Build the bicycle bridge over Hwy 101 at Adobe Creek to allow Palo Alto residents to easily bicycle to Google. Currently, there is no real safe and direct year-round bicycle route from southern Palo Alto to Google, so most people drive most of the time. Palo Alto has plans for the bicycle bridge, but no funding. The price is relatively cheap (much cheaper than a new parking lot at Google), so how about Google paying for it? I bet that more Google executives live in Palo Alto than Mountain View.

A path under Hwy 101 at this location is open occasionally, but has been closed all year and is not reliable enough for commuters.

The bridge over Adobe crk. would maybe help a little, but really, it would only affect the San Antonio road entrance area, assuming people would be coming from the north. If I lived in PA I wouldn't go down to Shoreline to drive in, I'd go in via San Antonio.
This initiative sounds VERY similar to what Stanford does. Worth a good look.

Yeah Mayor Mike (or rather businesses out at North Shoreline)!!! This would be a great business/government effort that would help our schools! How? - Shoreline property tax $ that might be diverted to 'traffic mitigation' could instead be passed to education - where it would normally go. (Menlo Park and Palo Alto all assess 'traffic impact fees' in the millions to new Face Book/Stanford development) With green business leaders showing the way - it will be much easier for leaders like Inks to follow. "it's what THEY want" can be a strong argument to support a 'more restrictive' public/private policy.
A 6% improvement every year in decreasing 'single occupancy vehicle' traffic can compound to a fantastic result within a decade. In the schools (MVWSD) we would call that Continuous Improvement [or "6 Sigma" at GE, or Leadership Through Quality at Xerox]. Let the POD PEOPLE go Mike! please?

SN is a Candidate for MVWSD Board
and a vocal proponent since 2007 of Sunset on Shoreline (and supporter since 2010 of "Share Shoreline")

To my knowledge, no suburb in the nation has public transit use above ten percent.

What on earth makes anyone think that we're going to be different? You can be the pod car mayor, the Bus Rapid Transit mayor, or the divine fairy dust mayor. It doesn't matter. If you vote for a general plan with 13,000 new cubicles, expect more traffic.

Greg is right. There is absolutely no reason to try something new, to reason to set a good example, no reason to try to be a leader. We should all just limp along accepting failure and the status quo as inevitable. Good thing Stanford didn't think that way.

Anyone know what happened to this proposal to Branch light rail from
ellis, through Moffett field by Goggles campus on NASA land being built across Stevens Creek into Shoreline tech area. There is space to do it if anyone has the will.

Isn't anyone remotely concerned that a "invitation only" group, read private, is in the driver's seat steering public policy.

I don't mind invitation-only meetings if Google is going to be paying for it. If taxpayer money is involved, then they need to be more transparent.

On the Adobe Creek bridge over 101 mentioned previously, the Board of Supervisors in Santa Clara County are scheduled to consider funding this project on Nov 6th. There are also other trails in the mix for $10.3M in funding that is required to go to recreational trails in the area, and it's by no means certain that this Adobe Creek bridge project will win.

If you believe this bridge over 101 is important (by the way, I do!) you should write the members of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors.

"invitation-only"? Isn't that a violation of the Brown Act? or at least its spirit?

This is not a council meeting or a meeting organized by the city, so Brown Act does not apply. Greg Perry is correct, MV lacks the density and jobs to make public transit feasible.

"We don't need 8,000 more cars on 101." How would he know?

It is great to see all of the comments on this article. The meeting included employers of various sizes, mostly in the North Bayshore area, as well as public sector agencies. There was no violation of the Brown Act because only one elected official was present and only for a brief time and the meeting was not paid for by the City. The City has many outreach efforts to solicit public participation in the planning process for North Bayshore and for the City in general. This was a meeting to bring together companies to look at what they could do individually and collectively to reduce the burden of single occupancy vehicles (and other vehicles) on highways and local roads and to find out from the public agencies what infrastructure and transit improvements are in the works and to find ways to bring the IT know-how of the private sector to help the public sector deliver their services.

If the traffic problem were easy, it would be solved here and around the world. Wouldn't it be great it this part of Silicon Valley could implement the great technology ideas and social media capabilities to have traffic flow better, to reduce green house gas emissions and smog and to improve everyone's quality of life? I think that we are lucky to live in an area where jobs are growing and where companies care about their environmental footprint and their role as members of the larger community. Come to the study session at the City Council meeting on 10/16 if you want to have your voice heard and if you want to learn more.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket MV.

Don't go swimming right after eating MV

Public transportation does not work in this case.

Why? These workers need to drop off kids on the way to work, and pick up kids on the way back home. And if the teacher calls you to come to school because your child is sick, you can't just wait for a bus to come and take you to school.

You also need to go to doctor appointments, go to lunch with friends and former colleagues, go to shop for some stuff during lunch breaks, etc. Bus won't help.

The feasible solution is to build another ramp off highway, or extend the two exits way into shoreline area, with multiple sub-exits off various roads, etc.

Any other investigation, fees for eco-friendly consultants, etc., are waste of money and time.

@James, lets take aim at finding a solution for a percentage. You state some assumptions that don't quite fit me nor my friends who I work with who also agree your assumptions miss the mark with who we know as professional peers.

"These workers need to drop off kids on the way to work, and pick up kids on the way back home. And if the teacher calls you to come to school because your child is sick, you can't just wait for a bus to come and take you to school"
- I don't nor do 12 out of the 15 people I work with. Not an issue at all.

"You also need to go to doctor appointments, go to lunch with friends and former colleagues, go to shop for some stuff during lunch breaks, etc. Bus won't help."

- Doc's maybe 5 days out of the year, maybe. Lunch with friends usually happens on campus at one of our in house dining facilities, or we carpool into downtown. Never needed to buy something at lunch that I could not buy at 4:30, or online. Many errands are taken care of in-house as well (dry cleaning for instance.

Reconfiguring the off ramps is a federal job. We locals really have little to no say in the matter, but study after study has proven that adding more lanes does not equal less congestion. Less cars equal less congestion.

Land locked parcels north of 101 with one way out of the area. Sunnyvale and Mtn view have them but no one wants to fix it. Moffet exit backs up 101/237 then a little ways down its Shoreline /85. So whats the cities fix? Allow more business north of 101? You would think Shoreline blvd could handle the traffic but stop by on concert night and see the mess, how did that design get passed the city?