Really? More houses, more people and less cars??????????

Its really disingenuous to say that " On a 41-2 vote, elected leaders serving on the executive board of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) approved the latest update to Plan Bay Area, which proposes a path where the region essentially builds its way out of the affordability crisis."

It sounds like the voting public elected them when really they are hand picked by officials in government.

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Don't worry Mr Laccardo Google acquired twice as much space in SJ than they have in Mtn View. Im sure more companies will follow.

This plan is a nightmare for Mountain View, it will transform our city into a crowded mess. Any ideas on how to fight back????

1.3 million more jobs? How are those people supposed to get to work? Riding VTA or Caltrain? Why don't they build more housing and put a lid on job growth until a realistic mass transit system is in place?

Can we put an end to the tagline that more housing will reduce traffic.

Here's what it will do:

Pre-Extra Housing: People drive to work; people drive home from work. Mostly on freeways or major arterials.

Post-Extra Housing: People drive to work; people drive home from work. Much is still on freeways. But now, more will be clogging up local arterials. In addition, and this is HUGE - all of these new residents WILL ALSO be driving on local streets multiple times during the day above and beyond commuting to work. They'll take kids to school and extracurriculars; they'll go grocery shopping; they'll visit a park or restaurant in a neighboring town.

More housing = more traffic. Pure and simple. Slow it down. And if balance is required, slow down the commercial growth too.

PS - The 43 people include a lot of names representing "interest groups" - not elected officials.

What a total crock!!! We residents increasingly are sane people trapped in an insane asylum run by the most insane, ignorant, and naively idealistic of its inmates. I have to wonder just how many of these incredibly ignorant and crazed fools are bureaucrats "earning" six-figure salaries and promised six figure pensions?

"Don't worry Mr Laccardo Google acquired twice as much space in SJ than they have in Mtn View. Im sure more companies will follow."

When they double (or triple) the population of SJ, it will spill over into other cities, just as crowding in SF, MV and others is spilling over into other Bay Area cities. This is an interconnected region where what happens in one city is acutely felt in other cities. Or were you being facetious? ;-)

The children of all these new residents will be educated how? More schools and teachers will be needed. The MVLA high school district will need a new campus,
located in the heart of this new growth. Los Altos high school and Mountain View high school are located at the periphery of Mountain View, five to ten miles from these proposed new homes.

What happened to the VTA pilot express bus service from Gilroy and Morgan Hill to Mountain View?

I think the key would be better transportation of express buses from areas where there is room for more housing. If Google can successfully run buses from San Francisco for its workers, then surely buses for everyone can follow the same pattern with express luxury buses from the outlying southern area of SC county to the north part of the county.

Here's a solution element that is not considered. Restrain the growth of jobs. Place some kind of revenue sharing requirement on cities that add more jobs than housing,
to support expenses for cities which do the reverse. Residents cost in terms of city services and infrastructure, on balance more than jobs. Yet the revenues to the cities
are GREATER from commercial office development than they are for residential development.

As for San Jose attracting more Google jobs, well, Google should give up some of that
land in Mountain View and Sunnyvale for residential development. Revenue sharing from cities that get lots of new office buildings should be spread across those building more housing, as well as subsidizing the development cost of the housing. There's got to be a reason cities like Mountain View have favored adding so many new jobs. At least Palo Alto has tried to restrain the addition of new jobs, as much as they can.

You've got places like Stanford University adding tons of jobs though, and doing naught all to add housing for these workers. These are jobs on COUNTY land and tax exempt facilities and real estate. Stanford too should step up and fund the cost of creating housing for their workers, because it does not come for free.

"At least Palo Alto has tried to restrain the addition of new jobs, as much as they can."

I'm not so sure. Look at Palanatir, and at Facebook's new giant campus project that they say will add 1500 housing units but 10,000 jobs.

Either way, if we want to slow down, let alone reverse, the destruction of our communities, addressing the root cause - runaway Big Tech growth - is the only approach that will be affective. Everything else is just pretending.

Is this a joke? If so it isn't funny at all. More housing will reduce traffic? Have all these bureaucrats gone insane?

Facebook is in Menlo Park, a different county even than Palo Alto. Palantir
has done what Google has also done in Mountain View, namely grow by taking over
one property after another and cramming it full of more people than was ever
done before. There are few laws that let a city control how many occupants
a company places into a location. The company can even build a new location
and immediately staff up beyond the planned maximum capacity.

It is a fantasy to say that more housing will reduce traffic. Regardless of where people work, they will want to move around rather than stay in a walkable bubble or even a bike ride bubble.

