I’ll just point out that the City was planning for more vehicle traffic on one hand while considering housing developments with insufficient parking. There’s a contradiction in there somewhere.

Excellent point, Rachel. Let me also point out that forcing increased housing density with insufficient parking onto Mountain View also contradicts the vision of Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg:

"In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents' living room to catch up," Zuckerberg wrote. "This will open up more opportunity no matter where you live. You'll be able to spend more time on what matters to you, cut down time in traffic, and reduce your carbon footprint." Web Link

Excellent call by the Mountain View City Council. Kudos to them on this one.

"Traffic studies indicate there will be a whole host of problems at the intersection of Shoreline Boulevard and Middlefield Road without the extra left-turn lanes, particularly as the city adds thousands of homes and new offices in North Bayshore." Seems like the easy solution is to simply NOT add thousands of homes. Let workers buy homes in less expensive areas and teleport to their offices instead! Win/win for everyone!

P.S. Also note that these traffic studies were only conducted because of the NBPP. They were not conducted because traffic had been considered an issue at that intersection before it. I'm glad that old redwoods have escaped the death penalty, at least for now.