Maybe the council should consider building the infrastructure first before all of the office buildings and housing. Considering the councils track record on traffic infrastructure I don't trust that they will do anything meaningful to deal with the inevitable increase in traffic. You can't force everybody onto bicycles. Oh wait...they did get us two shuttle buses that nobody uses. They have talked about these automated transit systems for years and actually had offers from companies to demonstrate there system and the council refused. I worked in north shoreline during the Silicon Graphics days and it was a mess even then. There have been no real changes to shoreline since then. And let's not even talk about 101!

"City officials were reassured by their own consultant team, as well as representatives from Google, the major employer and property owner in the area, that they could max out housing without worrying too much about the traffic it would bring."

Clearly the plan is to build GoogleTown there at no expense to Google -- the assumption being that everyone who lives there will be a Google employee and hence will just ride a GoogleBike to work.

I sure hope Google never fails, or we're gonna have one giant mess on our hands.

#CompanyTown

If we assume that the number of cars per housing unit is some kind of immutable law of California physics, and mandate plentiful cheap parking, then of course we will end up with a neighborhood full of people who need cars to get around.

But people do not choose where to live completely independently of their transportation needs. If overnight parking is expensive and scarce in North Bayshore, the neighborhood will attract mostly those who don't need cars. An immutable law of nature broken by the stroke of a pen!

0.6 parking spaces per unit? What are they thinking?

"Nearly at a paradigm shift"? Says who? Any studies or facts to back that up?

"Automated guideway" overhead transit system? IF it gets built, will it magically lower traffic to that extent? Any studies or facts to back that up?

IF all of these rosy dreams come true, the council would barely manage to install a company town of 10,000 tiny Google dorm units, with gateway street traffic exactly maxed out...that is, IF the traffic studies are accurate.

Why are they doing this? Where is their common sense?

When it comes to our so-called "city council", the road to Hell is paved with politically correct but ignorant intentions. If people can't park N of Bayshore, then they'll park S of Bayshore in residential neighborhoods and particularly downtown where shuttles will pick them up. It'd be far better to confine the traffic/parking contagion to N Bayshore where it belongs.

Maybe Google has installed mind control chips into the council. Trust us...we are Google! I hear Facebook is experimenting with such a thing.

Being one who already lives in North Bayshore on the other side of the 101, very few future residents in NB would go through the effort to park a car on the other side of the freeway, it's not as easy as those above make it seem.

I applaud the city for leading the vision towards a non-car based living community. This is a tragedy of riches, people want to create jobs here, that's a good thing! Let private entities create housing that has a smaller carbon footprint.

The city is however underestimating the number of potential families, there would likely need to be a new school and other public services in the future, so we need to make sure that development fees and future taxes will cover these added infrastructure needs.

Growth is good, just make sure the infrastructure keeps up. Maybe it's time for an employee tax like what Cupertino considered. An employee tax that would be waived if the employee lived in MV. Web Link

To clarify: an "employee tax" (per head) charged upon companies located in MV, not a tax on general residents. Web Link

Google said:
"We know that traffic is one of the top concerns here, but adding housing reduces regional traffic -- that was clear from this analysis," said Poskey. "Nobody wants traffic in this area to get worse, certainly not us."

This project would ease REGIONAL TRAFFIC. Google says they don't want "traffic in this area to get worse", but that has nothing to do with reality, which is local traffic WILL be worse. "Wanting" doesn't solve anything, because their greater want is to have more staff working in their MV offices. That is the WANT that will drive the building of an ultra-dense, urban hell currently called E Bayshore.

If that area is built up, I guarantee that they residents there will either take over the City Council OR petition to break away and form a E. Mountain View.

Councils come and go, but the compounding legacy impacts imposed by their socialist social re-engineering fiascos, and staff's bias for growth to fund their carriers and retirements, keep right on stacking up.

Eventually, it will be affordable in Mountain View, because MV will be such a bad place to live, that Alphabet will move jobs away, seeking segregation from the innovation and productivity impacting congestion stress of over crowding.

They will leave behind the demanding impoverished diversity, who struggle to live with the compounded stress of traveling across 101 to get the parking they require for their livelihoods.

As always it will be the poor who settle for the abandoned, worn out wooden structures of over crowded neighberhoods.

The social engineers are at it again. When will these narrow-minded individuals learn that not everyone fits into their tiny box of allowable behavior?

Even if people do what these pie-in-the-sky dreamers want and live within walking distance of their jobs, did it cross the minds of any of them that people don't JUST work? Maybe they want to take a vacation and drive down the coast. Maybe they have elderly relatives in Hollister that they visit weekly and they don't care to spend 2-3 hours each direction taking public transit to see them. Maybe they are disabled and can't bike to the grocery store. Maybe they are elderly and don't do things the way the City Council thinks they should. Maybe, just maybe, they want to decide for themselves how to run their lives without input from people who don't live in their house or understand their needs.

