OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) – Faced with a transit strike, San Francisco Bay area commuters got out the door earlier than usual Monday and encountered crowded roads and lines for buses and ferries after Bay Area Rapid Transit train workers went on strike.

However, rush hour did not come to a standstill as feared, and some travelers who used carpool lanes and other options added relatively little time to their commutes.

Two of BART’s largest unions went on strike after their contract expired the previous night, halting train service for the first time in 16 years.

The walkout promised to derail more than 400,000 riders who use the nation’s fifth-largest rail system and affect every mode of transportation. Transportation officials said another 60,000 vehicles could be on the road, clogging highways and bridges throughout the region.

Traffic at a toll plaza of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was heavier than usual early Monday. People also lined up to take buses that were leaving from a few Bay Area Rapid Transit stations.

Alameda-Contra Costa Transit buses into San Francisco carried more passengers, with some waiting for more than a half-hour to board, riders and bus drivers said.

“It’s pretty crazy,” said Young Choi, 34. “It’s creating a pretty chaotic feeling in terms of the commute situation.”

Choi, an architect in San Francisco’s financial district, got dropped off by a friend in Berkeley from Walnut Creek around 6:30 a.m. so he could catch a bus after hearing about the strike.

He normally left for work later but was navigating a new route so he wanted to get an early start.

Alejandro Illidj, 20, woke up two hours earlier than usual to get to his job at Nordstrom in San Francisco, but he had to wait for a bus with room to accommodate him.

“More power to the unions, but at the end of the day, how are we supposed to get to work?” said Illidj, a University of California, Berkeley student. “How is the economy supposed to work?”

The strike was called after an 11th-hour effort failed to produce a new contract by the deadline of midnight Sunday. Both the unions and management said they were far apart on key sticking points including salary, pensions, health care and safety. BART workers picketed outside stations Monday.

“A strike is always the last resort and we have done everything in our power to avoid it,” said Josie Mooney, a negotiator for Service Employees International Union Local 1021.

“Our members aren’t interested in disrupting the Bay Area, but management has put us in a position where we have no choice,” said Antonette Bryant, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555.

Negotiations fell apart Saturday and the unions walked away from the table. California Gov. Jerry Brown’s office had urged both sides to resume discussions Sunday with rush hour on the horizon.

But talks between the two sides came to an end Sunday night with BART accusing negotiators of walking away from the bargaining table, while the SEIU countered in a statement that management “threw in the towel.”

The unions, which represent nearly 2,400 train operators, station agents, mechanics, maintenance workers and professional staff, want a 5 percent raise each year over the next three years. BART said train operators and station agents in the unions average about $71,000 in base salary and $11,000 in overtime annually. The workers also pay a flat $92 monthly fee for health insurance.

BART spokesman Rick Rice said the agency had upped its original offer of a 4 percent pay increase over the next four years to 8 percent. The proposed salary increase is on top of a 1 percent raise employees were scheduled to receive Monday, Rice added.

The transit agency also said it offered to reduce the contribution employees would have to make to pensions, and lower the cost for health care premiums.

BART’s last strike lasted six days in 1997. The transit agency handles more than 40 percent of commuters coming from the East Bay to San Francisco with the Bay Bridge handling another 50 percent said John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Other transit agencies in the region urged commuters to consider carpooling, taking buses or ferries, working from home and, if they must drive to work, to leave earlier or even later than usual.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said the city will offer increased transportation options, including at the airport. BART said it will let commuters use parking lots at their 33 stations free of charge for the purpose of carpooling.

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Zaveri reported from Berkeley, Calif.

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Article source: http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/story/22728984/sf-bay-area-braces-for-first-day-of-transit-strike

The young tech crowd rented — and sometimes bought — in commercial buildings in this former warehouse area, converting them into “work-live” spaces where they operated their nascent companies and slept (once in awhile).

The boom-and-bust cycles in the tech sector move quickly, and the pace of constant reinvention and innovation is relentless.

