This does not go far enough imo. Santa Clara County should not be an island. People in the north county are not only left out, but it must not be assumed that they only want to travel within SCC or even within their own city. How will this help those that need to travel North?

We live in the Bay Area. This sort of thing has to be done at a regional level and innovative ideas.

We have no ferry services, can someone look into this, perhaps with hovercrafts?

We have Palo Alto Shuttles and Mountain View Shuttles. What happens to those who live in one and work in the other? We have Google buildings in both cities, and those employees use Google Bikes. Does the Bike Share program in Mountain View and Palo Alto allow for crossing city borders?

What about fast transportation to SFO and SJC? Most people need a ride rather than public transportation to the airports. Why? Answer, because there are no first class bus routes from transportation hubs. It would be much easier to get a ride to either the Castro Street station or the PA station to get an hourly luxury bus to each airport. Why hasn't there been any effort in getting a reliable transportation system to airports?

Lastly, why are there so many different transportation agencies in the Bay Area? We would do a lot better if they merged into one body. This would cut administrative, ticketing, marketing, advertising, route planning, costs and enable less administrators and managers to enable more money to be spent on actual transportation rather than support costs.

I am in favor of using tax funds to support transportation, but it has to be done wisely. Please be innovative and wise.

You can take bike share from Palo Alto to Mountain View, but this is discouraged by the 30 minute time limit. You need to be a pretty strong rider to bike from California Ave to downtown Mountain View in 30 minutes to avoid the overage charges.

I agree that we need more coordination for non-car transportation between Palo Alto and neighboring cities. Los Altos has bike lanes on San Antonio (south of El Camino), but those end without warning when a bicyclist tries to cross El Camino; a bicyclist was killed at this intersection recently, I don't know if that was caused by poor bike lane connectivity. Similarly, bike routes connecting Palo Alto and Mountain View are very poor (again mostly because of the San Antonio divide). I agree that Mountain View and Palo Alto really need to coordinate their shuttle busses and possibly have at least one large route connecting both cities.

For longer distance transportation (SFO, SJC, etc), electrified Caltrain has a lot of promise, if that can get built quickly. BART connects Caltrain to SFO and VTA connects Caltrain to SJC. Caltrain does have luggage racks.

Resident (of another Palo Alto neighborhood) wrote:

"Why hasn't there been any effort in getting a reliable transportation system to airports?"

Wake up! The SFO BART extension project cost $1.6 billion and was completed in 2003. Just take Caltrain to Millbrae and transfer to BART. It works great. You are free to flag a cab/rideshare at Millbrae if you don't want to take BART.

Prior to 2003, there was a reliable and convenient free shuttle bus from Millbrae Caltrain to SFO.

You can get to SFO by (1) get a ride to the CalTrain station (2) take Cal Train to San Bruno (3) San Bruno is a joint station for CalTrain and BART--take BART to SFO.

John's right, you can also transfer to BART at San Bruno Caltrain although it is a half mile walk between the two stations.

At Millbrae, the BART and Caltrain tracks are adjacent to each other and makes transferring easier, especially if you have luggage.

@Parent -- BART from Millbrae you still must go to San Bruno to catch an SFO BART train, except on weekends when there is direct BART service (or after 8pm on weekdays). The Caltrain/BART connections are not well-timed, and northbound I can never figure out whether I'll be able to directly enter the BART platform or need to climb up and down some serious staircases. Southbound always involves a climb. ps: travelers be advised to think about bathroom planning.

I miss the good old Samtrans 7F from ECR at Page Mill.

> " In some cases, funds have been transferred out from projects that locals expected to see spent in the north part of the county."

This is an understatement. In tax measure after tax measure, the promises in the ballot measure to the non-San Jose portion of the county have repeated become "inoperative" (Nixonian) shortly after the election. It is not just the North County that gets ripped off, but all the other non-SJ portions.

