21 ms·

Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

327 points by netrus 11y ago

azakai 11y ago
Odd to see this in the middle of the article, without context before or after, > Google plans to give $5 million in matching grants to cities in the area that want to start building out a better bike network. But even the matching grants don't come free: The money is offered as a community benefit, contingent on Mountain View's approval of Google's North Bayshore redevelopment. Without describing what Google's proposed North Bayshore redevelopment is, it's hard to know how to interpret that paragraph.
- ethanbond 11y ago
  This, maybe? Agreed that context would be nice. http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2015/05/08/linkedin-wins-big-google-plans-gutted-in-north-bayshore-decision http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2015/05/08/linkedin-wins...
dogma1138 11y ago
Good luck, SV is what 4-5 times (if not more) larger than Copenhagen and consists of spotty urban, suburban, industrial areas, connected by high speed motorways and highways.
- JTon 11y ago
  I think Google is one of a handful of firms that has the resources to make this happen
- nextos 11y ago
  Suburban Copenhagen has very good bike lanes. Actually separate roads for bikes. [1] Granted, this took years to build. [1] E.g. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Sjælsø,+Denmark/@55.8628868,12.4684614,3a,75y,1.51h,70.98t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sx-Z-LQhxJ0qCeCuQug74hg!2e0!6s//geo1.ggpht.com/cbk?panoid=x-Z-LQhxJ0qCeCuQug74hg&output=thumbnail&cb_client=maps_sv.tactile.gps&thumb=2&w=203&h=100&yaw=110.6162&pitch=0!7i13312!8i6656!4m2!3m1!1s0x4652489fbcd21df3:0xd58b8b781d558dca?hl=en https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Sjælsø,+Denmark/@55.8628... (yes, that thing on the left is a bike lane!)
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    We are still talking about an area much smaller than SV with a much lower population density.
    - bryanlarsen 11y ago
      Rural areas in Denmark have awesome cycling infrastructure and a much lower population density than Silicon Valley. Urban areas have awesome cycling infrastructure and a much higher population density.
      - dogma1138 11y ago
        Lower population density areas are easier to make bike friendly, less people which means that taking off road lanes or making sidewalks slightly narrower has a smaller impact. It also means that other bike infrastructure like parking is easier to build (need less of it). Construction is also easier when you either do need to move buildings at all, or you are moving 2-3 story buildings instead of huge complexes. Fixing public transportation is more important than fixing biking at this moment, especially in California. When more people move with cars than with public transportation it's harder to allocate the needed resources for bikes, the impact of public transportation improvement is also quicker and bigger than improving bike lanes. Not saying that having a bike / walk to work alternatives isn't important, but jumping straight to it when everything else isn't even remotely close to being right is a foolish mission in my book.
        jrock08 11y ago
        You're posing a false choice between biking and public transit. Biking and public transit can be improved together since, when properly designed, biking to public transit is a very easy way to extend the effective "bikeable" commute distance. Why do you think creating bike infrastructure would be more expensive than improving public transit?
- tormeh 11y ago
  How about public transport you can take the bikes with you on, and nice bike paths in the denser areas?
  - meatysnapper 11y ago
    This. Just putting down bike paths is useless when everything else is missing. You need bike parking too!
    - TulliusCicero 11y ago
      Google, at least, has tons of bike parking.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    The denser areas, especially the bay side belt are quite are quite bike friendly. Public transportation is a completely different question, bikes on buses do not work, some train services can be adopted with special carriages to carry bikes on board. The main issue isn't just roads its and entire infrastructure, e.g. giving bikes priority over motor vehicles like in some European countries which might not work well, In many cases bike lanes tend to also have a negative impact as they are often take spaces from public side walks, you can see that being a very big issue in some European cities that went bike crazy. London is trying to do that and it's infuriating bikes seem to do what ever the fuck they want they'll go in the bike land but on a red signal they'll decide to go over the cross walk and onto the side walk to get a head, they often go into red signals even on the road when there is no (or they think there isn't) incoming traffic, and they clog bus lanes. You can't just go from 0 to 60, turning SV into a bike friendly zone will take as much time as it took to turn Copenhagen or Amsterdam into one.
    - stbtrax 11y ago
      Why do bikes on busses not work? They have this already, as well as bike storage on the regional trains. Do you have a citation for bike lanes digging into sidewalk? I've literally never heard of that, especially in the US where sidewalks are never near bike lanes and separated by a curb/parking/grass.
- jrockway 11y ago
  Downtown Mountain View (like the Caltrain/VTA station) to Google is quite bikeable distance-wise, except for a few poorly-designed sections. You basically have to go over the freeway somehow, and to do that, you have to merge with traffic cutting over the bike lane to get on or off the freeway. I did this exactly once, people are not looking for bikes so you just have to stand and wait for a break. Good luck during commuting hours. (I think Shoreline actually has a button to press to give you a "walk signal", but I don't see a light to actually stop traffic. I've only tried Rengstorff. ) That said you can detour a bit and take the Steven's Creek trail, which is quite alright. Though very very very dark at night. You'll want a super-powerful light for that ride. Even then it's still scary. (My aforementioned trip on Rengstorff was to go to REI to buy a bike light for that purpose :) Anyway, safe bicycle infrastructure would make Mountain View wonderful for bike commuting. The distances are bicycle friendly, and the weather is almost always perfect for biking. If Mountain View had housing prices and bike infrastructure that was comparable to New York City, I would be happy to move there.
  - packetslave 11y ago
    Note that SCT is technically closed after sunset, although the rangers have said they're lenient on enforcing it due to all the commuters.
    - jrockway 11y ago
      Yeah, I kind of figured. This goes to show you how unfriendly Mountain View is currently with respect to biking, "if you want to commute legally you can only commute when the sun is up". Imagine if roads closed after dark. There would be 0 tech companies in Mountain View.
- shas3 11y ago
  Minneapolis-St. Paul, which is as sprawl-y as it gets has done a pretty good job of connecting most of the area with paved bike-only paths. I am not sure how bad the situation in Bay Area is, but it is not easy to get too many people to bike to work 20 miles each way, every day. So I don't know how this helps unless most people live within a 10 mile radius of the work place.
kevinburke 11y ago
A good way to accomplish this (not mentioned in the article) would be to build more housing close to Mountain View's campus. Office space has been outstripping housing growth in Mountain View for a very long time. See for example https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/01/stop-being-bullied-lets-sue-mountain-view/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/01/stop-being-bullied-lets-sue....
- DannyBee 11y ago
  They tried, multiple times, and were explicitly rebuked http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2012/07/13/google-housing-axed-in-citys-general-plan http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2012/07/13/google-housin... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/technology/google-plans-new-headquarters-and-a-city-fears-being-overrun.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/technology/google-plans-ne... etc It comes up every few years.
  - gozo 11y ago
    While I think the situation is ridiculous, I also can't help thinking that if you're one of the most successful companies in the world and you can't get this done. It's either not that great of priority for you or you're doing something wrong.
    - TulliusCicero 11y ago
      Nope, it's something Google would really love to see. You have to remember that as the Goliath in the room, Google has to be somewhat careful about how hard they try to persuade local governments, as many residents already dislike how quickly they've grown and how that's contributed to rents going up and traffic getting worse. And Google has made a bunch of improvements themselves, like, I believe, the buffered bike lanes on Shorebird and the multi-use path that extends west from Shorebird. But they can't just do whatever they want, no matter how rich they are. Just look at how their plans for development in North Bayshore got shot down by the city.
      - gozo 11y ago
Florin_Andrei 11y ago
I just biked last evening from downtown San Jose to the southern vicinity of the Google campus. There are two main options: Central Expressway or something close and parallel to it, which I've declined. Or trails near the bay shore, which is what I chose. Bad choice. The trails are for the most part unpaved. Riding my sleek, rigid road bike on those things was torture. Never again. If those trails were paved, that would be a pretty awesome route. So start with paving the lesser-known trails.
- dkhenry 11y ago
  I know its not an option for everyone, but a good cyclecross bike will do wonders for that kind of commute. I picked up a hybrid bike and got a set of tires with some tread on them and I can now handle gravel fairly well, and still get good rolling resistance on the rest of my ride
  - Florin_Andrei 11y ago
    I had a hybrid with fat tires, which I used to ride on trails like that. It makes the ride somewhat more bearable, yes. But the point is - no pavement, no speed, regardless of what kind of bike your using. Pave those things, and your average speed on a bike would double at least.
    - lorenzhs 11y ago
      Double? I doubt that. Typically, I ride ~20km/h on gravel and ~23km/h on well-paved roads at commute speeds (i.e., no sweating). Maybe the gravel roads are terrible in SV, but around here, it hardly makes a difference in speed as gravel roads are well-maintained.
      - Florin_Andrei 11y ago
        The trail right along the shore is hard dirt, not quite asphalt, but passable. So that one is okay-ish. But the connecting trail from SJ downtown along the creek towards the bay at some point changes from asphalt to literally a trough full of gravel. You'll lose a lot of speed there, no matter what kind of tires you're using.
Flip-per 11y ago
