San Francisco Bike Blog

The Journal is on Google for not making more money. Fine.

Google is already pretty bike-friendly. There are bikes all over the Googleplex in Mountain View. You can see some of them in the picture, below. Their New York office has been part of the NY DOT parking rack excitement going on in that city. I expect many of their campuses around the globe are bike-friendly, and that many of their employees are bike nuts.

But the Googleplex - the main Google headquarters in Mountain View - has problems. It’s also got serious potential.

The problems are that it’s sprawling - even if Google is going to contract a bit in the near term because of the economy. It will continue to need more parking. Many of the lots are already overflowing. People drive from close-by, but they also drive from San Jose and from all over the Bay Area. They also bus in from all over the Bay Area. All of this ends up costing lots of money.

The potential of the Googleplex is apparent once you visit the area — the natural beauty and spaciousness are really captivating. But there are stories of near-misses at all the crosswalks because pedestrians want to cross the street when they want to cross the street, and cars are cars - they are destructive. The Googleplex is like a miniature city, with several thousand inhabitants. Similar to San Francisco, it has a fundamental decision to make - attrition of cars by the Googleplex, or attrition of the Googleplex by cars - it has to be one or the other - it can’t be both.

Google has started to take steps to address its growing land and energy needs - installing solar panels on buildings and over parking lots. But I think they can do better. Their current approach to transportation makes me think that they want to brute force it - use technology to conquer the evils of the automobile. But this is the wrong approach. It can never work because cars are a mechanism that are inherently destructive - and they will remain so, whether they run on electric or gas.

But more directly, can Google save money by performing some attrition of cars on the Googleplex campus? And can Google perform this attrition by introducing more bike-friendliness on its campus, and then pushing for changes to the local bike network in and around Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, etc.?

Yes, and yes.

Google can reduce its expenses, and possibly even enhance its revenues, by looking at two non-technology solutions:

1. Bicycles, and
2. Land Use.

Bicycles, we know, have myriad positive effects for individuals and societies. I’m hoping data for companies and other organizations is right around the corner. The most obvious potential cost-saver might be health care costs. They are a concern for every company, especially one with good benefits, an aging population, with employees who sit in front of computers all day, a company stuck in such a car-dependent culture - like Silicon Valley. We know that even moderate exercise has tremendous health benefits. If we can find the data to show hard links (computer pun intended) between company cycling policy and health benefits and/or health care costs savings, this could be a big mover.

More people cycling to work means fewer folks that need to be supported on the shuttle buses. Few people need room to park their cars.

And with fewer cars, there is just more room for everything. Right now, your creativity is limited because you’ve bought into car culture. I say give it up. Think different. (Doh!)

Google is a natural choice for a full bicycle implementation policy for several reasons:

1. Much of the local and regional economy is dependent on a healthy Google. There are lots of people who are interested in keeping Google, and its employees, healthy and happy.
2. Google’s campus is large, has shown good growth, and looks set to continue growing after this contraction.
3. Google employees are freaks - they like bikes, they’re outdoorsy, they’re greenies, they’re high-achievers, adventurers, etc. — they’ll be open to a more humane lifestyle.
4. Some of the area already has some bike lanes - we don’t have to start from scratch. Now we need to push for real bicycle infrastructure - physically-separated bike lanes.
5. Good proximity to local housing and town centers (MV, PA, Sunnyvale, etc.) and rail connectors. There are two Caltrain stations within two to three miles (Yes, Caltrain+bikes has issues, but we can continue to work on Caltrain.), and lots of neighborhoods within a five-mile radius. The VTA light rail rolls up into the Mountain View station as well.
6. Peninsula weather is generally very good, making cycling extremely easy for much of the year.
7. Many Google employees are not highly-paid — we can’t all be programmers — these folks would love the chance to save some of their paychecks for something other than a car payment. Of course, even being highly paid in Silicon Valley does not guarantee you discretionary spending money - it’s expensive out here!

So, my recommendations for Google:

1. Hire a bicycle program coordinator for the Googleplex campus. Their job is to motivate your employees, to help make and keep them happy and healthy, to save you money, and make Google the bike-friendliest company on earth. Any program should be open, as much as is possible, to contractors.
2. Call up the SFBC and the SVBC and tell them that ‘Google wants in’ - tell them ‘we want to lend our institutional support’ to making the Bay Area the #1 most bikable region on earth.
3. Start thinking more creatively about land use, and how you can work with the Mountain View City Council and other local and regional governments to make the Googleplex more like a traditional transit-oriented development - maybe it can become a bicycle-oriented development. Mixed-use. Housing. Shopping. Retail. Whatever. No more parking lots.

Ride on.

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