Going East Bay (Union City) to San Jose (Almaden), how can I drive/travel and avoid rush hour traffic (6PM)?

Question

Going East Bay (Union City) to San Jose (Almaden), how can I drive/travel and avoid rush hour traffic (6PM)?

Answer 1

Take BART and switch to Caltrain.

Answer 2

Take BART to Fremont and switch to a VTA bus to downtown San Jose, and transfer to light rail.

Answer 3

If there's a carpool lane, buy yourself a car that runs on natural gas (methane) and you can drive in it single legally. It's cheaper to fill up, too, and cleaner for the environment.  

Answer 4

If time isn't too important, you can take the VTA 180 express bus from Fremont BART to downtown San Jose and take Light Rail down to Almaden.  If you need to drive, then I would suggest taking 880 to Auto Mall to 680.  Take that to Capitol Expressway and take it down into South San Jose (this avoids the 680-280/101 disaster merge).  Still a tough time to try to head down to Almaden from UC.  Maybe add some travel time to make sure you get there in time.  Good luck!