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It could be gondola cars, automated people-movers or express lanes for self-driving cars — all ideas are on the table as Mountain View embarks on an ambitious search for a new transit system to fix the daily traffic jam.
On Monday, April 3, a team of consultants from the firm Lea+Elliott convened the first of what could be many community meetings to zero in on a transit system tailored to Mountain View’s needs. That challenges inherent in that mission were readily apparent as public speakers brainstormed a speedy system that would be easily expandable, flexible and affordable.
“We’ve sees a lot of growth recently and the city’s been trying to figure out how to handle this by reducing auto dependency,” said city project manager Jim Lightbody. “Longer term, there’s a concern we may need something more than shuttle buses to meet the demand and make the city work better.”
The chief goal for city officials is to design a streamlined system that could deliver commuters from downtown to the North Bayshore jobs center. That system would likely be elevated above roadways to avoid the difficult and expensive task of acquiring property, something that hinders many transportation projects.
Jenny Baumgartner of Lea+Elliott went through a slide show of various automated transit systems launched around in the world, including monorails, magnetic levitation (maglev) trains and aerial lifts. They took a broad approach for now, she said, and only narrowed the field by looking for driverless systems that would only need a remote monitor. At this point, no price-comparison information for the options was available.
“In all of this, the goal would be to integrate it with what’s happening in the community,” she said. “This wouldn’t be the end-all, be-all that solves every problem with commuter traffic congestion.”
In a sign of a possible partnership, Cupertino Councilman Rod Sinks attended the meeting and voiced support for the concept.
“Our residents are growing so frustrated with transit that there’s a backlash against growth.” he said. “I’d love for you to succeed and succeed quickly, and I’d love to grow it to my city and beyond.”
The consultant team would take those idea into consideration with the city’s various long-term plans for growth to try and produce three or so alternatives, Baumgartner said. A final report is expected around September.
Also in attendance was Robert Baertsch, founder of SkyTran, a local player in the so-called automated-guideway transit field. His small five-person company at the NASA Ames Research Center has patented a magnetic rail technology that is currently being prototyped in Israel with plans to build a second system at an Abu Dhabi amusement park.
Baertsch expressed confidence that his system could be successfully implemented in the South Bay as a public-private partnership. But doing so would only make sense if a larger system was implemented with connections throughout Mountain View and nearby cities, he said.
SkyTran is currently finishing up a round of investment fundraising with plans to be “commercial ready” within two years, he said. The technology is good to go, all the company needs is to start manufacturing at capacity, Baertsch said.
“It’s going to revolutionize transportation,” he said.
Why is it so hard for Mountain View to have more roads dedicated to biking? And more safer bike lanes?
Because roads are only so wide, without the city declaring eminent domain on dozens of businesses and homeowners. Not sure that would be the best political move. :/
I mean, I kinda like the idea of SkyTran being *above* the roads to utilize that space, but it also sounds expensive.
And before someone comes in and claims self-driving cars will solve this problem: Self-driving cars take up the SAME AMOUNT OF SPACE as normal cars! We essentially have a system mimicking self-driving cars, called Lyft (or Uber if you want to support terrible, terrible people).
We hope to see a skyTran/ Beach Tran system in downtown Clearwater, Florida in the future. The Tampa Bay Area desperately needs relief from all the traffic and congestion.
>Self-driving cars take up the SAME AMOUNT OF SPACE as normal cars!<
Most predictions assume we will gain enormous amounts of space when self-driving cars become the norm. Self-driving cars do not need to park in already-congested downtown areas, and all the parking structures and parking lots (estimated at 10-15% of available land) can be returned to civic use. Furthermore, self-driving cars should eliminate most of the traffic and congestion problems, as well as the very common jams resulting from accidents.
Here’s a good look at some potential 2nd and 3rd order consequences of self-driving cars. http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/3/20/cars-and-second-order-consequences
SkyTran is projected to cost about $8 million per mile. The idea is that it would use the space over the City right of way, which would mean the cost of land would be significantly reduced. And, it is less expensive to operate since there are no vehicle operators, although of course there will be people in the control room, technicians, etc.