This City Council has, and only one, desire. They want to raise revenue so they can run their social experiments on the residents of this city. They have no concern for the consequences of their actions nor do they care if it is best for the people who live here. Maybe the City Council should be subject to conducting their lives according to the will of a group of citizens chosen by a drawing of lots. Perhaps they would take the will of the people who ALREADY live here a bit more seriously.

McAlister gets it right. Who were the other two? (Matichek & Abe Koga?) I want it widely known who is supporting a pragmatic approach (finally!), and who is trusting never-before-seen ratios backed up by a dream.

For the latter Councilmembers - if you trust these recommendations, would you also support a policy that once the "cap" on daily autos has been reached, that the 3 entrances to North Bayshore are fenced off for the rest of the day? C'mon, what's your confidence level?

Respectfully @psr, "when will these narrow-minded individuals learn that not everyone fits into their tiny box of allowable behavior" can be used to describe both sides of this policy debate.

There should be a shared goal that neither side should try to impose their values on the other. All residents and businesses in MV should aim to be cost neutral on their neighbors through fees and taxations directed, as much as possible, at those who create those burdens.

Rather than say "no" to anything new, lets just make sure anything new is responsible for their impact on others. Lets pose questions, and demand answers, rather than throw insults.

What I don't understand is how quickly the council and developers have forgotten the cyclical nature of companies. Yahoo is a good example; before Google, it was the biggest, hiring lots of people, building huge new buildings, and now it is almost non-existent. Did they not live here when the bubble burst in 2000, and the downturn of 2008? It may seem like Google can't fail, but any company can. And then we will have an MV with empty office space and apartments.

Also, 10,000 apartments? They are turning MV into a city with none of the charm of a real city, like SF, that has theater, LitQuake, symphony, other cultural events.

Wow, this is a disaster waiting to happen. How many schools are east of 101? Zero. How many grocery stores? Zero. Mass transit? Doesn't exist east of 101, unless you count the Google bus in the afternoon (Google badge required), and VTA 40 (which will soon get reduced / redirected / cancelled).

Unless you work at Google and do NOTHING in your life except go to work and come home, you will need a car. Oh and you better eat 3 Google meals 7 days per week, because there will be no other food nearby, after the kebab place and Sports Page get plowed over.

I sincerely hope the forecast is right that they won't need cars, but I am not optimistic.

What happens when one of the Google Techies marries someone who works elsewhere and needs a car to get to where they work?

What happens when the Google techies start having children that need to be taken to school, or soccer practice?

What happens when one of the Google techies gets a job elsewhere since they tend to change jobs every couple of years? Do they move house too?

This plan is nuts California and Mountain View is NOT New York City and will never be, each couple will want two cars where will they park them, we need new studies with no developer ties or City ties to study the the needs,

The curt City Counsel is living in dream land!!!!!

Yeah, these mixed neighborhoods suck. Worse, the businesses do not provide street parking, cannibalizing existing neighborhood parking. Who came up with this brilliant idea? It doesn't work. Also, I can tell you that Google employees don't live next door to their work. Nobody does. If they actually do live close for a time, they get transferred and that's the end of that. Once transferred, they have to move or take on a horrendous commute. Not to mention the many contract employees that come for a year or a summer, and then leave because they can't possibly afford to live here while unemployed, even for a short time. So then, we just have a very transient area.

Mountain View is so expensive that because of the central location, many couples find it an ideal place to live simply because of the easy freeway access. More people here that don't work here. Then, many people working here in city and restaurant jobs who can't afford to live here and commute from other areas.

So, no, minimal parking doesn't work, it never will work, in fact it makes things worse. Companies in residential neighborhoods suck. Companies should be required to provide street parking just like homes do. Nobody wants to live at their job. It sucks.

Yes 0.6 parking is not a good idea. What is a good idea? 0 parking. There is no need to mandate minimum parking; just let developers build parking garages and charge market rate. It works perfectly fine in other places, like Japan. No need to subsidies driving any more than necessary.

Honestly, it sure feels like for there is no point in writing letters or showing up to council meetings to voice concerns about anything going on in this city anymore. Truly, it feels like the actual residents of this city come -- last -- when considering just about any type of plans or projects. It's frustrating, and telling.

Why do our city leaders let Google/Alpahbet (whatever) run roughshod over the rest of the residents of Mountain View? Who am I kidding, that was a ridiculous question. Follow the $$$

Hey, city council...please introduce an annual "per employee" tax for our corporate brethren, who by the way, will be paying how much in annual parcel taxes if Measure B passes...$191 per parcel? But wait, how much will each of those shiny new 300+ unit developments be paying -- oh yeah, $191 per parcel.

