The bridge Google proposed looks like an excellent design to my untrained eye, well situated far away from the ecologically sensitive Bayshore, and by far the most bike and pedestrian friendly bridge I have ever seen.

It certainly makes a lot more sense to me to have such a bridge between large employment sites on the north side of 101, rather than having employees use 101 to get between those two areas. That seems like a really bad outcome.

One small improvement I might like to suggest, is to make bike and pedestrian access to the bridge from the Stevens Creek Trail good enough to not require a separate levee crossing further north, as Google proposed.

I hope a Council majority ends up approving the beginning of an environmental study soon after the February 5th presentation of the Transit Study.

After reading this..it reads that we will have not a Disneyland here but Googleland. They are looking at the future of their complexes and having their brightest minds working to make this work for them and our city...we will need to give and take and reading what they are suggesting in the future works for me. I hope the council get well read with their proposals and come up a plan that works with Google and Mt View soon. Good luck...glad we have Google in our "Town".

Yes, I am not a Google employee nor a shareholder. But let's go ahead with the Google plan. Google is a nice addition to the city. They have the bucks to do a GOOD job!!! Let's go with them and their plan. Better here than in other nearby cities...

Allowing Google employees direct access between buildings make a great deal more sense than requiring them to exit the N. Shoreline area, travel 101, then reenter it a block away. Surely we're all in favor of reducing traffic, instead of making it worse?

This is a boondoggle and is inappropriate for our city discussing a major company in social media for special treatment (All my rich friends are saying social media is about to collapse via the dot com fiasco). Your cars are dangerous, not that they will cause an accident, but that an accident to them could happen and the car goes out of control. Automated cars are decades out to get the entire population going. The rails idea is a great way to step up the idea.

Sounds like our former mayor has an innovative brain, higher and more capable than a major corporation that has no product. Go figure.

Would the bike and pedestrian paths that google wants to build be for everyone, or just 'googlers'? If just the latter, I say forget it!

Hundreds of senior and low-income people live in North Bayshore in the Santiago Villa Mobile Home Park, which is bordered by La Avenida, Shoreline, and Space Park Way. As a long-time resident of this park, I have become increasingly nervous about how Google's expansion might affect me and my neighbors.

I hope that Google will take care to ensure not only the welfare of that colony of egrets at the site of the proposed bridge, but consider whether or not the alternate bridge site at La Avenida might have a negative impact on its human "colony" in Santiago Villa. If I were biking from the proposed La Avenida bridge to the Google campus, a short cut through the mobile home park would make perfect sense. But if hundreds of Google employees took that route daily, it could turn our quiet neighborhood into a noisy thoroughfare.

I can't help but be concerned about the huge footprints that surround us. I am a Google shareholder, and work in high tech myself, so I do want the company to keep growing. But I am worried that our little neighborhood might be noticed only when at some point, we are in the way of some big future development plan - perhaps a new street linking Charleston and La Avenida? Could it be a good thing that it's Microsoft, not Google, that resides on the southern side of La Avenida?

Google is blowing smoke when they tell you their shuttle program will get most people out of their cars.

Look at their parking lot at 2:00 on a weekday. It's not full of bicycles. If you let them "build up, not out", you will turn 85 and 237 into a parking lot.

Does the city council think they have studied this better than GOOG? This is a formidable company and does it's homework. I trust GOOG more than our MTV politicians. GOOG won't do anything self destructive, they are smart.

Be glad Google isn't threatening to move their HQ to Austin like Apple. The concerns expressed by those living in the area are valid and should be addressed proactively, and I think Google is amenable to it.

They want to move fast to attract more talent to the area. As a past employee I can attest to the sincerity of purpose of the founders and employees to build a responsible campus. For example, providing plugin electric cars for faraway meetings and lunch for free.

To No to Google, the self-driving cars have been operating on the he streets and freeways of California for two years accident-free while testing. There's still more testing to do, but they've proven themselves capable of driving safely among regular cars. Plus they can operate at better MPG than humans. This is the future, but it's around the corner.

Funny how all that land out there used to be the dump.

Now we're terrified of building a bridge.

From a duplicate thread:

Posted by WIFI-user, a resident of the Jackson Park neighborhood, 7 hours ago

I'm a little worried about Google keeping a driver-less system running smoothly,, taking into consideration that they can't even keep their citywide wireless internet system (Metro Wi-Fi) working properly.

For much of 2012 the WiFi system has been introducing bad data packets to a lot of users (complaints can be seen on the Google/Wi-fi forum), making it impossible to upgrade PC software components like JAVA or Antivirus definitions. Now for the last few months I can't even get better than a slower-than-dialup speed of 1kbps or less, if I can get logged on at all.

I'd like to see them fix/upgrade simpler systems like this and making them reliable before attempting to send robot cars scooting about town.


Posted by No WIFI No Driverless Shuttles, a resident of the Cuesta Park neighborhood, 2 minutes ago

I second what the above poster states. The Wifi system has become a joke with a complete lack of support or updates to what's going on. I can imagine their driver-less shuttles creating all sorts of havoc.

Not mentioned in the article: the bridge plans include a real Stevens Creek Trail exit at Charleston Rd., a cleaned-up exit at Crittenden, and public restrooms at both the Charleston Rd. and Crittenden Rd. exits. These are huge benefits for all recreational users of the trail, not just bike commuters going in & out of the area.

Also, for beelia - a resident of Santiago Villa attended the Study Session and spoke in favor of the bridge & trail improvements.

let Google do what they want to better our town, they already paved our streets with Gold!! Google $$$ Money owns this town.

I'm baffled why a progressive population and city board is so resistant to change. Google is literally changing the world every day, but the folks moving at country-time to get Google's plan approved are stifling their progress. Google has only made a crappy 1980's business park into a landmark and you are slowing them from making it a state of the art (AND GREEN) model corporate campus.