I talked about some of these examples last summer in my blog "Public Transit Follies" (July 1, 2014) (Web Link in the section "Practical Politics of Transit". This is over 15 years of "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me", or rather "fool me consistently time after time after time..."

Yes, a very convoluted system does exist with separate fares to get to airports. Have you ever tried taking as much luggage as many people travel with on and off a Caltrain and onto a BART, let alone walk half a mile?

I was talking about buses that leave from Palo Alto or Mountain View and drop off outside the terminals.

I have taken buses from Heathrow to various towns. These buses are regular, efficient, comfortable and have wifi. They are far superior to anything available around here for either SFO or SJC. Transportation to airports does not have to be by rail.

The difference is that everyone knows that London public transportation is heavily supported by public monies beyond the fares received. London's bus/train/underground transportation system is superior - but it doesn't come close to paying for itself. Only 40% of the revenues come from fares...

Web Link

This yet-another-county tax is being pushed by a group of businessmen in San Jose, where it's described as money for potholes. If Palo Alto wants to discuss fund allocation, it would be folly to jump onto this measure.

CP Dad

London Transport is not the only agency that operates buses (and trains) into Heathrow.

Many other companies serve places like Reading, Oxford, Swindon, etc.

Airport transportation is important because not only does it work for those who fly, but also for those who work at the airports. When you see the number of people flying into and out of SFO on a daily basis of course the majority will be going to San Francisco or points north or east. Likewise, most at SJC will be going south. Those of us who live inbetween deserve to have first class options to get to the airports. At present, trying to get to either airport will take more than one fare and more than one transportation mode. Therefore for most of us, we use our own cars or get a ride. A few will get a taxi or one of the shuttles that come to your home.

If some of the airport traffic on 101 was reduced, it would make a big difference to volume on the Peninsula. Buses from selected cities on the Peninsula could work well if they were designated as airport transportation and not regular buses.

Taxes paid to transportation agencies to make them more efficient would benefit every single Bay Area resident. It would enable our teachers to get to class, our doctors to get to their offices, students to get to their classes, food to get to our stores with less traffic holdups.

I would much rather see taxes for transportation than for more lanes on highways and bridges.

I also think that anybody who has free parking where they work should consider that a perk and a benefit, not a given. If you work downtown San Francisco/San Jose/NewYork or London, you would not expect free parking. It is wrong to think that employees should expect free parking in a congested semi-urban area.

@Douglas Moran

You realize this probably has more to do with the fact that the majority of Santa Clara county lives in San Jose? Also, it makes sense to invest very scarce transportation monies into the areas actually willing to accommodate growth.

Several times when similar topics have come up, I have suggested installing several "Park and Ride" type lots/small bus depots off 101 to assist with transit to/from the airports.
For example, for us in the Palo Alto area, we could have a small parking lot with drop off route through it and small bus terminal on the east side of 101 at Embarcadero Rd. The idea would be to have once- per -hour busses, they would go two directions - one to SFO and one to SJC. Drivers could drop off and pick up people who would use the busses to get to/from the airports, a straight shot either way on the freeway. This would take numerous cars off of 101. Yes, there would be a few stops, like three, but not many.
This is like what you have in the Boston metro area and it works great.
There ARE some situations where busses really do function well for lots of people.
I never will drive someone to a Caltrain station (I do not live near one), have them go up to Millbrae, then transfer to BART to get to SFO. This is REALLY clunky compared to lots of other places in terms of airport transit.
Yes, I know there are commercial ride sharing vans to the airports; they seem a bit costly and involve long transits in our/our friends' experiences, yes I know they are in many cities. However, there are also functioning BUS schemes in many cities, too, and select, reliable, timely implementations of such a scheme would be a godsend.

I agree that it makes sense to combine our multitude of transit agencies into one unified system to avoid the problems that occur at the interfaces, but that is NOT going to give Palo Alto a higher priority. In fact, it is likely that we would sink farther down the priority list if MTC experience is any indication.