Fortunately there are still a few homeowners left in the city that you can foist that regressive tax onto...since large corporations and apartment building owners are getting a huge tax break, and homeowners will see an effective tripling of the parcel tax that is sun-setting. Excellent piece of legislation.

Many comments write as if this is being proposed in downtown MV, and that new residents from North Bayshore will be parking in front of your house (which is unlikely unless you are one of the few that do live in North Bayshore), and that this proposal makes you financially responsible for any future privately funded housing being built.

Housing built adjacent to tech growth is no pipe dream, just look at Menlo Park and Facebook. We need to be more imaginative. Actually, we don't even need to imagine, we just need to open our eyes to real life examples one city over. Web Link

Well, if I were a new young Google hire 3 or 5 years from now, here's what I would do. First, I'd find the best deal on housing that I could. Maybe one of those new sleeping cubicle apartments right by the office, with little or no parking. I'd park my bike by the apartment. Unbundled parking will be expensive, so I'd park my car just about anywhere else in the city. On those occasions when I want to use my car, I'd bike or bus to it. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

Sounds like some city council forgot to take its anti-delusion pills.

Council needs to give up their cars FIRST

Building and then saying infrastructure will follow sounds llke marrying a guy and saying he will change after marriage. When I lived in places where heavy growth from farm land worked, they built the infrastructure (trains, etc.) first and then the buildings for offices. In my opinion, it is reckless, and irresponsible of the city council and staff not to either build these first and run time, or require Google to build them and have them running before any new office and residential buildings are constructed.

correction: "build these first and run them ..."

Thanks Councilman McAllister. This kind of thinking is why I supported your election! Even a 'residentialist' can think clearly, when the subject is new community building. @DDD interesting thinking! I have a kid who lives and works in DC, but was California born and raised. Guess what - for the last 5 years - even though he can easily afford it, he has had no PRIVATE CAR. He has used Zip cars, he has used rentals, he has 'borrowed from friends' and he now extensively uses UBER.

Course, he lives on the Red Line, and often uses the Metro system to get around the larger DC-Maryland area. Or he WALKS locally!

It is entirely conceivable - if the Transit is Paid for and Built before much longer, that a better NBS community could work. NO Votes from Matichek (& Abe Koga?) and others (totaling 4) can ABSOLUTELY ASSURE that development will occur in the proper, logical sequence.

OK Lisa - now is the time for you 'to deliver' VOTES on the type of logical growth you campaigned on. (or else no campaign $$$ from me in the future :)

It's quite true that the city council candidates were "swept" into office by the special interest groups that have a tremendous profit incentive to build a massive dense city buildout in Mountain View.

It's also very true that technology offers a solution to the problems we face today in Mountain View and will continue to face in the future. But the technology already exists and is the Internet. Telework is the policy that needs to be supported not dense corporate HQs that do not pay taxes and create negative network externality in our community.

As disclosure, I ran for 2016 MV City Council as the candidate who refused to take $$$ from the special interest groups, supported affordable housing, safer paths to schools, and Telework to help spread out the work in our region, state, country and around the world.

The technology that is available today is free Internet that supports work from anywhere. Google, (my employer Cisco) and other local startups invented this technology and understand how powerful it is a tool to address our issues. But Google, Apple and others unlike Cisco do not support telework and instead are building massive worker cities in our community that is disruptive causing traffic jams, safety issues for children, lack of public schools, and more!

Telework is the technology NOT flying cars of the future! It is available today!

Ask the question to city council where will the children of the 4000 new families will go to school and how will they get to the high school on the other side on 101, where are the parks, where is the quality of life? Ask what will happen when Google shifts its employee base to other locations with the technology they have available today as a result of the next economic bust (boom bust is our reality)? Ask how many people are driving in the google and apple cars today? How soon will the new transportation infrastructure be built? Who will pay for it?

If there is a $$$ profit motive it is here in Mountain View it is with the builders and corps, but why not use the technology available today to spread out the work, help spread out the quality of life in our community?

As a candidate for city council, I advocated for telework rather than corporate build out. The elected were swept in by the $$$ and now the plans are for building out a dense corridor without parking, safe routes to schools, affordable housing, and public transportation. When do we want it? Now!!! When will we get it? Not anytime soon with this failure of vision.

These assumptions are not only "shocking" they are not based on community input only corporate power.

They should really be aiming for an arcology.

Web Link

Easy answer: annex the golf course where P-3s used to fly into Moffet Field.
There would be plenty of room TO SET UP 4 STORY living quarters. I heard " Golf Courses for the Homeless " : Web Link this could and should fix the housing problem!
Another game changer is Google/Alphabet building their Boulder Campus. Plenty of open space there! the same type of entertainment is available too. the Spandex bike community would welcome the new transplants with open arms and lower housing costs. For those car-less people, the Hop, Skip and Jump buses t6ake care of movement inside Boulder proper. At the end station to the South, you can board an Express bus into Denver. Bring your bike or borrow one from the local Bike Share program. You can take Light Rail to the outskirts of Denver. You can also thake light Rail to the DIA and fly anywhere the airlines can take you.All this from the Google Campus in Boulder!

