10 miles on a electric bike could be 40 minutes. (In Europe they are limited to 15.5mph). Depending on your physical fitness you could get it down to 30 minutes but you'd need a shower at the other end ;)

The new part of the Oakland Bay Bridge has a bike lane, but only out to Treasure Island; there's no bike lane from Treasure Island to SF.

That has to be by design.

They're two separate bridges built decades apart. They put a bike lane on the new eastern span despite it not being very useful at the moment so that whenever a new western span is built it won't run into the exact same issue (and there's some ideas being thrown around for adding a bike lane to the current bridge, but they're all hideously expensive).

Thank you for providing a least-hypothesis that is even more probable than "ordinary racism/classism". :)

there isn't a design, which is the problem. it's two bridges and people in the Bay Area are lucky to have one of them in-the-can. There's been a lot of argument over the design of the western spans; I despair of ever seeing them built before one of the faults underlying the area renders the argument moot.

Just curious, but how does someone get away with stealing a laptop during rush hour? I've lived in Oakland for about 6 months and I haven't seen anything like the crime you describe. Your description of congestion is spot-on, though.

Away from the station. On the sketchy block of Harrison between Grand and the Whole Foods. In the first incident, someone came running at me at full speed holding a laptop bag across his chest; I thought for about 300ms as he ran toward me about putting him on the ground because I thought he was running at me to attack me, but I moved to the side behind a pole and he kept running, then a (very very slow) security guard ran after him, and then some sad looking middle aged guy as well. Second time was someone running across a street and then disappearing down 23rd. Easy to identify people with laptops from a distance, with probably 75% accuracy.

I'm convinced 4-7pm Fridays is a great time to steal laptops from commuters; they're tired, it's relatively low traffic, OPD's response times are...not impressive, etc. It's really a 5-10 block area behind the stupid Auto Row and some sketchy semi-SRO housing in the area which is a problem. (Pro tip for cities: auto dealers are horrible for foot traffic.)

I upgraded from a very obvious laptop sleeve on strap to http://www.pacsafe.com/intasafe-z500-anti-theft-backpack.htm...

Steel wires through the straps, and looks like a backpack. I'm also big enough that unless it is rip and run, or a clear and unambiguous threat to my life, I'm not as concerned, so having a strap which won't break is enough.

Ugh please stop. So much fake going on. Oakland is just like any city in the last 20 years. Just fine but still remembered for their past.

Currently #2 in US. Hardly the past.

http://lawstreetmedia.com/crime-america-2015-top-10-dangerou...

I'm not even arguing that Oakland as a whole is dangerous; it's specific blocks in the good/high-traffic areas, and then large areas (Oakland is huge geographically) which are bad-but-no-one-goes-there. There's some street crime on top of that, but not actually much more than similar areas in SF. Way more than, say, Salt Lake City, though.

Most of the serious crime in Oakland is in places you won't accidentally go (although there's a sketch area a few blocks away from downtown, and on the other shore of Lake Merritt), by and against poor people, often one or more involved in gangs/drug entrepreneurship/whatever. Same as most cities.

Except most cities aren't on that list. SF has similar places where "good rich people" avoid -- but it still isn't in the top 10.

I also don't like this implicit because it's "poor against poor" then somehow that's ok and we can ignore those statistics. Poor people are people too. Talk about gentrifying.....

It isn't that it is ok -- but having rich people and businesses move to Oakland, pay taxes, and thus better fund things like schools, police, and other jobs will help with poverty. Because the violence isn't uniformly distributed and thus isn't targeted at them, it is less of s deterrent.

Also, a lot of that current violence is due to war on drugs and after effects, so the best way to address it is to wind down the war on drugs.