The SFO Back-Ups Are Back
 

It was like 2019 at SFO last night.

9:50 pm arrival into T2 and the access roads were totally gridlocked. It took my Uber driver 30 minutes to make the 1.1 miles from the rideshare waiting area south of the airport to the rideshare pick-up area. Google maps showed red all the way in. Also showed a significant back-up on the southbound 101 offramp.

My last couple of nighttime departures from Int'l were quite bad. (Unfortunately on those trips I usually have substantial luggage, traveling alone).

Question - are their reasonable Airtrain stop alternatives? Also, coming south on 101, is there a way to the Hyatt without taking the main SFO offramp?

Aside from taking Bart, which is always the best plan from the east bay IMHO, you can get dropped off at the rental car center and take the air train into the terminals to avoid the nighttime terminal traffic. You could do the same to get to the Hyatt. I don't think you'd have much traffic issues getting off at San Bruno as if you're heading to the rental car center and taking McDonnell road south all the way to the Hyatt. The traffic jam is coming north on McDonnell Road, from Millbrae, where you're traveling the same route as seemingly every Uber driver in the Bay Area.

I hope they can fix the issue as it causes a backup in the Millbrae area and Old Bayshore Highway is jammed to past the Marriott as certain times of day. Maybe forcing Bart to charge normal fares to SFO instead of gouging with a surcharge will help.

Yep. SFO needs to fix this. They fixed one problem (ride-share drivers in the loop) and created a different one by requiring ride-share drivers to use an airport sponsored gated waiting area.

Did they ever go away, save for the year or two during height of the pandemic?

in Dec. 2023, took 30+ minutes from freeway to T3 arrivals to pick up my dad from a mid-evening arrival. Unfortunately, the layout of the roadways - with little seperation between the through lanes and the terminal pick up, and the back ups with the short length ramps between the two, I don’t see this problem as fixable without a complete revamping of the roadway system. They need either a dedicated entryway for each terminal from the highway, or at minimum something with traffic signals. But even the latter requires more spacing, and isn’t feasible with the current roadway areas. Heck, I’m a layman, not anywhere close to an engineers mind, so im assuming there are traffic engineers that are a LOT smarter than me that could figure this out. But IMO, probably requires a complete reconfiguration in space/roadways, multiple tens of millions of $, and probably years of worse backups while constructing this. I don’t know when the current roadway configuration was designed, but I’d guess it was designed for 50% max of the current traffic, if not less.

A couple of trips ago I saw the congestion upon arrival (lots of red on Google Maps), and I decided to take a taxi. It was pricier than a comparable Uber, but it was right there at the stand, and we were outta there.

I agree with travelinmanS that dropping someone off at the rental-car station for AirTrain is a good option. Decent chance your passenger will get to security even faster than if you endure the traffic crawl.

Maybe traffic engineers can come up with some ideas, but it's not obvious to me what SFO can do about this. At least it's still nowhere as bad as LAX's horseshoe.

I’ve done this in an Uber. Exit at Millbrae Ave towards the Marriott, turn left onto S. McDonnell Road, enjoy the jetwash fumes from the departures on the 1s, and the port cochere to the Grand Hyatt is on the left.

On the rare times I’m able to use Hertz’ Platinum Return service, the drivers normally don’t take 101 and instead take McDonnell from the Rental Car Center to the terminal.

Take the AirTrain to the Kiss and Fly or Rental Car center and call your UBER from there.

Probably ok for some times of the day, but the 2nd option (via N. McDonnell Rd) sounds better to avoid backtracking. Also as others have mentioned and I have witnessed, that left turn from Millbrae Ave. to get onto S. McDonnell Rd backs up with rideshare vehicles. An Uber driver even mentioned that to me when we were driving past it to make a right on Old Bayshore Hwy on the way to drop me off at the Hyatt Regency.

They could do something about the back-up on northbound McDonnell Road by not making all the ubers come in that way, but that back-up caused by the late-night international departure bank is probably not solvable without a massive expansion of the international departures drop-off area. It's just too tight.

Interestingly, my last two times at LAX, traffic was flowing super smoothly through the loop. There were no lanes blocked for construction and that made a significant difference.
Yes.

Picking up my daughter tonight for her 8:20 pm arrival. Bracing myself for the backup. Plan is to use domestic parking structure. It still might involve waiting through a backup, but at least I'll be able to move left and away from the curbside crawl.

Entered domestic garage last week around 10-11 pm. Still had some traffic to deal with before the entrance to the garage due to all the rideshare drivers who didn’t move over to their far left entrance until the last minute. They had some lanes closed which contributed to that.

The normal traffic into the loop was starting to back up just before going under the Intl terminal, so it probably still would have been quicker to get in and out of the domestic garage.

I had good luck last Friday night. Daughter’s flight was delayed. I arrived at 9:20 pm And faced no backup at all getting into the domestic garage. Parking charge of $4 well worth it.

I recently encountered this while returning a rental car from the HR -- however it appears that the rideshare drivers are all headed for a staging lot (circled in red here) so they all line up in the right lane. So, pro tip: if you are turning left off of Millbrae Ave, or coming up Old Bayshore, pick the left lane, which for me was completely clear at the time. There is a lane merge but it does not occur until after you pass the parking lot entrance, so you can pretty much bypass the line.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a5ecc15bf1.png

The problem I encountered, waiting for an Uber pick-up at SFO around 10 pm, was that McDonnell was backed up all the way into the airport - rideshare drivers heading in from the dedicated lot to pick up riders.