Quote: --- They tackled the problem with data. "Rather than looking at what bike infrastructure is there, they looked at the user experience [...] They looked at levels of stress faced by bicyclists, and how those could change based on the infrastructure that could be there in the future," --- The innovation of this project is mind-blowing. Bicycle lanes! A whole network of them!
- ethanbond 11y ago
  Nothing more Silicon Valley than overthinking a very simple problem. Actually, not overthinking it (I'm sure there was limited thinking involved), but at least over publicizing what should be (and has been) an obvious problem and solution pairing. If they thought into it a bit more, they may have come to realize that it's entities like Google (and similar mega-campuses) that actually make the entire region a disaster for commuters and for citydwellers.
dkhenry 11y ago
I applaude this effort. I think many people discount how capable they are of making the switch to commuting via bike to work. Almost any commute less then 10 miles can easily be done via bike, and making a "safe" route to connect the metro area is a great first step. The unfortunate situation is that if you are over 10 miles to your office ( which many are ) you will have a hard time making that commute in a acceptable amount of time, unless you actually make an effort at going fast.
- buckbova 11y ago
  I don't want to show up to work sweaty. And I want the utility of a vehicle if my plans change. So I'll drive regardless.
  - lukeschlather 11y ago
    That really depends on your speed. Like dhenry says, if you're going at a moderate pace, a 5 mile commute ends up being about 30 minutes door to door, and you don't really work up a sweat, definitely not in the winter, maybe sometimes in the summer. If you're going full-tilt you can get that down to 20 minutes door-to-door and then you sweat and you have to take a shower. So really it's a question of if you're trying to get some aerobic exercise during your commute or not. I am of course speaking for Seattle where it's usually cool but not cold and damp but not really raining.
  - ethanbond 11y ago
    Honestly it's a great way to wake up to get some exercise in, then drop by a gym for a shower (if your office doesn't have one). Showers at the office are probably one of the most underrated perks ever. As a sidenote, the whole point is that "the utility of a vehicle" shouldn't far exceed the utility of a bicycle/public transit in an area as developed as Silicon Valley.
  - andy_boot 11y ago
    I travel ~ 5 miles to work (takes about 30 minutes). I dont push myself to hard and I keep a spare t-shirt in the office. Arrive, swap t-shirt. Done. If my plans change I leave my bike at work and arrive on mass transit the next day.
Wonnk13 11y ago
I evaluated moving to MTV last fall to take a job with GOOG; bayshore drive certainly is the most direct and dicey route. I'm in a position to move there this fall and knowing that Palo Alto, MTV etc would be connected via safe bikeways would be a huge plus to living in the fairly bland suburbs.
antr 11y ago
Silicon Valley is a car-centric urban area, and this Google initiative strikes a cord with this talk "The Importance of Designing Streets Instead of Engineering Them", well worth watching: http://www.architecture.io/talks/mikael-colville-andersen-the-importance-of-designing-streets-instead-of-engineering-them/ http://www.architecture.io/talks/mikael-colville-andersen-th...
- bduerst 11y ago
  If you look at the history of South SF Bay, it has always been a string of commuter communities. It started with the train to take workers into SF and the rich out to their mansions on the weekends. It exploded in the 1950's with affordable automobiles, and houses went up everywhere. Now the workers are going the other way and the South SF Bay infrastructure is being crushed by it.
msoad 11y ago
Palo Alto is also building a bike only bridge over 101 which will make it easier and safer for bike commuters to go over US-101 http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/topics/projects/facilities/bridge_project/default.asp http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/topics/projects/facilities...
- mikeyouse 11y ago
  Good for them, it looks like a really nice project. Thanks for the link, I hadn't heard about this at all.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
I appreciate the effort, although I'm annoyed that FastCoExist mentions Mountain View and Santa Clara, while avoiding mentioning Sunnyvale, the actual 'heart' of Silicon valley and right there on the map between Mountain View and Santa Clara. But hometown prejudices aside, the challenges are in connecting existing stuff. For example, once you get to the Stevens Creek Trail you are good to go right up to Goole's campus. Sunnyvale has been adding protected bike lanes that cross it east/west to aid that effort. I suggested to the Sunnyvale city council rather than remove a couple of lanes from El Camino they add an elevated bike pathway right down the center. You can ride on El Camino from Gilroy to Milbrae and if it had an out of traffic bike lane on it then you could open up a lot of the bay area to bikes.
- TulliusCicero 11y ago
  > Sunnyvale has been adding protected bike lanes that cross it east/west to aid that effort. Have they? Where? I'd love to see some on Evelyn. Really anywhere there isn't street parking, changing painted bike lanes into protected bike lanes seems like a no-brainer. Much more (perceptual, at least) safety, without any significant change to how the road space is divvied up.
  - jmhain 11y ago
    > Have they? Where? I'd love to see some on Evelyn. Me too. I was actually hit on Evelyn a few months back.
    - ChuckMcM 11y ago
      Remington has full size bike lanes, Mary and Bernardo are in the works to get them, and I don't know where the proposal for Homestead is these days.
      - TulliusCicero 11y ago
        Two things: Remington & Homestead don't connect to Stevens Creek Trail, and Mary & Bernardo aren't East-West streets. You said they were adding protected bike lanes, are any of those protected? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any protected bike lanes I've seen in Sunnyvale.
sharpercoder 11y ago
> Google is also hoping that other areas copy their data-driven approach of mapping out stress on bike routes, and finding the best places to invest. Previous week, we had the Fiets Tel Week [0] (Bicycle count week) in The Netherlands. You could download and install an app, which gathers data about cycling behavior. Connected organisations can now start to use this data to optimize bicycle routes. [0]: http://www.fietstelweek.nl/ http://www.fietstelweek.nl/
nostrademons 11y ago
There's actually a lot of low-hanging fruit that could make Silicon Valley a lot more bike-friendly with virtually no real-estate investment: Put up better lighting on the Stevens Creek Trail, enough so that you can see the full trail and surrounding woods after dark. This alone would've doubled the amount of trips I spent biking to work when I was at Google: the limiting factor was that after daily savings time ended, I'd usually finish up work when it was dark out, and my bike's lights aren't really sufficient on that trail. I also know a number of female cyclists who won't ride the trail after dusk because they don't know who might be lurking in the shadows. Pave the Bay Trails. There's a section by Palo Alto and another by Shoreline that get good use because they're paved. The connecting paths between them and over by Moffett and San Jose are unpaved, and only the most dedicated mountain bikers tend to brave them because it's a very bumpy ride. If you paved over the rest of the existing trails, you could bike from downtown San Jose all the way to the Googleplex via Guadalupe Trail and the Bay Trails. Add more bike cars to Caltrain. The existing bike car can get really full during good weather. Adding more trains may not be possible, but adding another car to existing trains should be reasonably inexpensive. Set apart the bike lane on Central Expressway. Central Expressway has a bike lane. You'd have to be crazy to ride on it, because cars whiz by you at 60 mph, they're not expecting to see you, they're often exiting or entering on cloverleafs, and there is nothing separating you from them. A concrete barrier & fence together with a few tunnels under the onramps would do a lot to improve safety, and make Central a viable North/South bike corridor. The real estate already exists for this. Build more pedestrian/bike-only connections between streets that almost line up but don't quite. For example, a pedestrian bridge across Caltrain between Sunset & Pajaro Ave would let cyclists bike from South Sunnyvale to North Sunnyvale while avoiding busy Mary & Matilda Aves, putting their whole trip through quiet residential neighborhoods. A similar connection between Escuela and Farley (where there's already a traffic light) would connect the dense apartment complexes on California with the Googleplex via the Permanente Creek Trail, though I suspect it'd be bitterly resisted by people on the Farley side because the demographics of those neighborhoods are very different. A pedestrian crosswalk (with a light) between Sleeper and Cuesta Park and then a cut-through on the edge of Cuesta Park via Gantry Way to Rose Ave would link the Stevens Creek Trail and everything that feeds into it with very low-traffic, residential streets that go all the way to downtown Los Altos.
BrainInAJar 11y ago
Hey that might actually convince me to take a job in SV
bordercases 11y ago
Blunt out the complexity of the road for self-driving, I see.
jalayir 11y ago
Silicon Valley is not exactly a dense city.. It's more a suburb.
- TulliusCicero 11y ago
  True, but even suburbs in the Netherlands have high cycling rates, thanks to their good bike infrastructure. And while SV is not a dense city, it's not that sprawled out. Almost everyone in the area has plenty of services and attractions within a good biking range (~3-5 miles depending on confidence), and lots of people live within a half-decent biking range (< 10 miles) of their work.
liveoneggs 11y ago
So you can bike from giant parking lot to giant parking lot?
hyperion2010 11y ago
Based on the photo at the bottom they are going to fail the same way that many other US cities have failed when trying install bike lanes. You MUST put the parked cars between moving traffic and bikes. If you do not bikers are going to get hit and doored and will obstruct turn lanes. Pretty much everywhere in Europe gets this right. Traffic -> parking -> bikes -> peds. How did the US get everything completely backward?
- TulliusCicero 11y ago
  I agree with you. To a certain extent there's institutional inertia around it now. Another issue is actually pedestrians not liking the idea of cyclists (who are all reckless scofflaws, of course) being right next to them. What they don't realize is that a) the reckless cyclists are a tiny minority of the people willing to bike in good infrastructure, and b) even a reckless cyclist probably still poses less of a threat to a pedestrian than a car, so moving people out of cars and onto bikes is almost always a win for pedestrian safety.
