"John Igoe, Google's real estate director [wants North of Bayshore to have] 10,000 new homes [and] 2 to 3 million additional square feet of office space". Assuming 250 square feet per employee, that new office space would mean 8000 to 12000 new employees. In other words both would probably not make traffic worse, but would not make it better either.

As for 20% affordable housing (2000 units), way more than 2000 affordable housing units are already needed in Mountain View.

Housing cost (whether purchase of single family detached homes or rental apartments) is primarily controlled by supply and demand. The demand for all kinds of housing is much higher than the supply. Of course that means the cost is outrageously high.

How many new housing units does Mountain View need before the supply will be enough higher than the demand to cut the price? I have no clue, but I wish someone who can answer my question would chime in.

I will say this: Mountain View is not an island, entire unto itself. The entire Bay Area, certainly including San Francisco, will have to go on a mind-boggling high-rise apartment building spree to ever solve the housing cost problem.

Why does it have to be high-rise apartment buildings? There is not enough land that does not already have single family detached homes (or other buildings) on it to build that many housing units any other way.

And, does anyone think developers are dumb enough to build so many housing units that they can't get high rents?

There's no Transportation Demand Management plan that would prevent a nightmare of congestion on the three roads into North Bayshore, with 10,000 new units of housing, not to mention the 3.5 million sf of new office space that has already been approved. And now Google wants 2-3 million sf more office space in exchange for some paltry number of "affordable" (but still expensive) apartments?

I wonder if Planning has the integrity to tell the City Council that no TDM program can deliver a workable result for this much development, and if the City Council is smart enough to scale back on their misguided ambitions. We'll see.

@Doug - "And, does anyone think developers are dumb enough to build so many housing units that they can't get high rents?" Well, the developers are not dumb, but a lot of voters certainly were fooled.

I think it would be nice to seriously consider a redesign to the shoreline 101 interchange so that it uses the diamond idea that eliminates all left turns. This should make traffic accomodate much more than now and help developments like this.
See the article in wired magazine.
Web Link

@Monta Loma: The traffic in MV is mostly flowing in one direction. It goes into NBS in the morning and it leaves NBS in the afternoon. Commuting out of MV is relatively painless.

So no, adding housing to NBS will not create a "nightmare of congestion". Those residents will either work in NBS and create very little traffic, or commute in the opposite direction of the existing traffic. People who currently commute in may even move there. Consider that, if we go ahead with the 3.5 m sqft regardless, the new employees have to live somewhere. How can forcing them to commute in be the better option for traffic management?

10,000 new residences, with no new office, is a good start on our ethical obligations in planning, not misguided ambition. Misguided ambition was approving that 3.5 m sqft to begin with.