@Robert:
> "You realize this probably has more to do with the fact that the majority of Santa Clara county lives in San Jose?"

1. If you had bothered to read what I cited [portion removed] you would have seen that this was the first point there.

2. That SJ has majority of residents does not entitle it to a hugely disproportionate amount of the spending.

> "Also, it makes sense to invest very scarce transportation monies into the areas actually willing to accommodate growth."

Most of the opposition to the current rate of growth in Palo Alto comes from it having overwhelmed the infrastructure, and part of the reason for that is that the SJ power-brokers have consistently viewed the rest of the county as a cash cow for the projects that profit them. For example, to fund BART-to-north-SJ, VTA dramatically reduced bus service to much of the county. For example, to fund BART-to-north-SJ, VTA looted the funds for a rail link along at the Dumbarton corridor. For example, many of the long-overdue improvements to Caltrain have been repeatedly promised as part of previous transportation tax measures but been looted by the SJ interests.

We are now in a situation where VTA is actively working to make congestion much worse in this area. For example, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) that will dedicate two lanes of El Camino for buses that will carry far fewer people than the autos being displaced. The VTA managers for the BRT program admit that this will push vehicles onto parallel arterials that are already congested and on to residential streets. For example, Caltrain electrification without grade separation--because it is intended to increase frequency of trains--will increase congestion not only on streets crossing the tracks, but the parallel streets that that congestion backs up onto (El Camino, Alma/Central Expressway,...)

Would there be any benefit to Palo Alto leaving Santa Clara County and joining San Mateo County? Our interests are probably better aligned with cities like Belmont than cities like Gilroy. If there's a benefit is there any format to explore how to do it?

The last tax measure was high jacked to pay for BART. That was not what the ballot measure 'promised'. I'm inclined to vote no for future measures because it seems that the fix is in, and it's almost certainly not going to fund what ever the promis(es) might be.

If there is a large pot of funds available, I would support trenching Caltrain in Palo Alto, at least the Charleston and Meadow crossing. I'm not sure why Churchill seems to be excluded in these lists, but it could really benefit from a grade separation too. Once the train is in a ditch, it's mostly out of sight, and out of mind. The gate crossing hazard for cars and pedestrians and cross traffic traffic problems disappear. Train horn noise, disappears. Much of the other train noise, disappears. It's unlikely that CAHSR will materialize, but if the tracks are in ditch, HSR goes in the ditch too, where it belongs.

@Douglas Moran

"Most of the opposition to the current rate of growth in Palo Alto comes from it having overwhelmed the infrastructure"

Which is why you're so open to growth in the areas that are already well served (Downtown/Cal Ave)? Didn't think so.

@Robert: "Which is why you're so open to growth in the areas that are already well served (Downtown/Cal Ave."

Ignoring the facts:

1. Vehicle commutes to University Ave face major congestion and projections based on growth already in the pipeline have multiple intersections in the U Ave area getting failing grades with no proposed remedy.

2. Parking: If U Ave is so "well served" why is there commuters orbiting residential blocks looking for parking spaces? Why is there an Residential Preferred Parking Program?

3. Caltrain is near capacity and electrification won't allow for much increase in schedule without eliminating at-grade crossings.

4. The ideas of the Traffic Demand Associations have been a priority for at least two decades, and have come up time and time again. Yet, the current advocates say "This time will be different" (because the speaker is involved and so superior to all those who preceded her).

As to the Cal Ave area, very similar.

If this is "well served", I would hate to see "badly served".

Doug, what you're describing is any bustling downtown, though I always forget, Palo Alto is special and other cities have these issues. Personally I never have any problem going to or parking downtown because I don't drive if I'm going there during a busy time, its easily accessible by transit to the majority of Palo Alto, but if your litmus test for "appropriate" places for development is abundant free parking, then everywhere but downtown or Cal Avenue should be built up first. I'll keep that in mind.