Airport Transportation to and from UC Berkeley and East Bay

Most links on this page will take you to transit info pages offered by The Bay Area Transit Information Project.

Recommendations

NOTE: This is NOT an official endorsement by UC Berkeley.

My current choice of transportation from/to Berkeley to/from SFO (San Francisco International Airport) or OAK (Oakland International Airport) is a door-to-door shuttle service by:

    BayPorter Express    415-467-1800
	$16 for 1-st person, $10 per additional person (as of May 1996).
	Fares to/from Berkeley hotels and dorms may be less.
	Call the number to make reservations for outbound rides.
	Special round trip tickets to/from selected hotels and dorms at:
	    STA Travel - Student Union
	    Councle travel 2486 Channing 848-8604	
	    Berkeley trip store 2033 Center St. 644-7665
To catch this (or any other) shuttle van at SFO, walk out to the middle island section (shown in red in the figure below) of the roadway on the upper level outside the departure floor, and ask a dispatcher from any shuttle company for BayPorter.

(SFO Upper Level Map)

If you are staying in downtown San Francisco, do not use BayPorter. There are plenty of shuttle services that serve the area to/from SFO. From San Francisco, take BART (Richmond line) to Berkeley station. See below for BART schedules and route maps.

Alternatives

A taxi ride from SFO to Berkeley will cost about $50. The most inexpensive (~$4 - 5) way I know of is to take a SamTrans bus from SFO to Transbay Terminal in downtown SF, and then take an AC Transit F bus to Berkeley. A next step up from this would be to take a door-to-door shuttle to any BART station in SF downtown, and then take BART to Berkeley station. It is only about a 5 to 10-minute walk to any building on the Berkeley Campus. Yes, I've tried all of the above.

Here's another person's tip (Erika Lin, elin@ssl.berkeley.edu) posted in a ucb newsgroup:
"If you want to take Public Transit all the way, you can take the SamTrans 3X bus to the Colma BART station (last bus leaves the airport at 11:33pm weekdays, 9:30 or so Saturdays, and 7:30 or so Sundays), then take BART back to Berkeley (Colma-Berkeley BART schedule).

If you want to take a van shuttle service, Bay Porter Express (a green van) will take you to Berkeley for $16 per person ($10 each additional person). If you are going to a major hotel or dorm in Berkeley, I think it's $10 (or at least you can buy tickets at the Berkeley TRiP store on Center near Shattuck for $20 roundtrips to those locations). The Bay Area Shuttle (a red shuttle) also drops off at major hotels and costs $10 (I think).

[For the direction of Berkeley -> SFO]
If you don't have a lot of luggage, you might consider taking BART to Colma (the new station past Daly City) and then the SamTrans Bus 3X -- which I think costs about $2.75 for BART and $1 for the bus. The 3X leaves every 20 minutes or so during most of the day, but it doesn't run on Sunday nights after around 7:30 P.M. If you time your connections right, it can take as little as an hour to get from Berkeley BART to SFO. Usually, it's more like an hour and a half, though."

Local Public Transit Schedules, Fares, and Maps

Complete Info

For more complete and unbiased transit info, See San Francisco Bay Area Transit Information
Disclaimer: Info on this page is provided as personal tips of Izumi Ohzawa, and does not represent an official endorsement of any kind by the UC Berkeley. There is also NO guarantee on the accuracy of information contained on this page. Use the information at your own risk. Don't blame me if you get stranded or miss your flight. I have no connection, financial or otherwise, with any of the transit companies and services mentioned on this page other than as a user. If you know of or operate a door-to-door shuttle service between SFO/OAK and the Berkeley area, I am happy to add the service to the list above. However, I reserve the right to not recommend any given service. Please send details to izumi@neurovision.berkeley.edu.