Google's $5m plan to spread bikeability beyond Googleplex to Silicon Valley

Cycling is safe and easy inside the search giant's Mountain View HQ, but getting to the site from elsewhere in Silicon Valley means crossing fast-moving expressways and busy train tracks. Is Google's new bike plan the answer?

Inside the Googleplex - the tech giant's headquarters in Mountain View, California - hundreds of multi-coloured bikes are scattered around. With bright yellow frames and big blue and green rubber tires, they're seemingly everywhere - clustered at the edges of parking lots, lined near building entrances, or clumsily toppled over into the office park landscaping. The bikes make it easy for Google's employees to move between its many office buildings, spread over roughly two miles of land at the southern tip of the San Francisco Bay in a neighbourhood known as North Bayshore. Inside the Googleplex, biking is safe and easy.

Outside the Googleplex, not so much.