Good luck, SV is what 4-5 times (if not more) larger than Copenhagen and consists of spotty urban, suburban, industrial areas, connected by high speed motorways and highways.
[1] E.g. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Sjælsø,+Denmark/@55.8628... (yes, that thing on the left is a bike lane!)
Fixing public transportation is more important than fixing biking at this moment, especially in California. When more people move with cars than with public transportation it's harder to allocate the needed resources for bikes, the impact of public transportation improvement is also quicker and bigger than improving bike lanes. Not saying that having a bike / walk to work alternatives isn't important, but jumping straight to it when everything else isn't even remotely close to being right is a foolish mission in my book.
That said you can detour a bit and take the Steven's Creek trail, which is quite alright. Though very very very dark at night. You'll want a super-powerful light for that ride. Even then it's still scary. (My aforementioned trip on Rengstorff was to go to REI to buy a bike light for that purpose :)
Anyway, safe bicycle infrastructure would make Mountain View wonderful for bike commuting. The distances are bicycle friendly, and the weather is almost always perfect for biking. If Mountain View had housing prices and bike infrastructure that was comparable to New York City, I would be happy to move there.
The main issue isn't just roads its and entire infrastructure, e.g. giving bikes priority over motor vehicles like in some European countries which might not work well, In many cases bike lanes tend to also have a negative impact as they are often take spaces from public side walks, you can see that being a very big issue in some European cities that went bike crazy.
London is trying to do that and it's infuriating bikes seem to do what ever the fuck they want they'll go in the bike land but on a red signal they'll decide to go over the cross walk and onto the side walk to get a head, they often go into red signals even on the road when there is no (or they think there isn't) incoming traffic, and they clog bus lanes.
You can't just go from 0 to 60, turning SV into a bike friendly zone will take as much time as it took to turn Copenhagen or Amsterdam into one.
Do you have a citation for bike lanes digging into sidewalk? I've literally never heard of that, especially in the US where sidewalks are never near bike lanes and separated by a curb/parking/grass.
A better rack design (hanging vertically on the rear?) could solve this.
You say "you can't just go from 0 to 60". That applies to bike culture too. As the segregated lanes are put in, London's cycling culture will become calmer, just as it is in Copenhagen or the best Netherlands cities.