Why not use the gondolas that are common at ski areas? Reliable, safe, existing technology. They operate in above-street airspace. No operators. Cars accommodate 4 – 6 people. Can have multiple stops where cars slow down to a crawl, and doors open automatically. People simply stand up and get off. Nothing to prototype. Construction could start as soon as routes are designated.
Bikes are safe in many places of the world, such a ridiculous argument! Bikes can enrich lives, if given an opportunity to do so, it requires city planning, community support and infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Amsterdam
Mountain View and Palo Alto should be working together on this. We are tied together in so many ways and San Antonio Road is not a Berlin Wall. These should be available for both communities in conjunction with an overhaul of shuttles and other public transit. Residents from both communities cross San Antonio on a daily basis. Our lives intermingle. Our traffic problems are similar and equally poor. Looking at separate solutions won’t fix the joint traffic problems.
@PA Resident,
Working together is a wonderful idea! Unfortunately, your city seems to consider us Mountain Viewers second-class citizens. How about we start coordinating on issues once you open up access to Foothills Park to the people you so deeply want to work with?
To paraphrase the Gipper: PA Resident, open up this park!
When the San Antonio project was on the drawing board years ago, I asked Mountain View City Council members what the plan was to alleviate a traffic nightmare on adjacent roads like San Antonio Road and California Avenue (among other places, of course) but there was never a straight answer. At that time the city’s biggest problem was housing, which was and still is important. Well, the traffic nightmare has begun, and the ideas to mitigate the nightmare are science fiction By the time the city finds a solution to the traffic mess, especially if it’s a gondola, I will be dead. Why is it that City Councils (Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mt. View, etc) prefer to put the cart before the horse. Why wasn’t a traffic solution presented at the time the Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the San Antonio Project were presented for approval. On another topic — I groaned when I read that the city was replacing a parking lot in downtown Mt. View with yet another new building!
“Why is it that City Councils (Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mt. View, etc) prefer to put the cart before the horse. Why wasn’t a traffic solution presented at the time the Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the San Antonio Project were presented for approval.”
Same answer for all Councils: the developers want to get on with their projects, and no Council wants to stand up to big developers. Too much hassle. So they simply kick the problem forward into somebody else’s watch.
“…the ideas to mitigate the nightmare are science fiction”
Of course. That allows finding a real solution to be put off indefinitely behind a curtain of dazzling technological hype.
Take this example: “Most predictions assume we will gain enormous amounts of space when self-driving cars become the norm.”
The key word is “assume.” Benefits are simply assumed, not proven or demonstrated. It is easy to cartoon a seamless stream flawlessly gliding bumper to bumper down the road. Not considered are frequent quotidian perturbations of cars joining the stream from onramps or adjacent lanes, or the propagating effects of random individual breakdowns (flats, etc.,).
In the real world dense vehicle stream motions will be anything but steady, computerized or traditional. Advice to passengers: keep Dramamine handy.
because very few people want to give up any car street parking or traffic lanes.
@Community
Why drag a totally irrelevant comment with a historical issue that few people around today were involved in?
If you want to start a thread about Foothill Park to discuss this issue then do so. In fact, do one on the PA Weekly TS as well as here on the MV TS. People who are new arrivals may then learn about the history and the issue. Few understand this completely today and it is worth discussing.
Otherwise, leave the issue out of neighborly discussions on other topics.
@PA Resident,
It’s not a “historical issue,” it’s a present-day one. If I try to enter the park, the attendant will ask for my proof of residence in Palo Alto. As a resident of Mountain View, I will be denied entry. Is that how neighbors act?
You keep coming in here asking us to work together, but you treat us like second-class citizens. Seems like you only come to us when you want something from us, but when you could do something “neighborly” you don’t really care. You talk the talk of “neighbors,” but don’t walk the walk.
@PA Resident and @Community –
I agree with PA Resident that discussing the access restrictions at Foothill Park is irrelevant to this conversation.
