Seems kind of expensive. Why not just run a bus shuttle up and down Shoreline Ave.?

Buses and Shuttles get stuck in the same traffic.

Instead of the word unfortunately in the title, it should read fortunately. The whole thing would look ugly above ground and way too expensive for the few people it will transport.

A simple solution: (1) Erect tollbooths at Shoreline and Rengstorff north of 101. (2) Charge a $5, $10, or $20 congestion toll anytime traffic is heavy; these are out-of-town googlers and they can afford it. (3) Fund more city parks with the proceeds.

At $20/visit you will see people's car driving behavior change. Just the mere discussion of this will cause GOOG to change. GOOG does not care one bit about traffic; what they care about is money. Threaten to take $20 out of their employee's pockets on a daily basis and they will suddenly seem concerned with MntView traffic.

This works in London, it can work here.

We need a high-speed link from the Caltrain/Light Rail/bus terminal to Google/Microsoft/LinkedIn/Intuit/NASA. That way, their employees could live anywhere served by Caltrain or Light Rail, and in a couple of years Bart, and take public transportation to work. The alternative is worsening gridlock.

In the long run, driverless cars will be the answer, but that is yaers off.

Steven A said: "Seems kind of expensive. Why not just run a bus shuttle up and down Shoreline Ave?"
Garrett said: "Buses and Shuttles get stuck in the same traffic."

I have been proposing a very simple potential solution to the problem of rush hour traffic on on Shoreline for a couple of years now during public comment time at City Council study sessions and council meetings.

The City should paint rhombuses in the left hand lanes of Shoreline, and on the NB side, put up a sign that says, 7 AM - 10 AM, vehicles with N or more riders only, and on the SB side, put up a sign that says, 4 PM - 7 PM, vehicles with N or more riders only. Have strict enforcement until people realize they need to follow the rule.

If N isn't high enough to enable the shuttles from Caltrain to make it along the left hand lane unimpeded, increase N until they can.

What's wrong with this? If the whole experiment doesn't work, we can paint over the rhombuses and go back to pod cars and drones, or whatever. But we should stop dilly-dallying and try a simple solution like this one first.

Here in the land of venture capital and visionary thinking... the fact that nobody with money is willing to waive a measely $75K at this idea speaks volumes: It's a joke. It's a con. It's a scam. A band of merry pranksters trying to get rich off mismanaged silicon valley tax dollars.
Sky Tran must be disheartened. After all, didn't we just pay some even-more-absurd bicycle sharing plan about 50 times that?
It isn't unfortunate. Surprising, for sure, nut not unfortunate.

Many communities with similar congestion problems are considering "Bus Rapid Transit" or BRT. Sometimes called Surface Subway, it basically combines the best traits of light-rail (off-board fare collection, platform loading, intersection stoplight priority, dedicated center lane alignment) with the best traits of buses (lower initial expense, flexibility). Seems like this could work for the Shoreline corridor. Check the Wikipedia entry for Bus Rapid Transit to learn more.

The Silicon Valley has infrastructure that is so last century and it is amazing since there are so many innovative residents. I think it must be the politicians who are adamant about preventing the Bay Area from getting ahead when it comes to traffic, public transit and out of the box thinking.

Google and other companies have engineers who can imagine great solutions to real life problems. Unfortunately the powers that be won't let them.

BRT to work it needs full or partial dedicated right away to avoid traffic, congestion and avoid delay.

It is cheaper then a subway but yes the roads need to be redesign, this seems to be easier then trying to secure funding for a El Camino Real subway.

Why not study the idea of turning Central Expressway into a BRT route system with bus lines feeding on and off to other points. High Density, Office Parks other street connectors, Central areas and San Jose Airport right at the end. Yes the Airport Express Bus, The Levi Shuttle.

If the editor is so thoroughly convinced, perhaps he'd like to invest 75K in a for profit version?

Converting a lane of Shoreline Boulevard or Central Expressway to BRT will decrease automobile throughput by 50. That is O.K. if you reduce the number of Cars by 50%, or more. However, I anticipate a reduction of only 10%, or so, thus exacerbating an already bad situation.

Does anyone have any data from cities that converted lanes to BRT?

Very fortunate our council exercised clear thinking this time (wish they'd do likewise with all the excessive development issues). My hometown is Mountain View, not Disney's Tomorrowland.

Set up experimental tracks somewhere else out of the people's way for testing, find and fix all the bugs in the tech and operations to mature the idea, THEN offer it to a city. Don't use M.V. as a lab rat, please. Last thing we need here is a sky full of abandoned monorail tracks due to poor planning.

How else do we move people around? The idea of building more roads won't help and won't be cheap.

Don't worry, Garrett83: between Fukushima and the TCE contamination, synergistically interacting with the chloramine in the tap water, there'll be nobody around but cancer patients and juiced raw hemp franchises.

For anyone who's interested in looking at the Shoreline studies that have been done, they are all available here:

Web Link

It's not about building new roads, just making the existing ones wider. Have better monitoring of street lights, to accommodate for the heavy traffic areas. Just like internet traffic, it's all manageable in a nice way, just needs to be done.