the Bay Area vs Boston for Business Travel
Which is the easier business trip — the Bay Area or Boston? Airports, getting around, and what’s actually there, compared.
Two very different business-travel cities. Here is the honest side-by-side, the airports, whether you can skip the rental, and how much is actually headquartered there.
| the Bay Area | Boston |
|---|---|
| SFO, Oakland (OAK), and San Jose (SJC) airport rail available · 49 HQ guides · Dreamforce, SaaStr, RSA | Boston Logan (BOS) airport rail available · 21 HQ guides · UNBOUND |
Which is easier to get around?
Bay Area. A BART station inside the International Terminal, 30 minutes downtown. Rideshare is Level 5 of the Domestic Garage, except at the International Terminal where it is the departures-level centre island. Peninsula campuses mean Caltrain as well: three zones at $8.50.
Boston. Every Logan terminal on the SL1, free outbound, $2.40 back, into South Station.
So which is the better business trip?
Boston, for cost and compactness. A free ride into a downtown you can walk is hard to beat, and Boston’s biotech and financial employers are largely inside the core or one Red Line stop from it.
The Bay Area only when San Francisco itself is the destination. Otherwise you are buying two systems and planning a connection, and the campuses that are the reason for the trip sit on a corridor the airport rail does not reach. Boston asks for traffic tolerance; the Bay Area asks for an extra hour and a second ticket.
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