I find it fascinating, and not a little disturbing, that the City Council believes no one will need a car to drive to San Francisco, or Oakland, or Santa Cruz, or Half Moon Bay, or wine country, or Yosemite, or...well, you get the picture. People do not just go to and from work. They go to the beach. They go to baseball games. They go to the city...San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland. They go to Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Mateo. They go to the hospital, dentist, doctor, chiropractor. They grocery shop. They buy Christmas trees. And to do all this and many more, they will need...wait for it...a car. So to assume that it's possible to build a carless community seems, well, sorry Council, pretty crazy. Hopefully this decision is not cast in stone, because it has serious sanity flaws.

Why are we certain that people will use cars the same in the future? The years it takes to get developments like this built, we are talking about a North Bayshore community for 7-10 years from now. 7 years ago was the first iPad, and 10 years ago the first iPhone. Can you imagine MV in 7-10 years?

Do some people not already use shared car services like Zip?
Do some people not already use ride sharing services like Uber/Lyft?
Will future residents in North Bayshore by the tech companies be even more inclined to do so?

Why replicate the past or wait for the future, rather than plan and build a future that tackles the real problems people see with traditional models of growth?
It's possible people won't even own cars in the future, and those shared cars are parked/charged remotely in silos.

Minimal parking would be a disaster. They would be better off getting rid of all parking whatsoever. At least then people would know what they are signing up for.

@ CourtneyB - yes, everything you said but to boot, there's no public transportation here! It's not like you can take the subway to get where you're going... SO ridiculous.

If proper planning by the city council had been done, MV would not be in the fix we are in now! The easiest solution is to take the Soviet Way of building a " block of flats " style building. Move the VTA tracks to serve the housing project and FORCE people to use VTA by totally eliminating car storage ANYWHERE! Hey, you would even have many bare walls to post your slogans like " Work Makes You Free!/sarcasm.....

"Hey, you would even have many bare walls to post your slogans like " Work Makes You Free!"

It's obvious that you don't know that the slogan you quoted was NOT a Soviet slogan. And if you actually knew under what context that slogan *was* used for, you wouldn't have put into your comment.

Did City Council consider requiring one electric car charging parking spot for every 5 households or 1 hydrogen cell feul refilling station for every 10 households to encourage better cars for the environment until other transportation options take hold? Maybe these ratios are too high? Maybe too low? But the idea being it would give some reason to also buy or rent a home here. Many apartments make it difficult to own an electric car. And being realistic, unless transporation is built first, it will be years after the places are available to live in that alternative means to safely and quickly transport residents and workers will exist.

The only improvements that have reduced traffic in the last 4 decades are when these companies cycle in a bust and all the little workers from the can't Hack it crew will move back to mom an dad's basement to play video games. It's funny that the arguments are the same, the lies are the same, and unfortunately they never learn about smart growth- infrastructure is the foundation of the house or the house crumbles. In ten to 15 yrs. this whole peninsula will be a complete nightmare to go anywhere. There is so much building in the pipelines already approved. Good Luck -

Sigh. Some people parade their ignorance of the /sarcasm sign. I know much more than the German language. I know exactly what happened in Germany BEFORE WWII to the German people.
East Germany HAD Soviet style block of flats housing; that is why many East Germans tried to escape to West Berlin over the now torn down Wall piece that sits downtown.
That " block of flats style " building is a bit like the concept being considered right now. Our problem: It sits close to my parent's house and we will need a handicapped parking spot in front of their house if this " thing ( monstrosity )" is built. Yes, I see plenty of unintended consequences in this disastrous project. These affect us personally.

I can imagine years ago the city planners were saying -- hey, we don't need parking downtown. We have jet cars coming soon. Jetsons will soon be a reality.

I don't think city planners were bought off by developers. I think they are really just that stupid.

Parking spaces are EXPENSIVE. And, believe it or not, some of your neighbors are actually at a stage of life where they DESPERATELY want a more affordable car-free lifestyle. That demand is badly underserved by Mountain View's current housing market. My younger colleagues instead pile into apartments and homes that really would be better utilized by single families.

We're not tearing down people's houses and taking away their cars and parking spaces. We're adding a new option for some of Mountain View's residents. I don't have a crystal ball, but my experience suggests that this new option will be extremely popular. My friends and I would have been first in line.

Massive parking lots separating humans from places are not some law of nature, they were particular design choices made in the 20th century.

I salute Council for providing this new option for some Mountain View residents that will serve them well in the 21st century.