I rode the Mountain View Community Shuttle today to do a few errands. It’s a great way to get a free tour of our city. I took photos along the way, through the bus window.
The free shuttle started 4 years ago, and it is 100% sponsored by Google. They just renewed their contract which will continue the service in our community through 2019.
It’s free; just hop on. It leaves every 30 minutes and there are about 30 stops. Here’s a map of the stops. I was on it for the entire route today and it took just over an hour. You could get so many daily tasks taken care of by using this electric shuttle. It goes all the places that you need to go: El Camino Hospital, the post office, Safeway, Target, Walmart, Palo Alto Medical Foundation, the downtown Transit Center, and many more.
I’ve been on it before and this time there were way more students and young people going to and from the downtown area. Last time it was an older crowd.
When the bus was on Grant there was a ton of traffic and it was so nice to be in a nice, clean, electric bus and not all stressed out in my car. And to be able to use the free wifi to get some emails answered while I was riding was also nice.
I asked the driver for one of the little green schedules. Inside the schedule, it mentions an app, TripShot, that has real time tracking of the shuttles. I downloaded it. The free app also shows shuttle ETA, a map of the route and you can request notifications. I’ll see what I can do to get a big stack of the schedules at the Chamber.
There are 6 electric Mountain View Community Shuttle buses and they run 10:00 am to 6:00 pm on weekdays and they stop at each shuttle stop every 30 minutes. On weekends or holidays, it’s every 60 minutes.
The shuttles are ADA compliant, so everyone can ride and they have bike racks on the front. It’s a nice way to take a free little tour of our community and it’s totally green. I’m grateful to live in a city that has such amazing services. Thank you Google. I love Mountain View.