However, I think there’s a larger issue here that perhaps Community is touching on. PA Resident, you wrote in your initial comment that “Mountain View and Palo Alto should be working together on this. We are tied together in so many ways and San Antonio Road is not a Berlin Wall…” However, in effect San Antonio Road has become a Berlin Wall in some ways because while Mountain View continues to accept and embrace growth, Palo Alto has for all intents and purposes rolled up the drawbridge and said you won’t have anyone more. You’ve got one of the world’s premiere universities on your doorstep and the most skewed jobs/housing balance of any city in Silicon Valley. Yet you pretty much won’t allow any more housing which would help ease the transportation demand by allowing people to live closer to their jobs. Palo Alto residents wouldn’t even allow a modest amount of housing – for seniors! – at Maybell Avenue a couple years ago.
Maybe once Palo Alto comes to the table in better balancing their jobs and housing and not just shunting the problem to other cities, then we can have the kumbaya moment you’re wishing for on transportation projects.
“Pod cars,” otherwise known as “Personal Rapid Transit,” is a bad idea that just won’t die.
“What is PRT? A forty year old concept for a system of autonomous vehicles that can go to multiple destinations on demand, on a track or guideway. Techo-cultists are fascinated by it, a Jetsonesque technology that has its own german joke word “gadgetbahn”. Like most cults it has a core of true believers and the more sinister quacks and scammers that prey upon them. Right wing nutcases back the PRT technology movement, they know it will never be built and PRT proposals can block or dismantle real public transit infrastructure and systems. Occasionally you will see left wing fantasy loonies who want to transform the world into a Futurama cartoon back PRT schemes. All the PRT backers say “if only”, if only there were politicians to back a real big system it would work, if only there were funding, if only…. “http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hause011/article/prt.html
The folks in Minnesota had to deal with this as you can see in the PRT Boondoggle Blog: http://prtboondoggle.blogspot.com/
And of course “pod cars” only seem to get built in niche areas, such as airports or planned communities with car restrictions. This topic has been discussed at length. I recommend a couple of articles on the Light Rail Now website.
First, there’s “Let’s Get Real About Personal Rapid Transit” by Ken Avidor. http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_prt_2005-01.htm He points out that, “PRT has a solid 30-year record of failure. Its main purpose in recent years seems to have been to provide a cover enabling its proponents to spread disinformation about real, workable transit systems.”
“The unsubstantiated claims of PRT proponents are always presented in the present tense as if the system is a proven success … which, of course, it certainly is not. Promoters never seem to fail to bash real transit, such as light rail (LRT), as “old fashioned technology”. Sadly, the media rarely check the veracity of PRT publicity and propaganda.”
A longer, more technical article is “Cyberspace Dream Keeps Colliding With Reality.” http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_prt001.htm The authors write “Despite the persistent and fervent claims of its promoters, repeated attempts to implement a working PRT system, even in very small-scale scenarios, have invariably failed. Not a single PRT plan, during these promotional efforts over the past 40 years or more, has seen successful implementation even in a small test application, much less a major, heavy-duty, citywide rapid transit application. Early would-be PRT installations, such as the AirTrans system at Dallas-Ft. Worth Regional Airport, and the PRT at West Virginia University at Morgantown, eschewed any attempt to provide true PRT-style, small-vehicle, customized origin-destination service, and were implemented in effect as line-haul automated guideway transit (AGT) peoplemover systems with some innovative features (such as offline stations).”
And finally, the good folks at Light Rail Now have put up a helpful list of links to various Monorail, PRT, AGT, and “Gadget Transit” Analyses at http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_monorail.htm
A good article by Setty and Demery points out that “In our view, it is a big waste of time advocating such “gee-whiz” options, given the severe limits of monorails and similar technologies such as PRT, when U.S. transportation problems are almost always sociopolitical and economic “not technical“ in nature.”
Mountain View should beware this solution looking for a problem.
How about if we ALL JUST MOSTLY WORK FROM HOME???!!!
I realize this is not as exciting as flying pod cars and tractor beams but seriously, why not?
@OMV Resident and Community.
I actually think housing/transportation is a regional issue not necessarily a city by city issue. It bothers me immensely that what is allowed in one city is denied in another because of an invisible boundary wall.