  - meatysnapper 11y ago
    Although i'm a fairly responsible biker, I'd say the amount of bikers I see totally ignoring traffic laws is very high- stoplights, riding fast on sidewalks, going the wrong way on one way roads, etc. Maybe 30%. Re sidewalks, I think most people feel very unsafe on bikes in demarcated bike lines, and I get that. The other stuff is totally crazy though.
    - TulliusCicero 11y ago
      > I'd say the amount of bikers I see totally ignoring traffic laws is very high- stoplights, riding fast on sidewalks, going the wrong way on one way roads, etc. Maybe 30%. Studies show that cyclists and motorists break the law at about the same rate: http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/08/06/bikers-drivers-break-law/ http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/08/06/bikers-drivers-brea... What's usually happening is that we're so used to motorists breaking the law that it doesn't even register. Tons of drivers, likely the majority, on my bike route to work go over the speed limit. When a light goes from green to yellow to red, do drivers correctly stop entering the intersection before it goes red? Nah, most of the time one or two more sneak in. But I doubt other drivers even notice these things (heck, a lot of the time I don't even notice it): that law-breaking behavior is normalized. People pick up on it more with bikes, because there aren't nearly as many bikes around, so it's more noticeable. I get the thing about sidewalks, and whenever I ride on sidewalks (which is when the road is wildly unsafe), I make sure to slow down, and I get off my bike if there are a bunch of pedestrians. The thing is, if we did invest in protected bike lanes, cyclists wouldn't ride on the sidewalk, because they wouldn't have to to feel safe.
rar_ram 11y ago
How about they fix the public transport system first ? The bay area (united states in general, except for a few places) has the worst public transportation system. The VTA light rails and buses are nothing compared to new york or even boston for that matter!
- FilterSweep 11y ago
  > The bay area (united states in general, except for a few places) has the worst public transportation system. Living in small tech enclaves in the South (e.g. Atlanta, Chattanooga, Raleigh) would make you eat those words. You might be surprised to find these areas are attractive because there is lots of room for leasing out data centers. MUNI, BART, CalTrain are (albeit, sadly) leagues ahead of anything these cities have to offer.
- jrock08 11y ago
  False choice much?
- xxpor 11y ago
  SV isn't even remotely close to being in the same universe in terms of density, which is needed to make transit really work.
mc32 11y ago
To my mind, one of the main issues, in addition to protected bike lanes is the spread. Bike friendly cities are more compact. Commuting to work via bike is not a strenuous fifteen mile commute one way. They tend to be leisurely few mile rides. Now, not to say it's not possible, but a one to five mile bike ride is not the same as a ten to fifteen or more miles bike ride. Now, I do like Copenhagen's above ground bike roundabout, I've seen. It'd be nice to see those at dangerous or busy intersections. I'd also like to see "turning boxes" where to make a left you go to a perpendicular boxed out area on the right and wait for your light. They have these in Asia for scooters and bikes.
- TulliusCicero 11y ago
  Sure, you're never going to get people who live 15 or 20 miles out biking the whole way to work, but there's lots of people who live < 10 miles away from Google who'd be willing to do it if there was better infrastructure. You also have to keep in mind biking as a first-mile/last-mile complement to rail transit. If there's good bike paths to get to a transit station, that effectively extends the usable radius of the station. Already, lots of people bike to Caltrain and then bike from their stop to work (I should know, I do it occasionally but recently have shied away because of how full the bike cars are during rush hour).
  - mc32 11y ago
    Yes, true it can complement mass transit some, but then it's not the same as Copenhagen (their characterization) and becomes more Tokyo --which while they have very many bikes, is not all that bike friendly.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Actually most of the the trains (not the metro for some reason) in Copenhagen have lots of bike space and one can take one's bike for no charge. Lots of people use bikes and mass transit together.
      - 11y ago
calbear81 11y ago
How about a bike lane with a small barrier along the Caltrain tracks? You already have the land, you can build some overpasses at major street intersections.
- TulliusCicero 11y ago
  This makes sense technically, but not psychologically, if you're talking about a bike lane that's very close to the tracks. The trains are very large and very loud with their horns. It's already intimidating when I'm biking on Evelyn, pretty close to the tracks. Intellectually, I realize the chance of the train derailing is pretty much zero, but it doesn't feel that way. Adding such a bike lane would be better than what we have now, but I think a lot of the 'interested but concerned' group would be unwilling to be very close to the train.
  - calbear81 11y ago
    How about an elevated bike lane that sits above the train tracks like 20 ft. above but with the train running below it?
ThomPete 11y ago
Dane here. The thing to remember here is that in order connect copenhagen like that, they basically decreased the size of the car lanes many places and Copenhagen, no matter how much I love it, isn't a big city more like a province.
arasmussen 11y ago
Including San Francisco? Please? :)
Pxtl 11y ago
Good luck. I'm an avid bike-commuter, but I live in a dense old industrial city, not a sprawling suburb. Modern transit infrastructure like bike-lanes and LRT lines and the like are very challenging in suburbia.
- Doctor_Fegg 11y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily argue with you, but what's funny is that exactly the opposite argument is used in London. Oh, people say, we can't put protected bike lanes in, it's a dense historic city and there isn't enough room. Turns out (hooray) there is room, and the first major ones are going in as we speak. Where there's a will there's a way.
nicklaf 11y ago
It might make more sense to make the area boat friendly, if we're planning for the long term and take elevation into account.
sandworm101 11y ago
I do laugh at the image of society at large switching from cars to bikes. At the moment biking is dominated by young fit and generally healthy people. That may be silicon valley but it isn't the general population. I see lots of young parents going to work by bike, but do they take their kids to school on bikes? Does grandma get to the doctor on a tricycle? And what about the growing number of people who need to be brought places, who cannot drive themselves? There are a great many people with special needs/requirements who will never be able to move themselves safely by bike or any other vehicle. They and their carers should not be cut out of city planning, nor should they be confined to special communities.
- icebraining 11y ago
  I see lots of young parents going to work by bike, but do they take their kids to school on bikes? In bike-friendly places, yes. http://www.workcycles.nl/workcycles-bakfietsen-images/bakfiets.nl-images-08/cargobike-long-ornj-3kids-420.jpg http://www.workcycles.nl/workcycles-bakfietsen-images/bakfie... And what about the growing number of people who need to be brought places, who cannot drive themselves? There are a great many people with special needs/requirements who will never be able to move themselves safely by bike or any other vehicle. They and their carers should not be cut out of city planning, nor should they be confined to special communities. Do you think people in Copenhagen who can't drive themselves are confined to special communities? Do you think they don't have roads and cars? If anything, less cars on the roads makes it easier and safer for them to move around.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    No, but Copenhagen is a tiny little place and still has lots of private cars. Either they aren't living in the bike-only core, or they have use of a car. A total switch to bikes, away from private motor vehicles by all, is a very different scenario than current copenhagen.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      A total switch to bikes, away from private motor vehicles by all, is a very different scenario than current copenhagen. And it's also a scenario that no one is proposing.
andrewliebchen 11y ago
I live in Mountain View and work in Redwood City. I don't have a car. It's not a big deal. For all the innovation in SV, it always surprises me how close-minded the area is when it comes to transportation options beyond the car.
mgraczyk 11y ago
Not sure how they generated that stress-level map, but it seems to be an unreasonably simplistic approximation. For example, there is a dedicated bike path along the 101 from the region marked "North Bayshore" all the way past the top-left corner of the map. That entire stretch is less stressful than any place south of El Camino. By extension, most of northern Palo Alto should be dark green instead of yellow and pale green. There's also a dedicated bike trail from very close to the San Antonio Caltrain station all the way to Google, but that path is not evident from the map. I'm mainly saying that the situation is actually much better than depicted for most of Palo Alto. By contrast, the situation is worse than depicted everywhere south of El Camino except very close to bike crossings. I'm speaking from personal experience here. I've biked from Crescent Park to Google every day for over a year. I also don't own a car and bike throughout Palo Alto most weekends with no stress. EDIT: There is a second stress map in the full plan (Figure 5) that shows "average" stress as opposed to "total" stress and represents much more accurately, in my opinion and apparently the opinion of the plan's authors, the true stress associated with riding to Google from each point in the South Bay. In that map you can clearly see the positive effects of the trail to Palo Alto (green blob at top left) and the trail through central Mountain View (green blob center right), as well as the negative effect of El Camino and the 101 (red blobs across those roads).
- peatmoss 11y ago
  As a planner and a person with a quantitative orientation, I think you've just illustrated some of the wickedness of many problems in planning. You've talked about stress, which will be dependent on the user--one user's stress is another user's expedient route. Then there's the hyper-local urban form characteristics that you allude to. That isn't to say we shouldn't apply quantitative analysis to such problems. It just should illustrate how easy it can be to oversimply problems involving highly stochastic human behavior and preferences. And, since there is no complete theory of Urban planning, we should be prepared to exist in an uncomfortable state where neither the ends or means are universally agreed on.
