Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen
1–10 of 345 posts
Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen
#2Good luck, SV is what 4-5 times (if not more) larger than Copenhagen and consists of spotty urban, suburban, industrial areas, connected by high speed motorways and highways.
Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen
#3Good luck, SV is what 4-5 times (if not more) larger than Copenhagen and consists of spotty urban, suburban, industrial areas, connected by high speed motorways and highways.
I think Google is one of a handful of firms that has the resources to make this happen
Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen
#4Good luck, SV is what 4-5 times (if not more) larger than Copenhagen and consists of spotty urban, suburban, industrial areas, connected by high speed motorways and highways.
Suburban Copenhagen has very good bike lanes. Actually separate roads for bikes. [1] Granted, this took years to build.
[1] E.g. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Sjælsø,+Denmark/@55.8628... (yes, that thing on the left is a bike lane!)
Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen
#5Good luck, SV is what 4-5 times (if not more) larger than Copenhagen and consists of spotty urban, suburban, industrial areas, connected by high speed motorways and highways.
How about public transport you can take the bikes with you on, and nice bike paths in the denser areas?
Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen
#6A good way to accomplish this (not mentioned in the article) would be to build more housing close to Mountain View's campus. Office space has been outstripping housing growth in Mountain View for a very long time. See for example https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/01/stop-being-bullied-lets-sue....
Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen
#7I just biked last evening from downtown San Jose to the southern vicinity of the Google campus. There are two main options: Central Expressway or something close and parallel to it, which I've declined. Or trails near the bay shore, which is what I chose.
Bad choice. The trails are for the most part unpaved. Riding my sleek, rigid road bike on those things was torture. Never again. If those trails were paved, that would be a pretty awesome route.
So start with paving the lesser-known trails.
Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen
#8Good luck, SV is what 4-5 times (if not more) larger than Copenhagen and consists of spotty urban, suburban, industrial areas, connected by high speed motorways and highways.
How about public transport you can take the bikes with you on, and nice bike paths in the denser areas?
This. Just putting down bike paths is useless when everything else is missing. You need bike parking too!
Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen
#9A good way to accomplish this (not mentioned in the article) would be to build more housing close to Mountain View's campus. Office space has been outstripping housing growth in Mountain View for a very long time. See for example https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/01/stop-being-bullied-lets-sue... .
They tried, multiple times, and were explicitly rebuked
http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2012/07/13/google-housin...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/technology/google-plans-ne... etc
It comes up every few years.
Re: Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen
#10Odd to see this in the middle of the article, without context before or after,
> Google plans to give $5 million in matching grants to cities in the area that want to start building out a better bike network. But even the matching grants don't come free: The money is offered as a community benefit, contingent on Mountain View's approval of Google's North Bayshore redevelopment.
Without describing what Google's proposed North Bayshore redevelopment is, it's hard to know how to interpret that paragraph.