When we moved to Palo Alto it was for a job in Sun in Mountain View and that building is now part of the Google complex. The accessibility was our biggest concern when choosing somewhere to live, so I get the jobs/housing proximity thing, but we have not moved whereas jobs have changed several times and our longest commute has been to Sunnyvale and Redwood City over the years.
I don’t want to get into specific development issues, but housing is something that both cities are grappling with and I feel sure that there have been more new jobs in Mountain View created than there have been in Palo Alto in recent years. Our residential communities in both places have been negatively impacted as well as our recreational, shopping, schools, traffic, parking, as well as infrastructure such as public transportation, water, road conditions, etc. etc. etc. I follow a lot of the Mountain View news because due to necessity as well as ease, I spend a lot of time in Mountain View, but as for discussion on specific housing developments I can’t say I am very familiar with the various approvals and disagreements.
However, innovation is a Silicon Valley thing. Transportation and traffic issues have to be looked at regionally. I can’t and won’t talk to Mountain View residents about housing as that is an issue that affects us all in different ways. I will however continue to ask for cooperation across the region on transportation and traffic because no matter where we live, we share the same issues of being stuck inside our cars because unless we ride a bike 20 miles every day to get from A to B to C to D and back to A, we have no efficient option other than to get in our cars.
As far as housing being near jobs, well if you think that people are going to move house every time they move job, then I think you are living in an alternative reality.
I agree that banning non-residents from the foothills park is rediculous. Opening the park to all should be a prerequisite for any discussion or cooperation.
@PA resident, perfectly stated. The whole “live near where you work” is overrated and a false narrative. We moved to MV to be near both our jobs. We were for several years but then my husbands company moved up the Peninsula and he now has a crippling commute. As I told him, we could certainly try to move closer but our luck, they’d run out the lease there and move down to Santa Clara or up to SF or over to Oakland….who the heck knows? As much as it sounds great and “green” to live near work it just doesn’t happen over the long run with any consistency anymore, people are too fluid with their employers and employers are too fluid with their locations.
I also agree that PA doesn’t have any responsibility to bear the burden of more housing, frankly neither does MV. And why Foothill Park is part of this discussion is just, well, sour grapes. Move on. I’d like to have access but it’s for PA residents, I don’t happen to live there so I can’t go. Not losing sleep over it, tons of other spaces I can go to.
Seems there’s a lot of chips on shoulders, envy for what one doesn’t have. Life is too short, appreciate what we’ve got, when you look at places like the Middle East we sure as hell shouldn’t be complaining
@Agreed – “Seems there’s a lot of chips on shoulders, envy for what one doesn’t have. Life is too short, appreciate what we’ve got, when you look at places like the Middle East we sure as hell shouldn’t be complaining”
I’ll concur with your remark above as it relates to Foothills Park. There are a ton of beautiful open space areas nearby to enjoy, even if you’re not a Palo Alto resident.
But I disagree with most of your posting and I’ll say that no “chip on my shoulder” or “envy” drives my comments. I’m proud of the fact that Mountain View has stepped up to help address our housing crisis and continues to do so while neighboring cities like Palo Alto stick their head in the sand. I feel thankful every day to be able to live in a city as beautiful as Mountain View, especially knowing that we’re doing a lot to provide opportunities for future generations to live here as well.
I agree with ‘will this ever die’ about this stupid idea that never went anywhere. In early 1970 this idea was presented at the civic center in San Francisco as the best new thing. Seattle built a monorail for the world’s fair in 1962 and it was never extended. Some ideas just don’t work in real life.
Ultimately people will keep driving unless alternatives are at least as fast, and that can only happen if the alternative does not have to wait for traffic, and that can only happen if it has dedicated right of way, whether it’s rail, BRT, or something else.
I like the concept of an overhead transit system; the Skytran illustration, however, does not look practical to me.
First, it seems to be too small for a group of 6, not to mention more. I realize there has to be a maximum capacity but I don’t think 2 or even 4 is big enough. (For example, I don’t think I’ve ever been on an elevator with a capacity less than 6.) This has a major impact on the cost of the system: bigger capacity requires bigger supports and bigger means more expensive.