The best solution is to get people into public transportation by making it efficient and a better alternative to solo driving.

If I could get where I was going in a faster manner without having to worry about finding somewhere to park, I would use public transport as opposed to getting stuck in traffic and driving around in circles looking for somewhere to park. Unfortunately, I have to drive as there is no sensible alternative. I recently had a meeting in downtown Mountain View with people who arrived from several points on the Peninsula. Traffic and parking issues delayed the meeting as well as taking time on the inevitable discussion of how bad traffic and parking had been.

In this center of innovation and technology, it is absolutely amazing that innovating technology to improve traffic and parking issues is so behind the rest of the world.

"Facebook is in Menlo Park, a different county even than Palo Alto. "

Yes certainly, but they have a huge project in Palo Alto in the works. They're calling it Facebook Village or something like that.

"Palantirhas done what Google has also done in Mountain View, namely grow by taking over
one property after another and cramming it full of more people than was ever
done before. "

Exactly.

"There are few laws that let a city control how many occupants
a company places into a location. The company can even build a new location
and immediately staff up beyond the planned maximum capacity."

What about zoning laws and height limits? Surely there are laws on what a company is allowed to build in the first place. For example, Mountain View actually did say no to Google's plan for a gargantuan sprawling campus a few years ago and they went back to the drawing board (and came up with something only slightly less gargantuan).

"Mountain View embraced the idea of PDAs...estimated 82% increase in the city's housing stock" & Palo Alto opted out. My question to our city's leaders, why in the world did you give away some of the City's water rights to East PA after asking MV residents to cut our water consumption & simultaneously increase our water rates, without having thought that there would be an increased need of water for our City's future growth? Perhaps you could have eased water restrictions, lowered our rates & preserved the use of our water? Instead, you unwisely saved yourself a little money (eliminating the non-usage water penalty) & recieved a one time bonus (1 time payment for all future water rights) and permanently gave away an extremely valuable resource that this city will have clear need of with it's continued growth. Short sighted indeed!

Finally. We've been putting more jobs in Mountain View than housing for a very long time now. Those people are commuting long distance, polluting the air and jamming the roadways, or paying high prices to live nearby, displacing lower income people elsewhere to pollute and cause traffic jams. With enough housing nearby, the community shuttle will finally make sense to run at a higher frequency, and we can get rid of the stupid rent control law that in 5 years will mostly benefit people working outside of Mountain View and commuting long distance while polluting and causing traffic jams just because they have a good deal on rent.

There's no escape from the corruption. What we need is some people with some ethics running this city. So sick of these groups of "elected officials", that want more power. Anyone wanting a position of "power", certainly doesn't deserve it. Mountain has been destroyed. They're only trying to get more people here, so they can continue to raise the rents and squeeze every last drop of money out of us. I'll cross my fingers and hope for a large quake.

No, No, No, Facebook Village is on Willow Road in Menlo Park.

Apologies; you're right, I was wrong, my bad. I got it mixed up because the discussion I saw was on the Palo Alto Online website where many PA residents were plenty unhappy with it. Either way, the cities of the Peninsula and South Bay are heavily intertwined and planning mistakes in one directly affect the others. And I absolutely agree with you that the growth of jobs should be restrained.

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It is time for high density hovels in Hillsdale, Saratoga, Monte Sereno, etc.
Spread the pain! Why limit the discomfort to the current residents of Mountain View and San Jose?
Those who vote to increase our housing density and ruin our quality of life should be condemned to live in it.

"If all goes according to plan, MTC staff predict the planned growth would go a long way toward reducing traffic congestion..."

What does a "long way toward" mean?

Menlo Park was sued based on state laws by special interests several years ago to compel it accommodation its "fair share" of more housing. The City simply agree to the court order. Cities are left to say precisely where the development will occur - not whether.

I don't know the exact statistics, but it seems to me that 820,000 housing units might be needed to support the 1.3 million new jobs, leaving us exactly back where we are now. The elephant in the room is jobs growth.

Anke, I was being very facetious!

I think the FANGS should set up shop in Modesto and Stockton, that's where folks can afford a house and they certainly need the tax base.
I also think Mtn View (City Council) is extremely short sited. A city should never put all their eggs in one basket; GOOGLE might not be in business in 5-10 years. I like Google products, by the way.
Remember Silicon Graphics, Netscape, AOL to name a few.

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Does anyone ever talk about human birth control. this world is going to suffer more and more from over crowding. Food shortages, water shortages, pollution, noise pollution and other problems like epidemics and extinction of wildlife as more and more space is occupied by people.