The same is true of tastes in real estate. Today a new generation of tech dreamers is back in the South of Market area. But this time they are breathing life into a start-up wave not previously seen in San Francisco: high-rise condo living.

A clutch of new condo buildings and condo-hotels, some with stunning views of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and Twin Peaks, have sprung up downtown in the past five years. For what would be considered modest prices in Manhattan, they are offering a full-service lifestyle that locals have traditionally steered away from, preferring the single-family homes traditionally available in the City by the Bay.

In the late 1990s, if someone wanted to live in a high-end condo, the options were almost nonexistent. “There wasn’t any signature building that people said, ‘I gotta have it,’ ” said Max Armour, a real estate agent with TRI Coldwell Banker.

Today there are at least two, both a few blocks south of Market Street. In terms of quality, amenities and V.I.P. neighbors, the 60-story Millennium Tower is San Francisco’s version of 15 Central Park West, or perhaps the yet-to-be-completed One57.

At Millennium, tech millionaires from Google, Twitter, Zynga and Salesforce mingle with celebrity residents like the 49ers legend Joe Montana and the chef Michael Mina, who runs RN74, the restaurant in the building. Thomas Perkins, the venture capitalist, lives in a 4,500-square-foot penthouse he bought in 2009 for $9.35 million.

Just up Mission Street from the Millennium, and nearer the financial district, is the St. Regis, a more low-key building, though also lauded for its refinement. Last December a 17,100-square-foot penthouse there sold to a Hong Kong family for $28 million, said Gregg Lynn, the broker at Sotheby’s International Realty who represented the sellers.

Other buildings south of Market have been selling swiftly, including Madrone, or have sold out, like Infinity. Developers have taken advantage of zoning regulations in the newer neighborhoods of South Beach, Mission Bay and Rincon Hill to erect taller towers than would be allowed in better-established residential pockets of the city. Millennium Tower, at 645 feet, is San Francisco’s tallest residential building.

“There is a whole new generation of wealth that has found its way into San Francisco,” said Richard G. Baumert, a partner with the New York-based Millennium Partners, which developed Millennium Tower. “Whether through stock options or whatever, there has been this influx of buying from the tech sector that has had a positive impact on the whole market.”

Some of the wealthiest tech buyers have ranged beyond South of Market and bought trophy properties throughout the city.

In February Jack Dorsey, a founder of Twitter and Square, bought a two-bedroom house perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific for $9.99 million. A few months later Mark Pincus, a founder of Zynga, paid $16 million for a seven-bedroom 11,500-square-foot house in the Pacific Heights neighborhood. Jonathan Ive, the Apple executive responsible for the design of the iPhone and iPad, bought an English-style manor on “Billionaire’s Row” in Pacific Heights for $17 million.

The recent fall in stock prices for companies like Facebook and Zynga hasn’t done a whole lot to slow the buying, brokers say. “If that hadn’t happened our inventory probably would be at zero now,” Mr. Lynn said.

The inventory in the San Francisco area, which includes the East Bay, dropped by 42.2 percent over the past year, the biggest drop after Sacramento among the country’s 30 largest metro areas, according to Zillow, the real estate Web site.

As for the young tech professionals, the catalyst for their condo purchases — often in developments South of Market — is San Francisco’s exceedingly tight rental market. What the buildings lack in proximity to supermarkets and night life they make up for with an easier commute to tech companies in Silicon Valley, which can take up to 90 minutes during rush hour. A train station for lines running south to the valley is in Mission Bay, as are on-ramps for the expressway.

“It’s like living in TriBeCa and working in New Jersey,” said Alan Mark, president of the Mark Company, a real estate marketing and sales firm.

Follow Alexei Barrionuevo on Twitter: @alexeinyt.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/realestate/in-san-francisco-glass-and-steel-condos-rising-by-the-bay.html?pagewanted=all