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There are still a few bugs to work out, but the few who rode the city’s new free community shuttle on its maiden trip Monday morning gave it a thumbs-up.
The shiny new Google-donated electric shuttle arrived for the first time a few minutes past 10 a.m. to pick up passengers at the downtown train station on Jan. 5. There was little fanfare, as the official inaugural ride isn’t set until a ceremony on Friday at 11 a.m. at the downtown train station. But, under a new community shuttle sign at the bus loop at the downtown transit center, Alltrans staffer Megan Huff enthusiastically greeted the first passenger, a woman who didn’t want to comment but jumped on just to check it out and ride the full route.
“I’m excited, I’ve been looking forward to this,” said resident Cheryl Walterskirchen, who boarded the shuttle on Grant Road, near El Camino Hospital with her dog and bicycle.
“It’s quiet,” she said of the electric shuttle. “I was disappointed it didn’t go to Mountain View High School but that was the decision they made and I understand it. So far it’s awesome. I can get down to shopping, I can get to downtown, to Palo Alto Medical Foundation, I can go to Sylvan Park, my daughter can get to volleyball practice — it’s great.”
Only three people boarded on its first clockwise loop around the city Monday morning, known as the “gray route.” The “red route” makes the same stops, in a counter-clockwise direction. It took just over an hour to ride the whole route.
As many people have yet to learn about the shuttle, people looked puzzled as the shuttle pulled up to bus stops (it shares a few stops with VTA). It is also expected that students at Graham middle school will be using the shuttle in the afternoon, as it stops there, and perhaps Crittenden middle school students will find it convenient as well.
The first run seemed to go smoothly for passengers but wasn’t without a few problems. A contractor had neglected to remove the temporary cover from one of the signs designating a shuttle stop at El Camino Hospital. There was a complaint that the schedule was difficult to read, as it is hard to distinguish the holiday and weekend schedule from the weekday schedule. And the bike racks had yet to be installed, so one passenger’s bicycle had to go inside the shuttle, though that didn’t cause much of a problem.
The chief complaint was that the stop at the movie theaters on North Shoreline Boulevard and Pear Avenue seemed to be unnecessarily inconvenient. While the shuttle pulls up to the theater’s front door to turn around, the actual shuttle stop is a bit of walk out from North Shoreline Boulevard, to the chagrin of several passengers who said they’d like to take the shuttle to the movies.
Alltrans staff said they had been working hard to get the shuttle ready, and would discuss passenger’s comments in a meeting Monday.
A shuttle arrives at each stop about every 30 minutes on weekdays and about every hour on weekends and holidays. It runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and from noon to 8 p.m. on weekends and holidays.
For more details on the shuttle, including the route and schedule, visit mountainview.gov.
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Martin Short plays a hedonistic dentist in “Inherent Vice.” Image by Wilson Webb/Warner Bros. Entertainment. -
David Oyelowo plays Martin Luther King, Jr. in “Selma,” a timely recounting of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery protest marches to secure equal voting rights for blacks. Image by Atsushi Nishijima/Paramount Pictures. -
Tim Roth plays Alabama governor and segregationist George Wallace in “Selma.” Image by Curtis Baker/Paramount Pictures. -
Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix in “Inherent Vice.” Courtesy Wilson Webb/Warner Bros. Entertainment
