Building expressways for autonomous vehicles could be the best option for creating a new transit link to Mountain View's North Bayshore neighborhood, according to a new report produced by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA).
The report released this week is the product of a lengthy partnership between Google and VTA officials that was originally announced back in 2015. At the time, Google paid the transit agency $1 million to study extending the light-rail system out to the heavily congested North Bayshore tech hub.
Originally, traffic engineers focused solely on building a light rail extension (expected to cost up to $500 million), but they were later asked to broaden the study to include other alternatives.
The study's authors examined the merits of electric skateboards, segways and motorcycles (both regular and with attached sidecars). Various types of aircraft were also examined, such as helicopters, blimps and personal jets. They even considered some outlandish prototypes like flying cars, hover bikes and automated drones.
Read the complete article at https://mv-voice.com/news/2018/04/09/vta-study-plugs-autonomous-vehicles-for-mv-transit
