Over the years, I've come to realize that the "quality" of urban design can be approximated by the ease at which one can travel while drunk. Mountain View is an epic fail.
As a first approximation, that's a good metric :-) And yes, it does make the valley an epic fail in general. You can caltrain/vta both ways to a certain extent. Or else its cabs. But really, there's not a decent downtown all the way from morgan hill until you hit san francisco.
I find San Jose downtown to just be a bit depressing.