- rconti 11y ago
  I used to bike commute on rare occasions from near Levi stadium up to around where Oracle is in Redwood Shores. I don't remember a dedicated bike path along 101 at North Bayshore. I'd usually leave Moffet, cross under 101, go up Middlefield to Rengstorff, then ride past Google, turn left, past Intuit, then follow East Bayshore (the road) the entire way until I cut through EPA towards what is now Facebook HQ (used to be Sun). Has something changed? Also, the trails they show up by the bay are all super-optimstic. First of all, I think they're pretty much all gravel, they meander all over the place, and they don't GO ANYWHERE. I live off of Marsh now and my commute involves more East Bayshore, cutting through Pete's Harbor, saying hi to the homeless people under 101, riding over the pedestrian bridge by the VW dealer, etc. I'm actually fairly lucky in that I have little traffic on my commute, but it's not exactly low-stress with a few high-traffic crossings. The worst is crossing 101 at Marsh. There's a hidden crosswalk to cross 3 lanes of the highway 84 onramp onto 101. I hate that traffic engineers decided to use the shortest-distance method and hide EVERY crosswalk behind a blind corner.. especially those on FREEWAYS, for god's sake. And then, it's pitch black at night...
npsimons 11y ago
When I did my on-site interview with Google in Mountain View, it was very obvious to me I would almost certainly be car commuting every day, for (at least) two reasons: 1) Cost of houses close to Google was ridiculous. 2) The city is very car centric. Fixing the second may be possible, but the first seems like a more insurmountable (and more important) problem. Where I currently live, I can bike commute to and from work on a daily basis because I can afford to live four miles away, and it only takes 18-20 minutes. It's one of the reasons I still live where I do, and I haven't accepted further interview offers from Google. Also relevant: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-c...
- hueving 11y ago
  Keep in mind big companies like Google have buses that run pretty far and you can just count the ride on the bus as part of your work schedule because you can work on your laptop.
  - QuercusMax 11y ago
    Yup. I live in Saratoga, about a 13 mile bike ride to where I work at Google West Campus (still part of North Bayshore). I typically ride my bike in every morning (takes just under an hour) and take the bus home - there's a bus stop a mile from my house, plus another one 2.5 miles away. I usually end up taking the bus to the farther stop because I forget to leave my desk on time. :D I started biking every day partly to try to get in shape, but also because my kids' school schedule is such that I can't catch the bus at the time I'd prefer. (During the summer I took the 7:30 bus near my house, which got me in to work in 20 minutes.) It typically takes me about 25-30 minutes on the bus to get home, plus 5-15 minutes biking home from the bus stop. I had a 13-mile commute to my old job in Cleveland, and I find I'm significantly less stressed commuting this way, even if it takes slightly longer. The locations of the bus stops are not publicized to non-employees, but there are lots of them, and some are pretty far out - as far as Santa Cruz. I can't imagine working on the bus to/from SC, though - you'd better bring some dramamine or barf bags!
rwhitman 11y ago
Retrofitting American suburban sprawl to be less car-centric is going to be one of the enduring puzzles of the 21st century. The suburban model of planning championed in the 50's onwards became so deeply embedded in development projects and just the entire culture of small city planning across the country that a huge chunk of Americans are completely unaware that a less car-centric lifestyle is even possible, let alone desirable. We're only starting to scratch the surface of understanding how much friggin work it's going to take teasing out the messes that were made by lazy cookie cutter civic planning. And it certainly doesn't help that local governments, planners and many many ordinary car-dependent citizens continue to fight tooth-and-nail to uphold the status quo in this regard. It's great that Google is at least attempting to transform Silicon Valley, at least a little bit. I just wish that the hundreds of other communities around the country that don't have a progressive mega company in their neighborhood can get a little nudge from this type of work someday...
- nickbauman 11y ago
  Here in Minnesota it's common that suburban "subdivision" neighborhoods don't even have pedestrian sidewalks. And the inhabitants think that's a good thing. I cannot even.
  - gamblor956 11y ago
    It snows quite heavily in Minnesota, so during much of the year those sidewalks would be unusable or hazardous.
    - rue 11y ago
      As would the roads without the maintenance that everybody always seems to completely forget about.
      - TulliusCicero 11y ago
        Ah, but you see, roads are important. Sidewalks are for what, walking? So basically playing around.
Bahamut 11y ago
It would be nice if the Valley was more pedestrian friendly - all too often bikers ignore the rules. One example is near the Palo Alto Caltrain station tunnel between Stanford and downtown Palo Alto, and too many times pedestrians come close to getting hit by their recklessness :( . One time I got yelled at by a biker on El Camino when trying to board a bus...the biker tried to pass to the right of the bus. It is frustrating how often bikers don't care about co-existing with the other modes of transportation & following the rules - I feel like this needs to change first before the area becomes bike friendly.
- erikpukinskis 11y ago
  > I feel like this needs to change first before the area becomes bike friendly. As in people should stop work making the area bike friendly until the issue of dangerous driving of bikes is ended?
- npsimons 11y ago
  While I agree that cyclists should be better behaved, I feel that it may be an (over)reaction to hostility from drivers. There's a saying motorcyclists have: ride like they (the car drivers) can't see you. I like to extend that for cyclists as "ride like they can see you and they're trying to hit you." The sad truth is that America is bike hostile, and even apart from that, many who shouldn't be driving are still issued drivers licenses (one cyclist was killed by an old lady near where I live, but no one's going to tangle with the AARP, and most people thought she'd have lived had she been in a "safe" car).
- fizx 11y ago
  It would be nice if the Valley was more pedestrian friendly - all too often cars ignore the rules. One example is near the Palo Alto Caltrain station tunnel between Stanford and downtown Palo Alto, and too many times pedestrians come close to getting hit by their recklessness :( . [Eh, pick any time you've seen a car shoot through a crosswalk and narrowly miss pedestrians... I observe this at least weekly] It is frustrating how often drivers don't care about co-existing with the other modes of transportation & following the rules - I feel like this needs to change first before the area becomes car friendly.
cwilkes 11y ago
Checkmate, Tesla
bagacrap 11y ago
I've biked in Copenhagen and in Mountain View, and I'd say both are head and shoulders above my hometown of Los Angeles which is in turn lightyears ahead of most American cities. Between the great weather, bike boulevards, bike lanes, dedicated bike trails, and wide shoulders, Mountain View can hardly get any better. The difference to Copenhagen is in the cost of owning a car and the population density (i.e. average distance from home to work). I don't think adding more bike infrastructure is going to move the needle on ridership in silicon valley.
jihokoo 11y ago
but who was amsterdam?
cobalt 11y ago
teaching people traffic laws would be a welcomed start
redwood 11y ago
Self driving cars will make biking safer too.
shmerl 11y ago
I wouldn't mind all cities doing that. And, more sidewalks! It's horrible that some places almost don't have them at all.
rollback 11y ago
That's nice! Seems like the first thing to do is ensure that workers live in a bikable distance from their workplace. Hint hint. Either scale up in SF, or elsewhere where there's a hope of people NOT using cars or busses to get to work.
another 11y ago
If you live on the peninsula and care about these issues: (1) Look at getting involved in a local group advocating a vision beyond car-centric suburbia. Palo Alto Forward is one example. (2) At the very least, vote in the local elections, especially (and carefully) for the city council positions! The future of the Bay Area is ultimately in the hands of town governments, not Google, and the only way to genuinely improve it is for residents to get politically involved who have a different and positive vision of the region's future.
wbsun 11y ago
The problem with bike in US is that everybody drives, the roads were initially designed for cars, not bikes. Simply converting part of a drive lane to a bike lane makes cars and bikes still share the road, which is very unsafe. Blind spots can easily cause accidents because of the shared-road bike lane design. Some downtown streets are already narrow enough, still the stupid city planning squeeze a bike lane into them and put more risk to bikers. The safe way to make bike lane is separating drive lanes and bike lanes with strip traffic island that can't be crossed. I used to work at Madison, WI for a while. Their bike lanes are completely separated and isolated by grass or tree traffic island from drive lanes. No wonder Madison claims itself the most bike-friendly city in US.
yason 11y ago
For masses, bikes work great if the daily operating radius where you go about is something like five kilometers. But in Silicon Valley, except for some minor villages in between, 5 kilometers is only a couple of blocks. And instead of snaking through traffic in a city for five kilometers at slower speeds with your working clothes on, you would be sweating on your bike beside fast-going cars in a very much grueling environment of noise, heat, and an endless stretch of road. And then you would need to take a turn and do another five kilometers along another road. I could see it working somewhat if you diverted all the bike traffic through the residential areas and punched the isolated culs-de-sac via bike paths so that bikes, not cars, could take a shortcut through the whole block instead of going along by the car routes. This kind of approach is very common in Finland: you can't always drive from one suburb to another but there's always a bike/pedestrian path that cuts through all that extra distance; here's a typical traffic sign denoting that: http://savepic.ru/7576556.png http://savepic.ru/7576556.png But in general it's hard to see bikes becoming the popular vehicle for masses in Silicon Valley until there are enough towns the size of Copenhagen downtown and built with similar density, and where people commute locally.
Roarosaur 11y ago
10-lane freeways and speeding cars? I wish. I live in Silicon Valley and the traffic here is unbearable.

