Currently Apple is building their new space ship campus expected to employ 13,000 employees.  This may bring as many as 8,000-10,000 more cars on the streets of Cupertino in the next 2-3 years once the campus is open.

The General Plan Amendment proposes that 1,400 units of high density housing be added to the City in the next 8 years.  This does not include any single family home construction that may occur in this time.  Each new housing unit will bring in about 2 additional cars or at least 2,800 more cars in the next 8 years.

New companies will come to our city bringing employees who will likely live outside the city but drive to work daily.  So even more cars will be constantly added to our ever increasingly crowded streets.

Given Apple employees and the number of people expected to move here based upon the General Plan Amendment housing units a minimum of 11,000 cars will be on the streets of Cupertino in 8 years averaging or roughly 1,375 cars/year.  But some of this will be in bursts such as when Apple opens it new campus.  This is an extremely conservative number and will likely be much higher, more likely more than 15,000 cars in that time or about 1875 cars/year.  This is more cars added to our roads than students attending most of our schools.

So less than 10 years from now we will truly have a nightmare in terms of traffic if nothing is done to deal with all the added cars.  Just think how much more crowded our streets would be today of 17,000 more cars were on our roads.  It would be far easier to sell people on this vision.

Right now people are in denial and are simply hoping that technology will find a solution.  Yet in the last 30 years no solution has been found and the traffic has gotten progressively worst.

So we have a choice, hope for a solution some time in the future and simply do nothing or come up with a plan for dealing with it today in the likely event that a solution cannot be found later.  It is much easier to be proactive and make plans now for tomorrow than procrastinate until tomorrow when the situation is far worst and deal with a solution then.  Any solution that comes when things become desperate is going to be dramatic, very costly, and extremely disruptive for everyone.  Of course miracles are always possible.