It's not the route that sucks. It's the Bay Area traffic. I have certain parts of the trip that can be fun but other cars can ruin those places for me. The straight lines in between are always packed.
PS. of my 3 route choices, every one has at least one spot where I won't get stuck behind 2 guys side by side doing 10-15 under WITH NOBODY IN FRONT OF THEM. But as bad as traffic is around here, I do have 3 choices with zero total congestion - no stop-n-go.