Public Works spent $3 million on North Bayshore studies

Amid plans for dense apartment towers and tech campuses in North Bayshore, Mountain View officials have been studying the area’s transportation network and how it interacts with the rest of town.

To that end, city officials have spent more than $3 million on a variety of transportation consultants as part of Mountain View’s quest to transform the North Bayshore area, according to city officials.

Combined with the city’s considerable planning costs, this means that Mountain View has spent a grand total of $8.1 million on outside experts since the city first began pursuing an update of North Bayshore precise plan nearly eight years ago.

In an article published earlier this month, the Voice detailed the $4.6 million in planning consultant costs for updating and revising the city’s North Bayshore precise plan. In addition to those costs, the city’s Public Works Department coordinated a series of related studies to investigate the traffic impacts of the anticipated development that add up to more than $3 million.

It started in 2012, when the City Council signed off on a $500,000 study with CDM Smith. The report, the Shoreline Transportation Study, became the road map for future improvements in the area, including a reversible bus lane system and a redesigned off-ramp from Highway 101. That study also laid out long-term plans for the city to reduce the number of solo drivers.

The following year, Mountain View leaders approved a similar Shoreline Boulevard Corridor Study at a cost of $600,000. That study conducted by Nelson/Nygaard included a complex traffic analysis to prepare a variety of road modifications intended to speed up traffic flow.

More recently, city officials have been interested in preparing an automated transit line to connect North Bayshore to the downtown area. This pursuit was launched in 2016 with a $300,000 contract with Lea + Elliott to investigate different transit technologies

The City Council followed up this study last week by approving a second automated guideway study, at a cost of $850,000 (see the Voice’s story). About $350,000 of the cost is being picked up by the area’s tech companies, including Google.

Last year, the City Council had approved a $935,000 study with the firm TJKM to study specific transit improvements, including a transit bridge across Stevens Creek and a new Highway 101 underpass leading to Charleston Road. The study also examine a future system for mitigating and measuring traffic impacts from residential development. In May, council members decided to add an additional $135,000 to this contract so that TJKM engineers could study different master plan scenarios for the Shoreline gateway property.

The study costs for the North Bayshore area do not include the extensive hours spent by city staff.