Predict-a-Trip

I'm getting ready for our first real baby-sitting day tomorrow!  Sure, we officially started last week, but since I was still recovering from a cold, and since we were all at my parents' house, I didn't have any real responsibility for watching Jesse.

Tomorrow is the real deal!  In the morning we'll meet my sister in the parking lot outside her office, receive baby and diaper bag, and be on our merry way.  Until 3:00 p.m. we will be the daycare providers.  Time to party!  We're going to meet my mom at the library at 12:30 p.m. and get some lunch together!  Wild times!

Back in the cold light of reality, today my sister sent me a text message asking if I was prepared to meet her at 8:45 a.m. tomorrow.  I had already warned the kids that we were going to get off to an early start tomorrow, and I tried to get the kids to bed early tonight, and we baked blueberry muffins today so we could eat breakfast in the car, so I guess I'm prepared. 

I thought I would make one last preparation tonight: find out exactly how long it is going to take to get there.  It's 73 freeway miles, and Google maps predicts one hour and 23 minutes for travel time, but since we'll be part of the morning commute heading through San Jose I expected quite a bit of congestion.  And I don't want to leave my sister waiting for us in the parking lot wondering if she is going to have to take Jesse to work! 

Anyway, in the Bay Area you can use the "Predict-a-Trip" feature at 511.org to find out historic freeway travel times for certain routes at specific times of day.  So I ran the numbers for tomorrow's trip and found that if we leave at 7:00 a.m. the freeway travel should take one hour and 22 minutes.  This surprised me quite a bit, since it is one minute shorter than the travel time given by Google maps, which doesn't provide any variation by time of day!  (But then Google doesn't expect you to speed, either...)   Also surprisingly, 511.org says that the 7:00 a.m. travel time is only ten minutes longer than the "typical" non-congested travel time.

Adding in 15 minutes for the non-freeway travel, we're looking at an hour and 37 minutes total travel time.  So if we depart at 7:00 a.m. we should arrive a bit before my sister's appointed meeting time of 8:45 a.m.  Maybe in future weeks we can arrange to meet up at 8:55 a.m. instead, and enjoy an extra ten minutes of sleep!  Oh, I'm kidding, Erica, don't worry. 

Plus Predict-a-Trip doesn't ask whether the car is allowed to use the HOV lane, and since we can I'm hoping that will speed things up even more.  I guess we'll find out tomorrow.