To San Francisco for the Day
Today I had a business trip to San Francisco. ...Okay, it's not a business trip so much as a business drive. Downtown SF is 40 miles from my home in Silicon Valley. But as little as I travel for business anymore compared to years ago, driving to SF for a 3 hour long customer meeting felt like a bit of a work adventure.
Drive or Transit?
Initially I planned on getting to SF by taking public transit. From home I can walk to Caltrain one mile away, ride Caltrain to Millbrae Station, transfer there to BART, and ride BART into downtown SF with a station less than 1/2 mile from my client's office. But I'd have had to catch a 6:57am train, which would've meant leaving home at 6:40am, in time to meet my customer 10-15 minutes ahead of our meeting allowing time to get badged in and set up in the meeting room.
Leaving home at 6:40am seemed kind of... ugh... so my idea #2 was to car-pool with Hawk to the Fremont BART station near her office. We could leave home at 7 in plenty of time to catch a BART green line train that would get me to downtown SF with no transfers. Idea #2 seemed like a plan. But then Hawk's plans changed and she needed to work from home today. That left me with plan #3: drive.
The Last Mile Takes 20 Minutes
I left home at 7am sharp, figuring on up to 90 minutes of drive time plus 15 for parking to meet the client at his front desk at 8:45am. Good news: because I left early, the first 39 miles of the trip took way less than 90 minutes. I had exited the freeway and was on city streets in SoMa in 45 minutes. Bad news: the last mile of the trip took another 20 minutes. And it would have taken even longer if I didn't commit two traffic offenses right at the end. 😳
The last mile also would have taken longer pre-pandemic. In 2019 driving in SoMa was like trying to drive through a street carnival. There were so many office workers in crosswalks that you basically couldn't make a turn anywhere. Oh, I'm not talking about a left turn; those are illegal almost everywhere in SoMa already. No, I'm talking about a right turn. At a green light. Maybe one car would manage to turn right per cycle because the crosswalks were always full.Parking: The Process is the Punishment
The company I was visited, a major tech company in San Francisco, has a crazy parking process at its site. The garage requires badge access to enter. Does that mean it's only for employees? No, visitors are welcome to use it- and pay $12/hour for it- but they need to get a visitor badge first. ...Which mean I had to park, to go in to get a badge, to come back out to my car, to enter the garage to park. Fortunately there was a loading zone I could use. That was one of those two traffic offenses I mentioned, though. 😰
The New Normal: Far Fewer People in Offices
When I met my client we made smalltalk about how SoMa is way less crowded that it used to be. That "Last mile takes 20 minutes" problem I mentioned above? It would have been twice as long in 2019. Credit the pandemic to making the streets actually driveable again. Even though the pandemic is over, it ushered in a new normal. With office vacancy rates at 40% in SF and employees still preferring to work remotely, there are way fewer people coursing through SoMa on a workday.
We also chatted about return-to-office (RTO) policies. His employer, a major tech company, announced over a year ago it was instituting an RTO plan. At the time it was a transitional, three days a week plan. Many other companies announced similar 3-day plans and it became kind of an industry standard. Yet the reality more than a year later is that his company quietly backpedaled on the plan. Employees are asked to average just one day a week in-office, and even that is not enforced. He personally rarely works in the office. And he was the only person in-office for the meeting. Ten of his colleagues joined remotely on the videoconference.
Drive or Transit?
Initially I planned on getting to SF by taking public transit. From home I can walk to Caltrain one mile away, ride Caltrain to Millbrae Station, transfer there to BART, and ride BART into downtown SF with a station less than 1/2 mile from my client's office. But I'd have had to catch a 6:57am train, which would've meant leaving home at 6:40am, in time to meet my customer 10-15 minutes ahead of our meeting allowing time to get badged in and set up in the meeting room.
Leaving home at 6:40am seemed kind of... ugh... so my idea #2 was to car-pool with Hawk to the Fremont BART station near her office. We could leave home at 7 in plenty of time to catch a BART green line train that would get me to downtown SF with no transfers. Idea #2 seemed like a plan. But then Hawk's plans changed and she needed to work from home today. That left me with plan #3: drive.
The Last Mile Takes 20 Minutes
I left home at 7am sharp, figuring on up to 90 minutes of drive time plus 15 for parking to meet the client at his front desk at 8:45am. Good news: because I left early, the first 39 miles of the trip took way less than 90 minutes. I had exited the freeway and was on city streets in SoMa in 45 minutes. Bad news: the last mile of the trip took another 20 minutes. And it would have taken even longer if I didn't commit two traffic offenses right at the end. 😳
The last mile also would have taken longer pre-pandemic. In 2019 driving in SoMa was like trying to drive through a street carnival. There were so many office workers in crosswalks that you basically couldn't make a turn anywhere. Oh, I'm not talking about a left turn; those are illegal almost everywhere in SoMa already. No, I'm talking about a right turn. At a green light. Maybe one car would manage to turn right per cycle because the crosswalks were always full.Parking: The Process is the Punishment
The company I was visited, a major tech company in San Francisco, has a crazy parking process at its site. The garage requires badge access to enter. Does that mean it's only for employees? No, visitors are welcome to use it- and pay $12/hour for it- but they need to get a visitor badge first. ...Which mean I had to park, to go in to get a badge, to come back out to my car, to enter the garage to park. Fortunately there was a loading zone I could use. That was one of those two traffic offenses I mentioned, though. 😰
The New Normal: Far Fewer People in Offices
When I met my client we made smalltalk about how SoMa is way less crowded that it used to be. That "Last mile takes 20 minutes" problem I mentioned above? It would have been twice as long in 2019. Credit the pandemic to making the streets actually driveable again. Even though the pandemic is over, it ushered in a new normal. With office vacancy rates at 40% in SF and employees still preferring to work remotely, there are way fewer people coursing through SoMa on a workday.
We also chatted about return-to-office (RTO) policies. His employer, a major tech company, announced over a year ago it was instituting an RTO plan. At the time it was a transitional, three days a week plan. Many other companies announced similar 3-day plans and it became kind of an industry standard. Yet the reality more than a year later is that his company quietly backpedaled on the plan. Employees are asked to average just one day a week in-office, and even that is not enforced. He personally rarely works in the office. And he was the only person in-office for the meeting. Ten of his colleagues joined remotely on the videoconference.