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Uploaded: Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 2:48 PM
Mountain View considers bold new transit system
Personal rapid transit hailed as solution to Bayshore traffic woes
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by Daniel DeBolt
Mountain View Voice Staff
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| Someday in Mountain View's not-too-distant future, driverless electric vehicles could whisk passengers between the downtown train station, NASA Ames and Shoreline businesses such as Google.
Advanced Transit Systems, a British company with a Palo Alto office, hopes to turn Mountain View's leaders on to the idea, which is being considered by various other Bay Area cities and is scheduled to operate for the first time next spring at London's Heathrow Airport. The company's personal rapid transit system, or PRT, uses computer-controlled, battery-powered electric vehicles that ride on dedicated cement pathways.
The Mountain View City Council's Transportation Subcommittee is set to discuss the idea on Wednesday, Sept. 16 at 6:30 p.m. in the Plaza Conference Room on the second floor of City Hall.
Advanced Transit Systems, or ATS, has outlined a possible route system that includes one route starting at the downtown transit station, heads down Stierlin Road and over the Shoreline Boulevard/Highway 101 overpass, and ends at the Googleplex's front door -- a 5-minute trip all told.
Steve Raney, an ATS employee who works in Palo Alto, says he has used input from Google and NASA Ames to develop a route for 15 miles of PRT track, or "guideway," and 40 stations in and around Mountain View's Shoreline and Moffett Field areas.
Raney said one Google employee with a background in transportation planning told him that "In five or 10 years we'll have gridlock" at the Highway 101/85 interchange, which feeds onto Shoreline Boulevard.
"We'll need an alternative," Raney quoted the Google employee as saying. "The proposal to connect Google, NASA and Caltrain makes sense as an alternative. PRT will be like a dam breaking. We're all frustrated with current transit in the area."
Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga discussed the plans with Raney and said it sounded "interesting."
"We've talked about building light rail out to Bayshore area," Abe-Koga said. "If we are serious about that we should be looking at this. It could be cheaper and more practical."
Abe-Koga said she is curious to see how San Jose progresses with its plans for a PRT system at San Jose airport. That city's transportation director is scheduled to take a tour of the Heathrow system -- which ATS has dubbed "Ultra" -- sometime this week, Raney said.
Raney said his company is making a similar push in Palo Alto for an Ultra system around the Stanford Research Park, where a market study showed a dramatic decrease in car use and an increase in use of buses and trains, which would be connected to the system.
If comments made during Mountain View's General Plan hearings by Google and other property owners in North Bayshore are any indication, such a transit system may be necessary to support the growth of Google and the NASA Ames Research Park. Ames may soon house several tall buildings and a major university campus for the University of California and the Foothill-De Anza Community College District.
Another company, Unimodal Inc., is building prototypes of an overhead "maglev" PRT system as a tenant at NASA Ames, but has not approached the city with any proposals.
Raney said his goal is to present the general idea of PRT to the city, and not necessarily sell them on his company's specific product. He said he hopes the city will take bids from the 30 or so PRT start-up companies worldwide. Raney says ATS is the largest among the PRT companies, with 40 employees.
If ATS were to build its Ultra system in Mountain View, Raney estimates it would cost $60 to 128 million for the 8.5-mile portion connecting downtown to the area around Google (colored orange in the map).
The tracks would also run to Shoreline Amphitheatre, over Stevens Creek to NASA Ames and south to the Moffett Business Park near Sunnyvale, among other places.
With four seconds between each vehicle, one Ultra guideway can transport 3,456 people per hour with four passengers in each vehicle. A bottleneck to consider is the number of berths (parking spots) at a station because each berth can only move 576 people per hour.
The system costs roughly $7 million to $15 million per mile to build, and the six-foot-wide cement paths can be constructed at a speed of about one mile per month by a four-person crew.
Google co-founder Larry Page may be a fan of the idea, according to his commencement speech at the University of Michigan on May 2.
"When I was here at Michigan, I wanted to build a personal rapid transit system on campus to replace the buses," Page told the crowd. "It was a futuristic way of solving our transportation problem. Many things that people labor hard to do now, like cooking, cleaning and driving, will require much less human time in the future. That is, if we have a healthy disregard for the impossible and actually build new solutions."
A video and more information can be found at www.ultraprt.com.
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Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Sep 16, 2009 at 3:32 pm This idea sounds wonderful and something that Palo Alto should be considering.
