Prepare for trouble: How to get around over Labor Day weekend

The typical Labor Day travel advice is to plan ahead for congestion on the roads and potential delays of all sorts. In addition to the usual Labor Day travel and traffic troubles — which mainly vex holiday travelers on Friday night and Monday afternoon — this weekend brings BART’s second shutdown of the Transbay Tube between Oakland and San Francisco. Toss in a couple of big events — a Billy Joel concert at AT&T Park in San Francisco Saturday night and Cal’s first football game of the season Saturday afternoon in Berkeley — and the Bay Area could become tangled in gridlock. Gas prices are falling, with Oakland seeing an average price per gallon of $3.17 on Thursday — down 32 cents in a month, 71 cents in a year and $1.50 in the past three years, according to AAA. Trying to get there in a private automobile,” said Ed Reiskin, director of transportation for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, “will probably result in a lot of delay and frustration. Bay Area transportation officials gathered Thursday to warn of the weekend transit work and urge people to take public transit — even though the regional system will be hobbled. The Billy Joel show starts at 8 p.m., and officials are concerned that a crowd unfamiliar with the South of Market neighborhood — combined with the BART shutdown and Muni Metro work — will entice people to drive all the way. With the tube gone for three days — service resumes Tuesday morning — BART will provide a bus bridge, during regular service hours, from outside its 19th Street Station in Oakland to the temporary Transbay Terminal in downtown San Francisco. When BART closed the tube over the Aug. 1-2 weekend, the bus bridge worked smoothly, with buses operated by Muni, SamTrans, AC Transit and Golden Gate Transit departing as often as every minute and using a bus-only on-ramp on West Grand Avenue in Oakland to get onto the Bay Bridge and skirt the backups at the toll plaza. An army of BART employees wearing neon vests directed passengers between the buses and stations. BART will employ the same strategy this weekend, but will add more employees to help direct passengers, including a corps that will line a route along Second Street from AT&T Park to the temporary Transbay Terminal after the Bill Joel concert. AT&T Park officials plan to alert BART near the end of the concert, allowing the transit agency to send a fleet of buses to the terminal. Muni is severing the T-Third Metro line at Fourth and King streets from 10 p.m. Friday until 5 a.m. Tuesday to upgrade traffic signals and start installing new tracks and switches as part of the Central Subway project. The number of travelers heading more than 50 miles is expected to increase slightly over last year, according to AAA of Northern California, and most of them will drive — a result of the low gasoline prices and recovering economy.