Suppose private funding can't be found for parking structures. Will one still be built? Who will pay for it? Are they mandated by the rail authority?

Also, seems to me that Mt. View has a pretty vibrant downtown community, why would the city want to buy into a so-called "a potential complete redevelopment opportunity" that would undo a lot of good things and throw the city into turmoil for a long time to come.

It also seems that these parking requirements are based on quite flawed ridership numbers. Will there be a credible reality check before anybody spends money to build anything or even plan structures?

If the HSR ever gets built, I would totally ride it. But I don't really care if there is a station in Mountain View. I'm not opposed to it, but I'd want to make sure the city gets state funding to build the train station and stuff. I didn't think there's land in the downtown area to build a decent hotel, which is something you'd need, if you are hoping to turn downtown Mountain View into a tourism hub.

That said, couldn't we just let one of the neighboring cities be the HSR station, and we can take the caltrain there?

I had a hard time picturing the size is this project so I looked up train stations in the French TGV (high speed train) network and discovered the Avignon TGV station is of comparable size to that described in the article. The link to the Avignon station is here: Web Link

The Avignon station platform is 400-m (1/4 mile) long (same length as described in the article). The web page shows a map of the of the station's location and size and of the surrounding parking areas for 1800 vehicles. There's also a photo of the station's interior.

To picture what 65,000 square feet looks like, the Nob Hill store at the Grant Road Center is 58,000 square feet (the store's interior space including storage in the building's rear). Also, the parking structure off Castro (the one with the Longs/CV store) has capacity for about 400 vehicles.

Hope this helps.