West Coast Spine

Sunnyvale, CA

Stop on the proposed 17,000-mile maglev network. Next stop: Santa Clara, CA (4.6 mi).

About Sunnyvale

Sunnyvale is a city in the Santa Clara Valley in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States.

Source: Wikipedia summary (full article). Population and facts as published there.

Cost breakdown (proposal-scale estimates — see math)

⚠️ All figures below are parametric estimates scaled from the proposal's own budget ($8.5T ÷ 17,000 mi ≈ $500M per mile), not engineering quotes. Methodology is shown so you can check the math.

Item	Basis	Estimate
Terminal construction	Large-city terminal (range $2–4B)	$3B
Land acquisition	Regional factor 1.5× on $200M base	$300M
Track: Sunnyvale → Santa Clara	4.6 mi × $500M/mi	$2.3B
Annual operations (share)	Staffing, power, maintenance	$60M/yr
Stop total (excl. annual ops)		$5.6B

Best terminal location (proposed)

the Sunnyvale Caltrain station district. Sunnyvale's downtown Caltrain station already anchors the busiest commuter-rail corridor on the West Coast, with VTA light rail and buses feeding it. The station district around Murphy Avenue is the walkable core of Silicon Valley's mid-peninsula. A terminal here puts the maglev within reach of the valley's densest job cluster.

Before / after

Before and after aerial mock-up of the proposed maglev terminal at Sunnyvale, CA

Aerial mock-up (illustrative, not an engineering rendering). Left: the proposed site today. Right: with the maglev terminal.

🛤️ Infill stops toward Santa Clara: the proposal envisions more stops than cities — smaller stations between majors. Plausible infills on this leg:

The Lawrence Expressway corridor — mid-point commercial zone straddling the city line.
Santa Clara's Rivermark district — dense residential area just north of the corridor.

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