327 points by netrus 11y ago

Odd to see this in the middle of the article, without context before or after, > Google plans to give $5 million in matching grants to cities in the area that want to start building out a better bike network. But even the matching grants don't come free: The money is offered as a community benefit, contingent on Mountain View's approval of Google's North Bayshore redevelopment. Without describing what Google's proposed North Bayshore redevelopment is, it's hard to know how to interpret that paragraph.

ethanbond 11y ago
This, maybe? Agreed that context would be nice. http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2015/05/08/linkedin-wins-big-google-plans-gutted-in-north-bayshore-decision http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2015/05/08/linkedin-wins...

dogma1138 11y ago

Good luck, SV is what 4-5 times (if not more) larger than Copenhagen and consists of spotty urban, suburban, industrial areas, connected by high speed motorways and highways.

JTon 11y ago
I think Google is one of a handful of firms that has the resources to make this happen
nextos 11y ago
Suburban Copenhagen has very good bike lanes. Actually separate roads for bikes. [1] Granted, this took years to build. [1] E.g. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Sjælsø,+Denmark/@55.8628868,12.4684614,3a,75y,1.51h,70.98t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sx-Z-LQhxJ0qCeCuQug74hg!2e0!6s//geo1.ggpht.com/cbk?panoid=x-Z-LQhxJ0qCeCuQug74hg&output=thumbnail&cb_client=maps_sv.tactile.gps&thumb=2&w=203&h=100&yaw=110.6162&pitch=0!7i13312!8i6656!4m2!3m1!1s0x4652489fbcd21df3:0xd58b8b781d558dca?hl=en https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Sjælsø,+Denmark/@55.8628... (yes, that thing on the left is a bike lane!)
- dogma1138 11y ago
  We are still talking about an area much smaller than SV with a much lower population density.
  - bryanlarsen 11y ago
    Rural areas in Denmark have awesome cycling infrastructure and a much lower population density than Silicon Valley. Urban areas have awesome cycling infrastructure and a much higher population density.
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      Lower population density areas are easier to make bike friendly, less people which means that taking off road lanes or making sidewalks slightly narrower has a smaller impact. It also means that other bike infrastructure like parking is easier to build (need less of it). Construction is also easier when you either do need to move buildings at all, or you are moving 2-3 story buildings instead of huge complexes. Fixing public transportation is more important than fixing biking at this moment, especially in California. When more people move with cars than with public transportation it's harder to allocate the needed resources for bikes, the impact of public transportation improvement is also quicker and bigger than improving bike lanes. Not saying that having a bike / walk to work alternatives isn't important, but jumping straight to it when everything else isn't even remotely close to being right is a foolish mission in my book.
      - jrock08 11y ago
        You're posing a false choice between biking and public transit. Biking and public transit can be improved together since, when properly designed, biking to public transit is a very easy way to extend the effective "bikeable" commute distance. Why do you think creating bike infrastructure would be more expensive than improving public transit?
tormeh 11y ago
How about public transport you can take the bikes with you on, and nice bike paths in the denser areas?
- meatysnapper 11y ago
  This. Just putting down bike paths is useless when everything else is missing. You need bike parking too!
  - TulliusCicero 11y ago
    Google, at least, has tons of bike parking.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  The denser areas, especially the bay side belt are quite are quite bike friendly. Public transportation is a completely different question, bikes on buses do not work, some train services can be adopted with special carriages to carry bikes on board. The main issue isn't just roads its and entire infrastructure, e.g. giving bikes priority over motor vehicles like in some European countries which might not work well, In many cases bike lanes tend to also have a negative impact as they are often take spaces from public side walks, you can see that being a very big issue in some European cities that went bike crazy. London is trying to do that and it's infuriating bikes seem to do what ever the fuck they want they'll go in the bike land but on a red signal they'll decide to go over the cross walk and onto the side walk to get a head, they often go into red signals even on the road when there is no (or they think there isn't) incoming traffic, and they clog bus lanes. You can't just go from 0 to 60, turning SV into a bike friendly zone will take as much time as it took to turn Copenhagen or Amsterdam into one.
  - stbtrax 11y ago
    Why do bikes on busses not work? They have this already, as well as bike storage on the regional trains. Do you have a citation for bike lanes digging into sidewalk? I've literally never heard of that, especially in the US where sidewalks are never near bike lanes and separated by a curb/parking/grass.
jrockway 11y ago
Downtown Mountain View (like the Caltrain/VTA station) to Google is quite bikeable distance-wise, except for a few poorly-designed sections. You basically have to go over the freeway somehow, and to do that, you have to merge with traffic cutting over the bike lane to get on or off the freeway. I did this exactly once, people are not looking for bikes so you just have to stand and wait for a break. Good luck during commuting hours. (I think Shoreline actually has a button to press to give you a "walk signal", but I don't see a light to actually stop traffic. I've only tried Rengstorff. ) That said you can detour a bit and take the Steven's Creek trail, which is quite alright. Though very very very dark at night. You'll want a super-powerful light for that ride. Even then it's still scary. (My aforementioned trip on Rengstorff was to go to REI to buy a bike light for that purpose :) Anyway, safe bicycle infrastructure would make Mountain View wonderful for bike commuting. The distances are bicycle friendly, and the weather is almost always perfect for biking. If Mountain View had housing prices and bike infrastructure that was comparable to New York City, I would be happy to move there.
- packetslave 11y ago
  Note that SCT is technically closed after sunset, although the rangers have said they're lenient on enforcing it due to all the commuters.
  - jrockway 11y ago
    Yeah, I kind of figured. This goes to show you how unfriendly Mountain View is currently with respect to biking, "if you want to commute legally you can only commute when the sun is up". Imagine if roads closed after dark. There would be 0 tech companies in Mountain View.
shas3 11y ago
Minneapolis-St. Paul, which is as sprawl-y as it gets has done a pretty good job of connecting most of the area with paved bike-only paths. I am not sure how bad the situation in Bay Area is, but it is not easy to get too many people to bike to work 20 miles each way, every day. So I don't know how this helps unless most people live within a 10 mile radius of the work place.

kevinburke 11y ago

A good way to accomplish this (not mentioned in the article) would be to build more housing close to Mountain View's campus. Office space has been outstripping housing growth in Mountain View for a very long time. See for example https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/01/stop-being-bullied-lets-sue-mountain-view/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/01/stop-being-bullied-lets-sue....

DannyBee 11y ago
They tried, multiple times, and were explicitly rebuked http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2012/07/13/google-housing-axed-in-citys-general-plan http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2012/07/13/google-housin... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/technology/google-plans-new-headquarters-and-a-city-fears-being-overrun.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/technology/google-plans-ne... etc It comes up every few years.
- gozo 11y ago
  While I think the situation is ridiculous, I also can't help thinking that if you're one of the most successful companies in the world and you can't get this done. It's either not that great of priority for you or you're doing something wrong.
  - TulliusCicero 11y ago
    Nope, it's something Google would really love to see. You have to remember that as the Goliath in the room, Google has to be somewhat careful about how hard they try to persuade local governments, as many residents already dislike how quickly they've grown and how that's contributed to rents going up and traffic getting worse. And Google has made a bunch of improvements themselves, like, I believe, the buffered bike lanes on Shorebird and the multi-use path that extends west from Shorebird. But they can't just do whatever they want, no matter how rich they are. Just look at how their plans for development in North Bayshore got shot down by the city.
    - gozo 11y ago

Florin_Andrei 11y ago

I just biked last evening from downtown San Jose to the southern vicinity of the Google campus. There are two main options: Central Expressway or something close and parallel to it, which I've declined. Or trails near the bay shore, which is what I chose. Bad choice. The trails are for the most part unpaved. Riding my sleek, rigid road bike on those things was torture. Never again. If those trails were paved, that would be a pretty awesome route. So start with paving the lesser-known trails.

dkhenry 11y ago
I know its not an option for everyone, but a good cyclecross bike will do wonders for that kind of commute. I picked up a hybrid bike and got a set of tires with some tread on them and I can now handle gravel fairly well, and still get good rolling resistance on the rest of my ride
- Florin_Andrei 11y ago
  I had a hybrid with fat tires, which I used to ride on trails like that. It makes the ride somewhat more bearable, yes. But the point is - no pavement, no speed, regardless of what kind of bike your using. Pave those things, and your average speed on a bike would double at least.
  - lorenzhs 11y ago
    Double? I doubt that. Typically, I ride ~20km/h on gravel and ~23km/h on well-paved roads at commute speeds (i.e., no sweating). Maybe the gravel roads are terrible in SV, but around here, it hardly makes a difference in speed as gravel roads are well-maintained.
    - Florin_Andrei 11y ago
      The trail right along the shore is hard dirt, not quite asphalt, but passable. So that one is okay-ish. But the connecting trail from SJ downtown along the creek towards the bay at some point changes from asphalt to literally a trough full of gravel. You'll lose a lot of speed there, no matter what kind of tires you're using.

