Las Vegas has a monorail system that seems to work very well there and I thought about a way that it could work here as well. If a monorail system was designed with two endpoints, one at the Google Mayfield development and the other in North Bayshore, it could run down the length of San Antonio Road to hwy 101, run down the median of 101 to the North Bayshore area and then go left and terminate there. There shouldn't be any need to use eminent domain to take any properties and it would be adjacent to an underutilized Caltrain station.
I went public with my idea at the Whisman Forum 2 weeks ago and it was very well received. Unfortunately, we were not given the opportunity at the Google forum to discuss transportation issues, so I wasn't able to bring up the idea during the forum itself, but I did talk to a group of Googlers after the forum and they seemed interested in the idea. I met with a representative from Google today and pitched the idea to him and he had already heard about it from someone else! If nothing else, I think this shows that there is at least some interest there.
The problem of course is that this would be a long term project and would be very expensive, but if it were done as a public/private cooperative project, there is a possibility that Federal or State funds could be used in addition to private funds.
It also would likely not be a free service, but then again, neither is the BART extension to SFO. So the trick there would be pricing it so that it makes sense for people to use it as an alternative, while also breaking even on the costs to build, run and maintain it. Whatever the cost, it would be less than the High Speed Rail boondoggle the State is saddled with and would be fully funded BEFORE it gets built.
The Google rep said that right now, they are pursuing other strategies for transporting people to and from the North Bayshore but didn't rule out GRAIL completely. It may be a Hail Mary, but maybe we'll see it completed one day.
Jim Neal
Candidate, Mountain View City Council
https://electneal.org (Campaign Website)
