KCBS AM 740 and FM 106.9 is the local all news radio station which does traffic reports every 10 minutes (:08, :18, :28, :38, :48, :58 past the hour). If you want to stream it live before you start your trip, they're on TuneIn, or click the 'KCBS' link at the top of the homepage and there's a link to listen on your computer.