Flip-per 11y ago

Quote: --- They tackled the problem with data. "Rather than looking at what bike infrastructure is there, they looked at the user experience [...] They looked at levels of stress faced by bicyclists, and how those could change based on the infrastructure that could be there in the future," --- The innovation of this project is mind-blowing. Bicycle lanes! A whole network of them!

ethanbond 11y ago
Nothing more Silicon Valley than overthinking a very simple problem. Actually, not overthinking it (I'm sure there was limited thinking involved), but at least over publicizing what should be (and has been) an obvious problem and solution pairing. If they thought into it a bit more, they may have come to realize that it's entities like Google (and similar mega-campuses) that actually make the entire region a disaster for commuters and for citydwellers.

dkhenry 11y ago

I applaude this effort. I think many people discount how capable they are of making the switch to commuting via bike to work. Almost any commute less then 10 miles can easily be done via bike, and making a "safe" route to connect the metro area is a great first step. The unfortunate situation is that if you are over 10 miles to your office ( which many are ) you will have a hard time making that commute in a acceptable amount of time, unless you actually make an effort at going fast.

buckbova 11y ago
I don't want to show up to work sweaty. And I want the utility of a vehicle if my plans change. So I'll drive regardless.
- lukeschlather 11y ago
  That really depends on your speed. Like dhenry says, if you're going at a moderate pace, a 5 mile commute ends up being about 30 minutes door to door, and you don't really work up a sweat, definitely not in the winter, maybe sometimes in the summer. If you're going full-tilt you can get that down to 20 minutes door-to-door and then you sweat and you have to take a shower. So really it's a question of if you're trying to get some aerobic exercise during your commute or not. I am of course speaking for Seattle where it's usually cool but not cold and damp but not really raining.
- ethanbond 11y ago
  Honestly it's a great way to wake up to get some exercise in, then drop by a gym for a shower (if your office doesn't have one). Showers at the office are probably one of the most underrated perks ever. As a sidenote, the whole point is that "the utility of a vehicle" shouldn't far exceed the utility of a bicycle/public transit in an area as developed as Silicon Valley.
- andy_boot 11y ago
  I travel ~ 5 miles to work (takes about 30 minutes). I dont push myself to hard and I keep a spare t-shirt in the office. Arrive, swap t-shirt. Done. If my plans change I leave my bike at work and arrive on mass transit the next day.

Wonnk13 11y ago

I evaluated moving to MTV last fall to take a job with GOOG; bayshore drive certainly is the most direct and dicey route. I'm in a position to move there this fall and knowing that Palo Alto, MTV etc would be connected via safe bikeways would be a huge plus to living in the fairly bland suburbs.

antr 11y ago

Silicon Valley is a car-centric urban area, and this Google initiative strikes a cord with this talk "The Importance of Designing Streets Instead of Engineering Them", well worth watching: http://www.architecture.io/talks/mikael-colville-andersen-the-importance-of-designing-streets-instead-of-engineering-them/ http://www.architecture.io/talks/mikael-colville-andersen-th...

bduerst 11y ago
If you look at the history of South SF Bay, it has always been a string of commuter communities. It started with the train to take workers into SF and the rich out to their mansions on the weekends. It exploded in the 1950's with affordable automobiles, and houses went up everywhere. Now the workers are going the other way and the South SF Bay infrastructure is being crushed by it.

msoad 11y ago

Palo Alto is also building a bike only bridge over 101 which will make it easier and safer for bike commuters to go over US-101 http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/topics/projects/facilities/bridge_project/default.asp http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/topics/projects/facilities...

mikeyouse 11y ago
Good for them, it looks like a really nice project. Thanks for the link, I hadn't heard about this at all.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

I appreciate the effort, although I'm annoyed that FastCoExist mentions Mountain View and Santa Clara, while avoiding mentioning Sunnyvale, the actual 'heart' of Silicon valley and right there on the map between Mountain View and Santa Clara. But hometown prejudices aside, the challenges are in connecting existing stuff. For example, once you get to the Stevens Creek Trail you are good to go right up to Goole's campus. Sunnyvale has been adding protected bike lanes that cross it east/west to aid that effort. I suggested to the Sunnyvale city council rather than remove a couple of lanes from El Camino they add an elevated bike pathway right down the center. You can ride on El Camino from Gilroy to Milbrae and if it had an out of traffic bike lane on it then you could open up a lot of the bay area to bikes.

TulliusCicero 11y ago
> Sunnyvale has been adding protected bike lanes that cross it east/west to aid that effort. Have they? Where? I'd love to see some on Evelyn. Really anywhere there isn't street parking, changing painted bike lanes into protected bike lanes seems like a no-brainer. Much more (perceptual, at least) safety, without any significant change to how the road space is divvied up.
- jmhain 11y ago
  > Have they? Where? I'd love to see some on Evelyn. Me too. I was actually hit on Evelyn a few months back.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    Remington has full size bike lanes, Mary and Bernardo are in the works to get them, and I don't know where the proposal for Homestead is these days.
    - TulliusCicero 11y ago
      Two things: Remington & Homestead don't connect to Stevens Creek Trail, and Mary & Bernardo aren't East-West streets. You said they were adding protected bike lanes, are any of those protected? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any protected bike lanes I've seen in Sunnyvale.

sharpercoder 11y ago

> Google is also hoping that other areas copy their data-driven approach of mapping out stress on bike routes, and finding the best places to invest. Previous week, we had the Fiets Tel Week [0] (Bicycle count week) in The Netherlands. You could download and install an app, which gathers data about cycling behavior. Connected organisations can now start to use this data to optimize bicycle routes. [0]: http://www.fietstelweek.nl/ http://www.fietstelweek.nl/

nostrademons 11y ago

There's actually a lot of low-hanging fruit that could make Silicon Valley a lot more bike-friendly with virtually no real-estate investment: Put up better lighting on the Stevens Creek Trail, enough so that you can see the full trail and surrounding woods after dark. This alone would've doubled the amount of trips I spent biking to work when I was at Google: the limiting factor was that after daily savings time ended, I'd usually finish up work when it was dark out, and my bike's lights aren't really sufficient on that trail. I also know a number of female cyclists who won't ride the trail after dusk because they don't know who might be lurking in the shadows. Pave the Bay Trails. There's a section by Palo Alto and another by Shoreline that get good use because they're paved. The connecting paths between them and over by Moffett and San Jose are unpaved, and only the most dedicated mountain bikers tend to brave them because it's a very bumpy ride. If you paved over the rest of the existing trails, you could bike from downtown San Jose all the way to the Googleplex via Guadalupe Trail and the Bay Trails. Add more bike cars to Caltrain. The existing bike car can get really full during good weather. Adding more trains may not be possible, but adding another car to existing trains should be reasonably inexpensive. Set apart the bike lane on Central Expressway. Central Expressway has a bike lane. You'd have to be crazy to ride on it, because cars whiz by you at 60 mph, they're not expecting to see you, they're often exiting or entering on cloverleafs, and there is nothing separating you from them. A concrete barrier & fence together with a few tunnels under the onramps would do a lot to improve safety, and make Central a viable North/South bike corridor. The real estate already exists for this. Build more pedestrian/bike-only connections between streets that almost line up but don't quite. For example, a pedestrian bridge across Caltrain between Sunset & Pajaro Ave would let cyclists bike from South Sunnyvale to North Sunnyvale while avoiding busy Mary & Matilda Aves, putting their whole trip through quiet residential neighborhoods. A similar connection between Escuela and Farley (where there's already a traffic light) would connect the dense apartment complexes on California with the Googleplex via the Permanente Creek Trail, though I suspect it'd be bitterly resisted by people on the Farley side because the demographics of those neighborhoods are very different. A pedestrian crosswalk (with a light) between Sleeper and Cuesta Park and then a cut-through on the edge of Cuesta Park via Gantry Way to Rose Ave would link the Stevens Creek Trail and everything that feeds into it with very low-traffic, residential streets that go all the way to downtown Los Altos.

BrainInAJar 11y ago

Hey that might actually convince me to take a job in SV

bordercases 11y ago

Blunt out the complexity of the road for self-driving, I see.

jalayir 11y ago

Silicon Valley is not exactly a dense city.. It's more a suburb.

TulliusCicero 11y ago
True, but even suburbs in the Netherlands have high cycling rates, thanks to their good bike infrastructure. And while SV is not a dense city, it's not that sprawled out. Almost everyone in the area has plenty of services and attractions within a good biking range (~3-5 miles depending on confidence), and lots of people live within a half-decent biking range (< 10 miles) of their work.

liveoneggs 11y ago

So you can bike from giant parking lot to giant parking lot?

hyperion2010 11y ago

Based on the photo at the bottom they are going to fail the same way that many other US cities have failed when trying install bike lanes. You MUST put the parked cars between moving traffic and bikes. If you do not bikers are going to get hit and doored and will obstruct turn lanes. Pretty much everywhere in Europe gets this right. Traffic -> parking -> bikes -> peds. How did the US get everything completely backward?

