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Ask HN: Reasonable places to live near Mountain View

3 points by go1979 ↗ HN
I'm moving back to the Bay area after a few years. Don't work for Google but an employer close by. My original idea was to forego a car and bike .. but when I look at the rents of close by apartments, it seems insane. Is taking the VTA daily reasonable? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

4 comments

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nostrademons
Rent everywhere in Silicon Valley is insane, and the VTA will take you between 1-2 hours to get anywhere (seriously; Mountain View to San Jose is an hour by public transit, but only 10 minutes by car if there's no traffic, or 30 in rush-hour traffic. Mountain View Caltrain to Googleplex is about 45 minutes by bus...it's about 5 minutes by car and 15ish by bike).

If I were moving and wanted to avoid cars, my first choice would be to live and work close to the Caltrain and take that. My second choice would be to live within biking distance, eating the elevated rent that tends to cause, and bike. If you go in to work around rush hour and have to cross 101 (via either Shoreline or Rengstorff), biking can frequently take 1/2 the time as driving, and even walking is comparable.

zhte415
> Mountain View Caltrain to Googleplex is about 45 minutes by bus...it's about 5 minutes by car and 15ish by bike

This is crazy. Why not set up a fleet of private busses to turn 45 mins to 5 mins, some app to subscribe the private bus for the day. Is SV not innovative enough to do this? Does it do it?

nostrademons
Hmm, as of the beginning of this year, that has apparently happened:

http://mvgo.org/east-bayshore-route.html

Situation is a little better - 15 min from Caltrain to Google - but the main problem is the number of stops. It also services LinkedIn, the movie theater, Microsoft, smaller startups on Terra Bella, and 3 Google stops. That's the general problem with short-hop bus shuttles; they spend more time picking up and dropping off passengers than driving. The corporate shuttles tend to work because they have a single start and end point.

hbien
It's not ideal but reasonable. I lived in Campbell and took the VTA for 2 years: http://www.vta.org/routes/rt902 -- it's about 1.25 hours one way. I used the time to catch up on reading.

I'd suggest living somewhere along the green line so you don't have to do any transfers: http://www.vta.org/routes/rt902. Campbell/San Jose are going to be cheaper than Sunnyvale/Mountain View.

You may also consider using the Caltrain instead. It's faster and cleaner. But there are less frequent trains and stops are more spread apart: http://www.caltrain.com/stations/systemmap.html -- the Mtn View station is a main one which most bullet trains stop at. Rent will be cheaper between Redwood City <-> San Bruno and Santa Clara <-> Tamien. Be careful going south of San Jose Diridon though, that's the final stop for many trains.