Second, I don’t see how a wheelchair rider can get into that car. If handicap accessibility is not built in, the system cannot be offered to the public.
Third, to avoid making the system a tinkertoy Disney Monorail, each stop must be a siding, to avoid stopping all traffic on the main line every time anyone wants to get on or off. Sidings are expensive, too, partly because of the handicap access requirement in my second point, and partly because of the merging traffic requirement.
Doug Pearson is correct in his concerns that PRT infrastructure when he writes “bigger capacity requires bigger supports and bigger means more expensive.
Light Rail Now! address this issue back in 2004 http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_prt001.htm
“In terms of station dimensions, PRT promoters seem to downplay the size of stations. However, the simple logistics and requirements of publicly accessible elevated structures – particularly structures designed to accommodate large volumes of tiny-vehicle traffic – dictate minimum size characteristics which are substantial.”
“For example, ADA compliance typically requires elevators. Add in escalators for convenience and efficient public movement, plus adequate platform widths for passengers to wait safely (with room for purchasing tickets), and the spatial dimension of the elevated structure mushrooms ominously. in narrow streets and other constrained areas, the effect is to form a “lid”, with the street below virtually placed in a tunnel.”
Every decade or so, we have to re-hash these arguments all over again.
Just because PRT has never succeeded anywhere doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give a few 100k to some design agency to come up with a nice looking brochure. Those agencies need to make a living too.
**sarcasm intended**
The problems of visual intrusion, evacuation facilities, and the like seem peripheral and minor compared with the truly critical drawbacks of Personal Rapid Transit, demonstrated in actual practice: the relatively minuscule capacity of the system, with its tiny cars, and the implications of that in view of the relatively high installation cost of this capital-intensive, entirely grade-separated, elevated transit concept. The capacity problem has proven to be PRT’s Achilles heel, time after time.
PRT promoters claim extremely high capacities for PRT. SkyWeb Express (aka Taxi 2000, perhaps the USA’s foremost PRT vendor wanna-be at the moment), for example, claims the capability of operating at a one-second headway (or less) and conveying as many as 10,800 passengers per hour in fully loaded 3-person vehicles. Designers even postulate operating vehicles at fractions of a second apart, yielding staggeringly high capacity rates. Leaving aside the probability that average loads would be less than full capacity, critics question the plausibility of assuming such close headways for vehicles operating at up to 40-50 mph (as the SkyWeb design assumes).
At a safe stopping rate of 5 mph per second for seated passengers, it would take 8 sec for a 40-mph vehicle to come to a complete stop; safety engineering rule-of-thumb recommends assuming this as a bare minimum safe headway, and adding an additional allowance as a safety margin, depending on the given mode and application. Given the many variables involved – including response time for the automated system to detect an obstacle ahead of a car, weather conditions impacting guideway adhesion, etc. – at least doubling the “bare minimum” stopping time would seem reasonable to provide an adequate margin of safety.
This implies a minimum safe design headway of 16 seconds, and thus about 1/16th the line-throughput capacity claimed. (The Morgantown “PRT” system – in reality, as previously noted, a type of AGT – has minimum headways of 15 sec.) This level of headway would also make more feasible the assumed accommodation of vehicles frequently entering the guideway from offline stations. Using this more realistic headway, and a more realistic average occupancy of half the vehicle capacity, one can calculate that the probable guideway capacity is more like 340 persons per hour – less than half the capacity of a vehicular traffic lane, and less than 8% of the capacity of a surface LRT system running 2-car trains. Even the “bare minimum” 8-second headway, sans safety margin, would imply a capacity of only about 680 persons per hour – about 15% of surface LRT.
Some public transit planners calculate minimum stopping time from the stopping distance. On this basis, the stopping distance is 235 feet (71 m), and the stopping time from 40 mph is 4 seconds – doubling this to incorporate a safety factor yields a possible PRT minimum headway of 8 seconds. However, it is also appropriate to use a more realistic probable occupancy of 1.2, closer to that of the private automobile in urban travel, which PRT promoters claim to emulate. This implies a maximum line capacity of about 540 persons per hour – still slightly below that of an arterial lane, and far below the potential capacity of LRT. The specific PRT technology of various vendors, vehicle branching and merging spatial allowances, and other considerations could further impact the minimum safe headway.
