North Bay (San Francisco Bay Area)

The North Bay is a subregion of the San Francisco Bay Area, in California, United States. The largest city is Santa Rosa, which is the fifth-largest city in the Bay Area. It is the location of the Napa and Sonoma wine regions, and is by far the least populous and least urbanized part of the Bay Area. It consists of Marin, Napa, Solano, and Sonoma counties, with a combined population of more than 1.2 million.

The North Bay is connected to San Francisco by the Golden Gate Bridge and to the East Bay by the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge (usually called either the Richmond Bridge or San Rafael Bridge), and the Carquinez Bridge, which crosses the San Pablo Bay between Crockett and Vallejo. Several ferry routes operate between the North Bay and San Francisco, from terminals located in Sausalito, Tiburon, Larkspur, Vallejo and Angel Island. Commuter rail service from Fairfield to Sacramento and Oakland is provided by Amtrak on its Capitol Corridor line.

Plans for the development of the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, a fourteen station commuter rail line from Larkspur to Cloverdale, were approved by voters in November 2008.