TulliusCicero 11y ago
I agree with you. To a certain extent there's institutional inertia around it now. Another issue is actually pedestrians not liking the idea of cyclists (who are all reckless scofflaws, of course) being right next to them. What they don't realize is that a) the reckless cyclists are a tiny minority of the people willing to bike in good infrastructure, and b) even a reckless cyclist probably still poses less of a threat to a pedestrian than a car, so moving people out of cars and onto bikes is almost always a win for pedestrian safety.
- meatysnapper 11y ago
  Although i'm a fairly responsible biker, I'd say the amount of bikers I see totally ignoring traffic laws is very high- stoplights, riding fast on sidewalks, going the wrong way on one way roads, etc. Maybe 30%. Re sidewalks, I think most people feel very unsafe on bikes in demarcated bike lines, and I get that. The other stuff is totally crazy though.
  - TulliusCicero 11y ago
    > I'd say the amount of bikers I see totally ignoring traffic laws is very high- stoplights, riding fast on sidewalks, going the wrong way on one way roads, etc. Maybe 30%. Studies show that cyclists and motorists break the law at about the same rate: http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/08/06/bikers-drivers-break-law/ http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/08/06/bikers-drivers-brea... What's usually happening is that we're so used to motorists breaking the law that it doesn't even register. Tons of drivers, likely the majority, on my bike route to work go over the speed limit. When a light goes from green to yellow to red, do drivers correctly stop entering the intersection before it goes red? Nah, most of the time one or two more sneak in. But I doubt other drivers even notice these things (heck, a lot of the time I don't even notice it): that law-breaking behavior is normalized. People pick up on it more with bikes, because there aren't nearly as many bikes around, so it's more noticeable. I get the thing about sidewalks, and whenever I ride on sidewalks (which is when the road is wildly unsafe), I make sure to slow down, and I get off my bike if there are a bunch of pedestrians. The thing is, if we did invest in protected bike lanes, cyclists wouldn't ride on the sidewalk, because they wouldn't have to to feel safe.

rar_ram 11y ago

How about they fix the public transport system first ? The bay area (united states in general, except for a few places) has the worst public transportation system. The VTA light rails and buses are nothing compared to new york or even boston for that matter!

FilterSweep 11y ago
> The bay area (united states in general, except for a few places) has the worst public transportation system. Living in small tech enclaves in the South (e.g. Atlanta, Chattanooga, Raleigh) would make you eat those words. You might be surprised to find these areas are attractive because there is lots of room for leasing out data centers. MUNI, BART, CalTrain are (albeit, sadly) leagues ahead of anything these cities have to offer.
jrock08 11y ago
False choice much?
xxpor 11y ago
SV isn't even remotely close to being in the same universe in terms of density, which is needed to make transit really work.

mc32 11y ago

To my mind, one of the main issues, in addition to protected bike lanes is the spread. Bike friendly cities are more compact. Commuting to work via bike is not a strenuous fifteen mile commute one way. They tend to be leisurely few mile rides. Now, not to say it's not possible, but a one to five mile bike ride is not the same as a ten to fifteen or more miles bike ride. Now, I do like Copenhagen's above ground bike roundabout, I've seen. It'd be nice to see those at dangerous or busy intersections. I'd also like to see "turning boxes" where to make a left you go to a perpendicular boxed out area on the right and wait for your light. They have these in Asia for scooters and bikes.

TulliusCicero 11y ago
Sure, you're never going to get people who live 15 or 20 miles out biking the whole way to work, but there's lots of people who live < 10 miles away from Google who'd be willing to do it if there was better infrastructure. You also have to keep in mind biking as a first-mile/last-mile complement to rail transit. If there's good bike paths to get to a transit station, that effectively extends the usable radius of the station. Already, lots of people bike to Caltrain and then bike from their stop to work (I should know, I do it occasionally but recently have shied away because of how full the bike cars are during rush hour).
- mc32 11y ago
  Yes, true it can complement mass transit some, but then it's not the same as Copenhagen (their characterization) and becomes more Tokyo --which while they have very many bikes, is not all that bike friendly.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Actually most of the the trains (not the metro for some reason) in Copenhagen have lots of bike space and one can take one's bike for no charge. Lots of people use bikes and mass transit together.
    - 11y ago

calbear81 11y ago

How about a bike lane with a small barrier along the Caltrain tracks? You already have the land, you can build some overpasses at major street intersections.

TulliusCicero 11y ago
This makes sense technically, but not psychologically, if you're talking about a bike lane that's very close to the tracks. The trains are very large and very loud with their horns. It's already intimidating when I'm biking on Evelyn, pretty close to the tracks. Intellectually, I realize the chance of the train derailing is pretty much zero, but it doesn't feel that way. Adding such a bike lane would be better than what we have now, but I think a lot of the 'interested but concerned' group would be unwilling to be very close to the train.
- calbear81 11y ago
  How about an elevated bike lane that sits above the train tracks like 20 ft. above but with the train running below it?

ThomPete 11y ago

Dane here. The thing to remember here is that in order connect copenhagen like that, they basically decreased the size of the car lanes many places and Copenhagen, no matter how much I love it, isn't a big city more like a province.

arasmussen 11y ago

Including San Francisco? Please? :)

Pxtl 11y ago

Good luck. I'm an avid bike-commuter, but I live in a dense old industrial city, not a sprawling suburb. Modern transit infrastructure like bike-lanes and LRT lines and the like are very challenging in suburbia.

Doctor_Fegg 11y ago
I wouldn't necessarily argue with you, but what's funny is that exactly the opposite argument is used in London. Oh, people say, we can't put protected bike lanes in, it's a dense historic city and there isn't enough room. Turns out (hooray) there is room, and the first major ones are going in as we speak. Where there's a will there's a way.

nicklaf 11y ago

It might make more sense to make the area boat friendly, if we're planning for the long term and take elevation into account.

sandworm101 11y ago

I do laugh at the image of society at large switching from cars to bikes. At the moment biking is dominated by young fit and generally healthy people. That may be silicon valley but it isn't the general population. I see lots of young parents going to work by bike, but do they take their kids to school on bikes? Does grandma get to the doctor on a tricycle? And what about the growing number of people who need to be brought places, who cannot drive themselves? There are a great many people with special needs/requirements who will never be able to move themselves safely by bike or any other vehicle. They and their carers should not be cut out of city planning, nor should they be confined to special communities.

icebraining 11y ago
I see lots of young parents going to work by bike, but do they take their kids to school on bikes? In bike-friendly places, yes. http://www.workcycles.nl/workcycles-bakfietsen-images/bakfiets.nl-images-08/cargobike-long-ornj-3kids-420.jpg http://www.workcycles.nl/workcycles-bakfietsen-images/bakfie... And what about the growing number of people who need to be brought places, who cannot drive themselves? There are a great many people with special needs/requirements who will never be able to move themselves safely by bike or any other vehicle. They and their carers should not be cut out of city planning, nor should they be confined to special communities. Do you think people in Copenhagen who can't drive themselves are confined to special communities? Do you think they don't have roads and cars? If anything, less cars on the roads makes it easier and safer for them to move around.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  No, but Copenhagen is a tiny little place and still has lots of private cars. Either they aren't living in the bike-only core, or they have use of a car. A total switch to bikes, away from private motor vehicles by all, is a very different scenario than current copenhagen.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    A total switch to bikes, away from private motor vehicles by all, is a very different scenario than current copenhagen. And it's also a scenario that no one is proposing.

andrewliebchen 11y ago

I live in Mountain View and work in Redwood City. I don't have a car. It's not a big deal. For all the innovation in SV, it always surprises me how close-minded the area is when it comes to transportation options beyond the car.

mgraczyk 11y ago

Not sure how they generated that stress-level map, but it seems to be an unreasonably simplistic approximation. For example, there is a dedicated bike path along the 101 from the region marked "North Bayshore" all the way past the top-left corner of the map. That entire stretch is less stressful than any place south of El Camino. By extension, most of northern Palo Alto should be dark green instead of yellow and pale green. There's also a dedicated bike trail from very close to the San Antonio Caltrain station all the way to Google, but that path is not evident from the map. I'm mainly saying that the situation is actually much better than depicted for most of Palo Alto. By contrast, the situation is worse than depicted everywhere south of El Camino except very close to bike crossings. I'm speaking from personal experience here. I've biked from Crescent Park to Google every day for over a year. I also don't own a car and bike throughout Palo Alto most weekends with no stress. EDIT: There is a second stress map in the full plan (Figure 5) that shows "average" stress as opposed to "total" stress and represents much more accurately, in my opinion and apparently the opinion of the plan's authors, the true stress associated with riding to Google from each point in the South Bay. In that map you can clearly see the positive effects of the trail to Palo Alto (green blob at top left) and the trail through central Mountain View (green blob center right), as well as the negative effect of El Camino and the 101 (red blobs across those roads).