It should be noted that some PRT proponents argue that their computer simulations of Personal Rapid Transit operation assure them that redundancy and other safeguards in the system would prevent collisions and virtually guarantee perfection in system operations. Aside from the fact that the assumption of de facto perfection seems foolhardy in any system transporting human passengers at high speeds, it must be pointed out that there is no evidence from actual experience that such “zero-tolerance” running of totally automatic passenger cars at fractional headways is truly free of any reasonable possibility of accidents. In effect, PRT theoreticians’ claims on the headway issue appear to be based entirely on speculation.
Yes, this is ridiculous and almost certainly not going to be built anywhere. If SkyTran is serious, they can raise 100% of the funding necessary to build this, place it in an escrow account, and then the city of Mountain View can begin to consider how / where to build it. Until then nobody working for the city should waste two seconds on it. Waste of time and energy.
I’m with you Juan. If this is such a good idea, let SkyTran come up with 100% of the money.
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This sounds like a commercial for SkyTran. That being said, I have nothing against the company or its management or employees. It’s just that every few years, I keep hearing about this and nothing ever gets done. I’ve even made a number of suggestions myself during the last few campaigns (some of which are in this article) but I have seen zero action on any proposed solutions from any source.
I gave up driving my personal vehicle for 5 years but I have yet to see anyone on any of the City Councils do the same. Every day I see VTA cars at the Caltrain station. How can they expect us to limit ourselves to public transportation that even the people running it and working for it don’t use?
We are getting to the point where private transportation will be restricted only to the well-connected and well-to-do, while the rest of us are jammed into public cattle cars and taxed to death for the privilege. (Note: I am not saying this will happen tomorrow or even the next 5 years).
All you have to do is follow the trends:
A rapidly increasing percentage of ‘public’ highways, freeways, and roads are requiring tolls to use all or part of them.
Increased car registration taxes and ridiculous smog requirements (testing the car’s computers not the actual emissions).
Millions (if not billions) taken from gas taxes that were supposed to repair roads being diverted to completely unrelated projects or used to fund under-performing and overpriced public transportation.
Deliberately allowing over-development of an area while ensuring that not enough parking is available.
These are but a few ways in which we are being directed to give up our selfish desire for freedom of movement and instead use the ‘approved’ transportation methods for the good of the collective.
The perfect people movers are always ‘just-around-the-corner’. But until I see a plan so solid, that our leaders start selling their cars and buying transportation passes, I won’t be holding my breath.
Jim Neal
Old Mountain View
@I have it!
I sometimes work from home. Many of my coworkers do too. And sure, it’s easier to VPN from home than to commute to the office. But ultimately, we’re more productive when we’re together in the same office, than when we’re working from home. So it works as an occasional thing (e.g., waiting for repair service appointment, on-call response to problems) but not as an everyday “mostly work from home” kind of thing.
—
@Community @Juan
The next time you’re turned away from Foothills Park, just head a little further up Page Mill Road to Foothills OSP. Or give Los Trancos OSP or Monte Bello OSP or Rancho San Antonio OSP a try.
—
@Agreed
And of course, life isn’t just about work, even here in Silicon Valley. Moving for a new job (or for an old job that has relocated) disrupts your connections to schools, churches, clubs, friends, etc., etc., etc.
Why not first make our existing transit investments better by putting up real time displays at all major stops that show real arrivals/departures (with a corresponding phone app), allow mobile fare payment (who carries spare change and why require a Clipper when you can pay everything else by phone?), and expand the long transit routes (Morgan Hill, Gilroy, etc) with WiFi seats you can pre-purchase to guarantee spots on those long transit routes. We also need to shift public transit dollars away from compensation, and towards subsidizing fares. Public transit right now is too pricey for most working class residents.
Agree with Juan. If a $700 juicer company can raise $120M in VC money, no reason PRT vendors would need any public subsidies.