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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

Make it extremely convenient to travel to and from SF from a couple of directions at a distance of 25-50 miles?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train

In-valley transport actually sucks. I commute from Alameda to Mountain View - it takes 2.5 hours via public transport. :( (37 miles).

Bike --> Bart --> Cal-Train --> Bike (and reverse, $20 total)

This is one thing that interestingly has been both ignored and solved by tech companies. FB, Goog, Gene - they all have very effective troop transport. But by-in-large, silicon valley has done nothing to provide a solution to the problems with transportation and data access.

(WRT data access: DSL wasn't available in the heart of SV for several years after it was widely avaialble. Cellular coverage from AT&T has had the SAME EXACT dead spots on 280 and 101 corridors for TEN FREAKING YEARS! -- No widely available wifi, data coverage on CalTrain and Bart is horrendous!)

I commute from Oakland to Menlo Park. It's kooky how it's either a 40 minute drive (consistently) or a 100 minute bike->BART->shuttle, the latter being way more stressful due to transitions and multiple failure modes.

How about getting all solo cars off of 101 during b-ness hours. Create exclusive bike/motorcycle/bus lanes. 101 is the problem and the solution!

37 miles should be about 15 minutes on the Google Maglev. Maybe Apple will chip in.

My badge doesn't work :(

And they could still call it the "Shanghai Maglev", considering San Francisco's history with Shanghaiing[0].

Although, in a way, the Bay Area is already Shanghaied without a solid method of medium distance transportation.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing

Well, it is already pretty convenient in one direction (between SF and the east bay). Beyond that, it'll never happen, because Marin and the peninsula are full of NIMBYs.

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