Interesting solution to the high price of housing in Silicon Valley.
From the Mercury News (use Bug Me Not to get the email and password -- save yourself from SPAM)
Sky drivers: Commuters take wing to beat traffic
It's commute hour on a Monday evening, and Bill Byrne is zipping past hundreds of cars crossing the Dumbarton Bridge and crawling up Interstate 880. Not by squeezing his car onto the shoulder, mind you, or by weaving in and out of traffic on a motorcycle.
No, Byrne is above all that. The 37-year-old applications developer is cruising 3,500 feet above the fray in a rented propeller plane. He slips into the pilot's seat for his commute almost every day, which shrinks the three-hour journey home from his Mountain View office to a 75-minute trip, door to door.
"I feel the best when it's Friday and I'm doing that," the Davis resident said.
Byrne is among a handful of Bay Area commuters who trade the highway for the skyway. These hobbyist pilots fly to their high-tech jobs in Silicon Valley from Oakland, Martinez and even Ashland, Ore. It's a way to escape the valley's stratospheric housing prices, avoid some of the worst commute traffic in the nation and reclaim a few hours of enjoyment.
The numbers actually work out pretty well -- the housing prices in the Valley are so high that by moving out beyond normal commuting distances, you are able to afford the purchase and operating costs of a private airplane. One person in the article rents his plane out during business hours to a local flying club and gets $80 or so per hour.
