<p>Should I bring my car to Berkley or is a car useless at Berkeley?</p>
<p>The San Francisco Bay Area has one of the best public transportation systems in the country – this is one area where a car can be deemed near-useless</p>
<p>You can bring a car, but parking is expensive both at Berkeley and anywhere where you may want to go. Some people bring their cars and don’t use it the first year because public transportation (BART, AC transit) can sometimes be more convenient.</p>
<p>If it’s your first year, I would recommend going without your car for the first semester at least and see how it is and then decide to bring it up. Also, using public transportation is one of the quintessential experiences at Berkeley (imo) :).</p>
<p>Also, I’m going to take a second to complain about the US public transportation system. The fact that the SF/Bay Area has one of the best public transportations systems in the country speaks to how poor the public transportation system in the US really is. The public transportation around Berkeley is pretty good, but not excellent compared to some other countries.</p>
<p>if you’re a freshman, don’t bring your car. you have meal points and stuff to get you by with food. All the restaurants will still have some appeal. As a third year, I really don’t like any of the places near campus anymore (ex Asian Ghetto, telegraph places…but shattuck and university are alright still)</p>
<p>In the future though, if you move into your own apartment, a car is gonna be your best friend.
The transportation system is okay, but put it this way: the buses are never on time (some arrive too early and just leave whereas others arrive way late) and so what happens if you get stuck with four or more bags of groceries? Do you really want to take 30+ minutes total to just go to Target and back only to be limited by the amount you can carry in your hands?
My roommate and I don’t use the car often (usually only Friday or Saturday to go out) so you’re not gonna be using that much gas. Obviously though, you’ll need to consider where you’re going and whether it’s worth it to drive or use pubtrans. Like if you’re going to SF in the daytime, it’ll be even faster to just BART or if you’re planning to just wander around Chinatown, it’ll be better to use pubtrans so you don’t have to keep running back to chuck in more coins.
The real hassle with a car is finding a ****ing parking spot, especially at night.</p>
<p>Yep, you’ve pretty much summed it up: it’s useless. Parking is hella expensive, and there’s always almost no parking in most places you’d ever want to go. When there is parking, the time you spend finding it exceeds the time it takes you to walk, and you pay a fortune for it.</p>
<p>A bike + ZipCar has satisfied my needs much cheaper than a car will. A bike means that anywhere within Berkeley is within a 20min bike ride (10min if it’s around campus), and I don’t have parking and insurance to worry about. The cost of that bike is equivalent to two car payments, and maintenance stays within the double-digits per year. As for Zipcar: sure, it costs $9/hr, but considering that it comes with insurance and parking, it ends up being much cheaper than what I’d pay for a parking space (usually $100/mo near campus).</p>
<p>There’s also the bus. :)</p>
<p>What should also be addressed in this post is the ever-present, evil menace of the Berkeley City Parking Enforcement Officer. Here is my story about why I quickly decided to leave my car at home…</p>
<p>I possess a disabled parking placard which allows me to park in metered spots without paying the toll. It’s a minor perk of having a disability, I guess. I originally purchased my vehicle in Arizona and it didn’t come with a front license plate holder. This has never been a problem in any other city/town in California. Not so in Berkeley. This sort of violation is usually punishable by the officer issuing a simple ‘fix-it’ ticket which gives the offender a chance to correct to violation. Instead, the Berkeley City traffic enforcement folks decided that it would be fun to ticket my vehicle every 3 hours throughout the night my very first evening at Cal (I was parked on Haste outside of Unit 2). Each ticket was $35. They gave me city violation tickets so that they could do this instead of the ‘fix-it’ tickets normally issued, although I’m not sure how this could have been addressed at 6, 9, 12, 3, or 6AM. By the time I became aware of the situation, I was in debt to the city for a few hundred dollars.</p>
<p>By not having a front license plate I was definitely in the wrong. Did I deserve to be ticketed every 3 hours to make someone’s quota? No.</p>
<p>From that day on, I left my car at home, took public transportation, and always carried a large number of quarters to feed the meters of expired/soon-to-be expired meters along Bancroft, Durant, Channing, and Haste…</p>
<p>hi excelblue… is zip car relatively accessible. is their parking available?</p>
<p>I’ve always been within a 5min walk of the nearest ZipCar lot. The idea is that ZipCars are parked at certain spaces, and after you rent it out hourly, you return it to the same space. It’s really a rental, except instead of contracts and paperwork each time, it’s just an online reservation / phone call, a scan of a card, and a bill at the end of the month.</p>
<p>I haven’t looked into the parking situation at Berkeley too much, but based on what I’ve heard from friends with cars, it’s like searching for an apartment. They are available, but you will pay dearly for them.</p>
<p>If you can afford upwards of 100 a month, there are plenty of garage spaces, both in the public garage near telegraph and in homes around the area. </p>
<p>The city of Berkeley has a permit system, but has divided the city into many small zones such that your permit is only valid in the zone where you are registered. You need an address in the city, but they don’t accept the dorms as valid, your car must be registered to your local address, and even with the permit you might be driving for quite some time at peak periods just to find an open space, but once you find a spot the only reason you might have to move is for the days that street sweepers are scheduled to clean.</p>
<p>The city makes MAJOR revenue from parking enforcement, with fleets of small vehicles patrolling steadily to write tickets, limits on parking duration for those without a permit, alternate side parking regulations on certain days to free up the curb for cleaning, meters in lots of spots especially near campus . . . in general it is a headache to maintain a car unless you have an off street parking spot, but even that doesn’t solve the problem of parking whereever you drive to on an outing. </p>
<p>There are also less expensive off street parking options. Often a house or small apartment building has some driveway space, yet most residents don’t have cars. The renters will sublet the space in the driveway to those in need of parking, although it may involve shuffling cars around to park and to leave, with the driveway looking like a tight urban parking garage with cars two or three deep. If you need to get somewhere quickly, finding the owners or the keys and shuffling cars just to leave can be frustrating.</p>
<p>While most spots require a permit to stay in it past two hours, there are some that are a bit of a walk from the campus. Of course, every economizing student with a car is circling those precious few spots, wasting hours spot hunting instead of studying.</p>
<p>Finally, Cal has a storage lot, used with the ‘satellite’ permit at $5 per month, which isn’t that close to campus but where you can leave a car if it is mainly needed for trips home or for once-a-month kinds of sojourns. </p>
<p>Overall, better to not have one when you arrive. You can always bring one during your next break or in a future year.</p>
<p>Leave the car at home. Get a moped/scooter or bike. No reason or need for a car. Total hassle. Everything is close to campus and BART will get you to San Francisco, or further, if you want to go someplace.</p>
<p>I have a car this year (3rd year) and a $75/month parking spot behind my apartment. I only use it about once a week for costco/safeway or sf/emeryville. And it’s nice being able to drive myself home for breaks.</p>
<p>Definitely don’t get one if you’re living in dorms though lol.</p>
<p>Everything is close to campus</p>
<p>lol no.</p>
<p>The 5 years I was there I can count on one hand the time I needed a car. I never really left the campus area. I was always able to bum a ride if there was something important going on. Maybe kids now want to leave the area. I still don’t think it is worth the hassle.</p>