Magid: Tech companies cause, but could help cure, Bay Area traffic woes

Anyone who has recently driven on any portion of Highway 101 between San Jose and San Francisco knows that our roads are increasingly crowded, largely because of the enormous number of people working for Silicon Valley tech companies. Apple, Google, Facebook and Cisco account for about 80,000 local workers, according to Silicon Valley Business Journal, and that doesn't count the thousands more people who work at Microsoft, Tesla, Linked-In, Oracle and other large companies plus the many local startups. And, with a significant number of tech workers choosing to live in San Francisco and the South Bay, traffic flows in both directions. Plus, the Bay Area's staggering home prices have forced many workers, especially those who don't earn six-figure salaries, to live in outlying communities as far away as Modesto where 7.3 percent of workers travel at least 3 hours a day to get to and from work – many to Silicon Valley. Stockton is even higher at 10 percent, according to a 2019 Apartment List study.