This is Moffett Park station — a stupendous example of VTA incompetence. This photo below is of Moffett Park Dr, the main street running past the station.
Note the total lack of sidewalks, or bike lanes of that matter. And the special touch of making transit riders climb over a railing, just to reach the platform:
See that parking garage in the distance? Here is a closer look:
Believe it or not, this 1217-space parking garage was built as part of a Sunnyvale “Green Building” Initiative. Another fine example of promoting transit-oriented development in Silicon Valley!
Moffett Park station, by the way, is one of the least used VTA LRT stations. I can’t imagine why that is?
I can understand the idea of wanting to replace surface lots with a parkade in a TOD, but that one’s not a winner from a design point of view, and it looks like there’s lots of surface parking anyway at this site. I can only hope that those surface lots are intended to be replaced by future development in the medium-to-long term ;-)
Like you say, a poor effort on tying the pedestrian network to the surrounding development. Guess the roads department is more powerful than the active modes department in this area. Too bad, but typical of halfhearted TOD and business parks in general.
Question: does the proximity of the station have any benefit to the neighboring office parks, in terms of e.g. reduced parking requirements?
If you zoom in on the station, you’ll notice that there is nothing much but a freeway on the south side of the station – hence a railing and no pedestrian access. There is no need to climb over it as there is no demand to go that direction. On the north side of the station, there is a huge plaza that connects the station to the so-called “TOD.” I just wanted to clarify this point a bit.
However, you are definitely correct. From your picture, there are THREE parking garages (plus the sea of surface parking). I guess they are simply taking the TOD name literally…construction a sprawling campus, make a skinny path to a transit station, and calling it Transit-Oriented Development.
It’s sad how there is still a remaining gray area between TOD and TAD (Transit-Adjacent Development). It seems like even today, just the presence of a nearby transit station makes something a TOD, and not the whole walk/access/density package.
Red,
While you are correct that (for now) there is not much south of the station, Moffett Park still needs a sidewalk. Pedestrians should be able to walk from point “A” to point “B” without having to cut through parking lots.
Note the “clever” absence of sidewalk on the north side of the tracks next to Moffett Park Drive. It is impossible to access this station from anywhere except the neighboring building, without walking through a parking lot. And it didn’t need to be that way.
Moffett Park Drive, not 237, is directly adjacent to the station. Anyways, I agree, its horrible station design-also look at the adjacent Nasa/Bayshore station, there’s no bus connections at either. Also, Nasa/Bayshore, from what I can tell, is not the main entrance to Moffett Field/Ames.
I took a look at Google Maps (*) and saw that the big missing piece is a ped./ bike crossing over CA-237 that connects to Ross Dr. This would avoid the thundering herds on N. Mathilda Ave and lead into a residential sector off to the east.
*Search string – [ w moffet park dr and innovation way,sunnyvale,ca ]
Routing – From the big tree east of the MPD/ramp T-intersection roughly south to the bulb-end of Ross Dr.
FWIW, this section, the Silicon Valley extension, is the absolute worst of the VTA system. It’s so bad it should actually be ripped out and replaced. It’s OK from Fair Oaks east, but west of there — oh my God. The line wanders around apparently simply for the purpose of being slow, without actually managing to have well-located or accessible stations.
The rest of the VTA system is not designed with *this* degree of insanity, and is somewhat more usable. Unfortunately, this was the part which was supposed to connect to major employers, so screwing it up this bad was a very serious error.
Great article and pic’s. Build it and they will drive. The problem I see is permitting this office space in the first place. This used to be the valley of heart’s delight, now it is the valley of developers dreams.
Just to be clear, the developer paid for this station: http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BATN/conversations/topics/4249