A fact of life on the Peninsula is that during rush hours, the 101 freeway is jammed in both direction leading to SR-92 and SR-92 is also jammed leading to the San Mateo Bridge. Unfortunately, unlike nearly all other Bay Area bridges, this bridge has no transit option currently for the general public nor a route for cyclists. Commuters either have to drive themselves, make informal arrangements for carpool, lucky enough to have employer sponsored shuttles, or use other bridge corridors on transit or bike/micromobility. Why hasn’t transit worked for the San Mateo Bridge?

Even though the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge first opened to traffic in 1929, and being the second road bridge to be opened crossing San Francisco Bay (after Dumbarton Bridge), I was not able to find history of scheduled bus service on the bridge before SamTrans introduced the 90E route between San Mateo and Hayward BART in 1977. In the early decades, the Peninsula and East Bay regions outside Oakland and Berkeley were mostly rural. Primary transbay transit service was ferries from Oakland and eventually interurban rail and buses over the Bay Bridge.