The Problem: transporting thousands of employees from/to a very large North Bayshore employer in Mountain View to the Caltrain station.
The solution, as proposed by some on the Mountain View City Council: a $1 billion monorail:
The idea has been floating around since 2009 under several names and iterations — Personal Rapid Transit, pod cars, SkyTran, autonomous shuttles, monorails and gondolas — all aimed at solving the practical challenge of efficiently moving commuters roughly 3 miles, from the city’s downtown transit center to Google, NASA Ames and other major employers.
Despite the decadelong wait and worsening traffic, the project suffered another setback last month. An $850,000 study to figure out the land requirements needed for the future Automated Guideway Transit (AGT) line, originally intended to begin last month, has been pushed back to November. Council members granted the request of city staff who sought a one to two year delay, citing burdensome workloads and a vacancy in the public works department. The study now aims be complete in April 2021. Estimated costs to build an elevated system over surface streets could cost as much as $195 million per mile, raising questions over how the city could cobble together enough transportation funds to pay as much as $1 billion.
There is of course a trivial solution: just stripe bus lanes. The $850k cost of the study is enough to pay for it. Google and the other employers already have buses, as does the VTA.
Systemic Failure 
Yes, but Mtn. View doesn’t have spare lanes they’re prepared to make bus-only, and they want a high-frequency driverless system to keep operating (labor) costs and with an exclusive guideway to keep travel times down.
This type of AGT has higher operating costs compared to bus service. See for example the BART-OAC connector.
Are AGT systems even very high capacity? My only experience is with airport style people movers and those definitely are not. It sounds like this area will be seeing heavy surge, commuter traffic. I would expect an AGT system would tend to get very backed up at peak travel times with no way to increase vehicles.
They may not _want_ to, but between Caltrain and Google’s main campus is a 3.5 mile trip along the Central Expressway (4 lanes with a mostly-scrub median) and Rengstorff Ave, which is also four lanes and grows a median between them after Leghorn.
That the wide, flat and nearly completely unpopulated cities of the peninsula have an allergy to striping bus lanes on their multiple 4-or-more lane boulevards is a prima facie argument for stripping them all of their transit planning authority and handing it over in toto to the state.
The BART link from SFO to Milbrae Caltrain makes a good reference. Despite the huge cost, it has been unable to outperform the modest shuttle bus it replaced.
How does cost compare to SFO people mover? That thing runs pretty efficiently.
Mountain View GadgetBahn construction cost: $1 billion
Operating cost: ??
vs
SFO AirTrain construction cost: $430 million (year-2003 dollars)
Operating cost: $22 million/year
vs
BART OAC construction cost: $500 million
Operating cost: $10/trip subsidy (5X more than proposed BRT solution)
vs
North Bayshore bus lanes: $1 million for the paint + $5 million for some buses (if Google doesn’t supply their own)
Operating cost: $1-2 million/year (depending on service levels)
“…somebody help me budget, my city is dying!”