I grew up in the valley, and I can tell you that in 2007 the traffic on 280 and 101 going north in the morning was much lighter than it is today. As SF tech com

I grew up in the valley, and I can tell you that in 2007 the traffic on 280 and 101 going north in the morning was much lighter than it is today. As SF tech companies have grown dramatically in the last few years, so has the traffic. The same was true building up to 2001; after dotcom, the traffic went down dramatically. Of course, improvements to the highways and interchanges around that time made traffic feel even more sparse on the peninsula. Those post-dotcom days were sad; the reason there was less traffic was the unemployment of people you knew. You felt that everywhere you went.