To any members up in Marin or Sonoma counties...

Big news (for me at least), due to a change in employment, it looks like I will be relocating to the North Bay within the next few weeks. I am looking for advice regarding where to live (rent). My aim is to be able to commute to work daily in Santa Rosa, but still be within reach of San Francisco, where my girlfriend lives and works. Ultimately my girlfriend will be moving up as well so the location should hopefully have a tolerable commute both directions.

I think this pretty much forces me to go with San Rafael or Novato, although Petaluma has a lot of charm and the cost of living seems to decrease quickly as you go north... Housing prices in Santa Rosa are about 1/3 what I am used to in the South Bay!

I hear the soutbound 101 commute in the mornings is horrible, how bad is it?

The San Rafael slow down is pretty bad going south, and the Santa Rosa slow down going north is even worse. But Petaluma would be a good compromise. Plus then you would shop at the Trader Joes where Allison works. The city of Sonoma is really cool, but would mean a nice short easy commute for you and a longer one for Kylie (?). Sonoma to SF would probably be just under 1.5 hours on a clear day, where as Petaluma is about 30 minutes on a clear day. With traffic those numbers go up.

I would start your search in Novato or Petaluma and actually Napa, or Vallejo wouldn't be too bad of options.

I've heard that the commute south through Novato and San Rafael is something like the 5th worst in the bay area. The Larkspur ferry is an option for Kylie since she works very close to the Ferry Building.

How many members do we have that are up in the North Bay?

When I lived in San Rafael and commuted to the city it was 30 minutes every day (traffic or not) from Larkspur to SF by car and an hour from Larkspur to SF by ferry. BUT, on the ferry at least you can take a nap or read a book. I also took the Vallejo ferry when I lived in Napa and commuted to the city. Same sort of story, the ferry is longer but you get to sleep/read.

Me and Trekkor are the most active North Bay members, but Randy Wentzel is up here and a couple others in the Santa Rosa area and John G. is in Napa too. Doesn't compare the the south bay crowd, but there are a few of us.

I'll agree with Mark on the ferry comments.

I commute by train from San Mateo to Sunnyvale, which takes roughly 1 hour each way. It's a 20-40 minute drive (depending on the day, the weather, and the accident rate on 101). However, I get so much more reading done by taking the train that keeping myself in books is actually a problem. If her job ends up with her commonly reading a pile of email every morning, then having a laptop, downloading the email at home, then taking it on the ferry to read and answer them, works very well. Some mass transit is also getting WiFi on board now.

I know people who live in the City and commute by train to Sunnyvale that manage to get enough work done on the train that they can justify counting the commute time as work time, so they come in late and leave early, yet still do a full day, effectively driving their commute time down to almost nothing. Not everyone can do that (esp. if you have lots of meetings as part of your job), and sometimes mass transit can be very constricting (last minute 6pm meeting can often be impossible), as well.

I've been working a job in SF for a while now and the commute is AWFUL!!

1.5 hours from Napa during peak...45 minutes off.

15 minutes to Sears

Think about Cotati...


KT