peatmoss 11y ago
As a planner and a person with a quantitative orientation, I think you've just illustrated some of the wickedness of many problems in planning. You've talked about stress, which will be dependent on the user--one user's stress is another user's expedient route. Then there's the hyper-local urban form characteristics that you allude to. That isn't to say we shouldn't apply quantitative analysis to such problems. It just should illustrate how easy it can be to oversimply problems involving highly stochastic human behavior and preferences. And, since there is no complete theory of Urban planning, we should be prepared to exist in an uncomfortable state where neither the ends or means are universally agreed on.
rconti 11y ago
I used to bike commute on rare occasions from near Levi stadium up to around where Oracle is in Redwood Shores. I don't remember a dedicated bike path along 101 at North Bayshore. I'd usually leave Moffet, cross under 101, go up Middlefield to Rengstorff, then ride past Google, turn left, past Intuit, then follow East Bayshore (the road) the entire way until I cut through EPA towards what is now Facebook HQ (used to be Sun). Has something changed? Also, the trails they show up by the bay are all super-optimstic. First of all, I think they're pretty much all gravel, they meander all over the place, and they don't GO ANYWHERE. I live off of Marsh now and my commute involves more East Bayshore, cutting through Pete's Harbor, saying hi to the homeless people under 101, riding over the pedestrian bridge by the VW dealer, etc. I'm actually fairly lucky in that I have little traffic on my commute, but it's not exactly low-stress with a few high-traffic crossings. The worst is crossing 101 at Marsh. There's a hidden crosswalk to cross 3 lanes of the highway 84 onramp onto 101. I hate that traffic engineers decided to use the shortest-distance method and hide EVERY crosswalk behind a blind corner.. especially those on FREEWAYS, for god's sake. And then, it's pitch black at night...

npsimons 11y ago

When I did my on-site interview with Google in Mountain View, it was very obvious to me I would almost certainly be car commuting every day, for (at least) two reasons: 1) Cost of houses close to Google was ridiculous. 2) The city is very car centric. Fixing the second may be possible, but the first seems like a more insurmountable (and more important) problem. Where I currently live, I can bike commute to and from work on a daily basis because I can afford to live four miles away, and it only takes 18-20 minutes. It's one of the reasons I still live where I do, and I haven't accepted further interview offers from Google. Also relevant: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-c...

hueving 11y ago
Keep in mind big companies like Google have buses that run pretty far and you can just count the ride on the bus as part of your work schedule because you can work on your laptop.
- QuercusMax 11y ago
  Yup. I live in Saratoga, about a 13 mile bike ride to where I work at Google West Campus (still part of North Bayshore). I typically ride my bike in every morning (takes just under an hour) and take the bus home - there's a bus stop a mile from my house, plus another one 2.5 miles away. I usually end up taking the bus to the farther stop because I forget to leave my desk on time. :D I started biking every day partly to try to get in shape, but also because my kids' school schedule is such that I can't catch the bus at the time I'd prefer. (During the summer I took the 7:30 bus near my house, which got me in to work in 20 minutes.) It typically takes me about 25-30 minutes on the bus to get home, plus 5-15 minutes biking home from the bus stop. I had a 13-mile commute to my old job in Cleveland, and I find I'm significantly less stressed commuting this way, even if it takes slightly longer. The locations of the bus stops are not publicized to non-employees, but there are lots of them, and some are pretty far out - as far as Santa Cruz. I can't imagine working on the bus to/from SC, though - you'd better bring some dramamine or barf bags!

rwhitman 11y ago

Retrofitting American suburban sprawl to be less car-centric is going to be one of the enduring puzzles of the 21st century. The suburban model of planning championed in the 50's onwards became so deeply embedded in development projects and just the entire culture of small city planning across the country that a huge chunk of Americans are completely unaware that a less car-centric lifestyle is even possible, let alone desirable. We're only starting to scratch the surface of understanding how much friggin work it's going to take teasing out the messes that were made by lazy cookie cutter civic planning. And it certainly doesn't help that local governments, planners and many many ordinary car-dependent citizens continue to fight tooth-and-nail to uphold the status quo in this regard. It's great that Google is at least attempting to transform Silicon Valley, at least a little bit. I just wish that the hundreds of other communities around the country that don't have a progressive mega company in their neighborhood can get a little nudge from this type of work someday...

nickbauman 11y ago
Here in Minnesota it's common that suburban "subdivision" neighborhoods don't even have pedestrian sidewalks. And the inhabitants think that's a good thing. I cannot even.
- gamblor956 11y ago
  It snows quite heavily in Minnesota, so during much of the year those sidewalks would be unusable or hazardous.
  - rue 11y ago
    As would the roads without the maintenance that everybody always seems to completely forget about.
    - TulliusCicero 11y ago
      Ah, but you see, roads are important. Sidewalks are for what, walking? So basically playing around.

Bahamut 11y ago

It would be nice if the Valley was more pedestrian friendly - all too often bikers ignore the rules. One example is near the Palo Alto Caltrain station tunnel between Stanford and downtown Palo Alto, and too many times pedestrians come close to getting hit by their recklessness :( . One time I got yelled at by a biker on El Camino when trying to board a bus...the biker tried to pass to the right of the bus. It is frustrating how often bikers don't care about co-existing with the other modes of transportation & following the rules - I feel like this needs to change first before the area becomes bike friendly.

erikpukinskis 11y ago
> I feel like this needs to change first before the area becomes bike friendly. As in people should stop work making the area bike friendly until the issue of dangerous driving of bikes is ended?
npsimons 11y ago
While I agree that cyclists should be better behaved, I feel that it may be an (over)reaction to hostility from drivers. There's a saying motorcyclists have: ride like they (the car drivers) can't see you. I like to extend that for cyclists as "ride like they can see you and they're trying to hit you." The sad truth is that America is bike hostile, and even apart from that, many who shouldn't be driving are still issued drivers licenses (one cyclist was killed by an old lady near where I live, but no one's going to tangle with the AARP, and most people thought she'd have lived had she been in a "safe" car).
fizx 11y ago
It would be nice if the Valley was more pedestrian friendly - all too often cars ignore the rules. One example is near the Palo Alto Caltrain station tunnel between Stanford and downtown Palo Alto, and too many times pedestrians come close to getting hit by their recklessness :( . [Eh, pick any time you've seen a car shoot through a crosswalk and narrowly miss pedestrians... I observe this at least weekly] It is frustrating how often drivers don't care about co-existing with the other modes of transportation & following the rules - I feel like this needs to change first before the area becomes car friendly.

cwilkes 11y ago

Checkmate, Tesla

bagacrap 11y ago

I've biked in Copenhagen and in Mountain View, and I'd say both are head and shoulders above my hometown of Los Angeles which is in turn lightyears ahead of most American cities. Between the great weather, bike boulevards, bike lanes, dedicated bike trails, and wide shoulders, Mountain View can hardly get any better. The difference to Copenhagen is in the cost of owning a car and the population density (i.e. average distance from home to work). I don't think adding more bike infrastructure is going to move the needle on ridership in silicon valley.

jihokoo 11y ago

but who was amsterdam?

cobalt 11y ago

teaching people traffic laws would be a welcomed start

redwood 11y ago

Self driving cars will make biking safer too.

shmerl 11y ago

I wouldn't mind all cities doing that. And, more sidewalks! It's horrible that some places almost don't have them at all.

rollback 11y ago

That's nice! Seems like the first thing to do is ensure that workers live in a bikable distance from their workplace. Hint hint. Either scale up in SF, or elsewhere where there's a hope of people NOT using cars or busses to get to work.

another 11y ago

If you live on the peninsula and care about these issues: (1) Look at getting involved in a local group advocating a vision beyond car-centric suburbia. Palo Alto Forward is one example. (2) At the very least, vote in the local elections, especially (and carefully) for the city council positions! The future of the Bay Area is ultimately in the hands of town governments, not Google, and the only way to genuinely improve it is for residents to get politically involved who have a different and positive vision of the region's future.

wbsun 11y ago

The problem with bike in US is that everybody drives, the roads were initially designed for cars, not bikes. Simply converting part of a drive lane to a bike lane makes cars and bikes still share the road, which is very unsafe. Blind spots can easily cause accidents because of the shared-road bike lane design. Some downtown streets are already narrow enough, still the stupid city planning squeeze a bike lane into them and put more risk to bikers. The safe way to make bike lane is separating drive lanes and bike lanes with strip traffic island that can't be crossed. I used to work at Madison, WI for a while. Their bike lanes are completely separated and isolated by grass or tree traffic island from drive lanes. No wonder Madison claims itself the most bike-friendly city in US.

yason 11y ago

For masses, bikes work great if the daily operating radius where you go about is something like five kilometers. But in Silicon Valley, except for some minor villages in between, 5 kilometers is only a couple of blocks. And instead of snaking through traffic in a city for five kilometers at slower speeds with your working clothes on, you would be sweating on your bike beside fast-going cars in a very much grueling environment of noise, heat, and an endless stretch of road. And then you would need to take a turn and do another five kilometers along another road. I could see it working somewhat if you diverted all the bike traffic through the residential areas and punched the isolated culs-de-sac via bike paths so that bikes, not cars, could take a shortcut through the whole block instead of going along by the car routes. This kind of approach is very common in Finland: you can't always drive from one suburb to another but there's always a bike/pedestrian path that cuts through all that extra distance; here's a typical traffic sign denoting that: http://savepic.ru/7576556.png http://savepic.ru/7576556.png But in general it's hard to see bikes becoming the popular vehicle for masses in Silicon Valley until there are enough towns the size of Copenhagen downtown and built with similar density, and where people commute locally.

Roarosaur 11y ago

10-lane freeways and speeding cars? I wish. I live in Silicon Valley and the traffic here is unbearable.