Mountain View and Palo Alto share many amenities and I think Palo Alto should get involved in this scheme and make it a two city scheme. Mountain View residents shop at Stanford, Town & Country and work in Stanford Park and Page Mill. We all know that PA residents use Shoreline, San Antonio and work at Google.
Mountain View gets things done. I don't want to see something like this happen down the road in Mountain View and Palo Alto having more and more bus route reductions. Cooperating together on this scheme would be a win/win for both cities.
Please, this is a serious request. Let's get involved.
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Posted by sarah, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Sep 16, 2009 at 4:26 pm I agree that this sounds like a great project. Everyone complains about traffic and parking problems in Palo Alto. Improved public transit can solve that problem. Good public transit can increase the number of jobs in the city without any of the negative side effects like pollution and congestion.
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Posted by TJ, a resident of the College Terrace neighborhood, on Sep 16, 2009 at 4:53 pm Mountain View gets things done because their City Council is leaner and meaner than ours. They can make decisions without throwing everything back to some Commission.
For starters it's time Palo Alto reduced the number of City Council persons from nine to seven, then perhaps meetings would not go on 'till 1:00 AM.
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Posted by Walter_E_Wallis, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Sep 16, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Walter_E_Wallis is a member (registered user) of Palo Alto Online Start Council meetings at 5 AM.
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Posted by fuzzy math, a resident of Mountain View, on Sep 16, 2009 at 9:47 pm Why is this remotely necessary? And if so let Google pay. NOT THE TAXPAYER
Also there is some fuzzy math here: The system costs roughly $7 million to $15 million per mile to build, and the six-foot-wide cement paths can be constructed at a speed of about one mile per month by a four-person crew. (7m to 15m is a big gap)
That is 640 man hours per month. @ 7 million that is $10,937.50 per hour or @ 15 million a staggering $23,437.50. I use this for reference only and I realize that materials would need to be purchased. Yet there is something really screwy with the math.
I give you a example: There is a new pedestrian bridge over 280 in Cupertino. I am sure most of you have see this new white, illuminated, suspension bridge. You know how much for this one bridge? 30,000,000.00 (ouch)
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Posted by DZ, a member of the Barron Park School community, on Sep 16, 2009 at 9:57 pm [Post removed by Palo Alto Online staff.]
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Posted by sarah, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Sep 16, 2009 at 11:23 pm You just new that the anti-transit pro-pollution people would chime in on this article. Nowhere does the article say that any taxpayer money would be used. The anti-transit people must be opposed for reasons other than money. Perhaps they are really shills for the oil companies or car companies? Those are the same people who killed street cars in most cities in the first half of the 20th century, and later killed most electric car programs.
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Posted by Commuter, a resident of another community, on Sep 17, 2009 at 8:29 am There is already gridlock at the 101/85 interchange. All those new ramps and cars still come to a screeching halt at that point. Even the new carpool lane ramp backs up because cars have to merge very quickly at the end of it. I am not in favor of more costly drawn- out engineering projects that have wishy-washy results. I can't see how this Jetson skyway around town is going to solve this problem since most of that gridlock is caused by cars passing thru this area.
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Posted by sarah, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Sep 17, 2009 at 8:35 am They are talking about a public transit system between the Castro Street train station and the employers on east side of Hwy 101. Employees that use the system avoid the Hwy 101 traffic altogether.
Obviously, if we can improve public transit up and down the peninsula, then fewer people will find the need to drive on Hwy 101 during rush hour.
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Posted by fuzzy math, a resident of Mountain View, on Sep 17, 2009 at 9:13 am >>> Obviously, if we can improve public transit up and down the peninsula, then fewer people will find the need to drive on Hwy 101 during rush hour.
Where is the proof that your statement is true? Where has that ever happened, people leave the car for a transit trip that takes twice to three times as long? The Lego Land system will take tons of concrete and hundreds of millions to complete.
Will Google make there campus car free? If so where are all these people going to park?
This whole thing is a waste of money. If you want to improve transit answer this question. Why doesn't the VTA Trolly have stations at the San Jose Airport. I think you could of had at least two trolly stations at San Jose for the cost of the red granite clad parking structure at terminal 1.
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Posted by Allen Payton, a resident of another community, on Sep 18, 2009 at 10:42 am Another low-cost, ultra-light rail, electric transit system to consider is CyberTran being developed in the East Bay. www.CyberTran.com
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