From: Google Maps Bike There<\/p>\n
Google is facing space problems at its worldwide headquarters, nicknamed The Googleplex<\/a>, in Mountain View, California (about half-way between San Francisco and San Jose). Check out the story and a video report here<\/a>:<\/p>\n Internet search giant Google has asked the city of Mountain View to allow homes and storefronts to be built near its headquarters.<\/p>\n At a City Council and Planning Commission meeting Tuesday night, officials considered a letter from Google. The letter said the company wants plans for a stretch of Shoreline Blvd near its headquarters to include more housing.<\/p>\n Every day, fleets of buses coming from all over the Bay Area take Google\u2019s employees to their offices. Google said in its letter that building more homes nearby would be more sustainable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In the video, notice all the cars. Notice how wide the roads are, with the unbuffered, unprotected, non-grade-separated, split-by-gutters bike lanes. Notice how loud the cars are \u2014 even blocking out much of the audio in the video clip. As beautiful as the Mountain View area is, including and especially the Googleplex area, it seems shocking that anyone would allow cars to so completely overwhelm a place of such natural beauty. It\u2019s really a crime.<\/p>\n Google has talked a lot about renewable energy and all sorts of very high-tech ways for us to live better and greener, and they\u2019ve done quite a bit \u2014 relatively speaking, with bikes \u2014 but they\u2019ve not done enough. Google can save and profit from becoming more bike-friendly. People, including potential genius future employees and their families, love<\/em> bike-friendly.<\/p>\n At some point, we need to convince someone high up at the company that bikes are a serious, if old-fashioned, technology. Bike technology can solve many of Google\u2019s growing pains.<\/p>\n Bikes can also make a place a great place to be \u2014 a great place to work, play, live. I just returned to San Francisco after a quick weekend in Fullerton\/Los Angeles \u2014 a very car-dominated place, relatively speaking (and I\u2019m still completely enamored with LA culture and LA people). On my Monday morning bicycle ride into work in SF, I just thought, \u201cWow \u2014 so civilized.\u201d Or, more accurately, \u201cWow \u2014 so much less uncivilized.\u201d<\/p>\n All the talk of \u2019sustainability\u2019 really misses that important aspect of bike culture vs. car culture \u2014 quality of life. In the video, a person walking their dog near the Googleplex says, \u201c\u2026I wouldn\u2019t want to live here.<\/strong>\u201d Ouch.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Providing enough space for cars and anything else is becoming increasingly difficult. You can have cars, or you can have housing, but you can\u2019t have both. It\u2019s the old Jane Jacobs advice \u2014 you are going to have attrition of the Googleplex by cars, or attrition of cars by the Googleplex \u2014 one side is going to be dominant, and it\u2019s a policy decision that we make consciously every time we add roads and lanes without accommodating pedestrians and cyclists. Thus far, cars have won out, but we\u2019re not doomed to repeating the mistakes that got us here. Get rid of that first ginormous car parking lot and build the first mixed use building. Provide some real bicycle infrastructure. Watch community opposition disappear. If you promise to make Mountain View better, you\u2019ll find that people actually want to help<\/em> you implement your plans \u2014 but if you promise to deliver them more cars\/traffic\/air and noise pollution\/danger\/brutishness, they\u2019ll fight you all the way to City Hall.<\/p>\n A little over a year ago, our now-retired sister blog published a post titled, \u2018To Save Money, Google Can Do More with Bikes, Land Use<\/a>\u2018. We left a few quick recommendations:<\/p>\n And don\u2019t call the position \u2018bicycle coordinator\u2019 \u2014 give the person some real power to make Google some money \u2014 \u2018Bicycle Program Manager\u2019, etc.<\/p>\n The (highway) 101 is a human-maiming and killing scar that runs between SF and San Jose \u2014 and it cuts off the Googleplex from the rest of civilization, including the commuter train, Caltrain<\/a>, busy commercial\/retail corridors (e.g. El Camino Real) and shopping centers, etc. The 101 is certainly a crime against humanity and one that should be scaled down from car-only use to provide a bicycle highway and transit corridor, and ideally, phase out car use on it altogether. There is always talk of building special walk\/bike bridges over the 101 at various points \u2014 little gerbil runs \u2014 to allow people to walk and bike to that place where only cars go \u2014 but I\u2019d prefer we demand to be treated like humans, and get full access to existing roadways \u2014 just reappropriate some space for pedestrians and bikers. I recently accepted a job offer in SF because the other option would be to Caltrain down from SF to Redwood City (awesome-ish), but then make a 3-mile ride from the Caltrain station through this brutish, car-centric landscape, including a ride across that loveliest of all highways, the 101 \u2014 not my cup of tea. Google can help make the Googeplex accessible to people on foot and bike \u2014 it\u2019s not rocket science, we have the technology to make Google better, faster, stronger<\/a>. It\u2019s called the bicycle, and sufficient bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure \u2014 and it\u2019s already working wonders around the US and around the world.<\/p>\n\n
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