CITY OF SAN MATEO
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CITY OF SAN MATEO
Agenda Report
City Hall
330 W. 20th Avenue
San Mateo CA 94403
www.cityofsanmateo.org
Agenda Number: 15 Section Name: {{section.name}} Account Number: 10-4666 File ID: {{item.tracking_number}} TO: City Council
FROM: Alex Khojikian, City Manager
PREPARED BY: Public Works Department
MEETING DATE: June 03, 2024
SUBJECT:
Citywide Complete Streets Plan – Update
RECOMMENDATION:
Receive an update on the San Mateo Citywide Complete Streets Plan and provide feedback.
BACKGROUND:
The City was awarded approximately $490,000 from the Caltrans Sustainable Communities grant program to fund the San Mateo Complete Streets Plan (“Plan”). The Plan will complement the City’s General Plan by creating an actionable plan rooted in safety for all transportation modes and will result in policies, goals, and prioritized projects that are focused on improving mobility, equity, connectivity, and sustainability to build a better circulation network for the City’s future. The Plan will provide the basis for projects that are planned, designed, constructed, and maintained for all roadway users, allowing the City to develop a safe mobility network for many years to come. The final outcome of this effort will be an adopted Citywide Complete Streets Plan and a Design Standards Manual. The Citywide Complete Streets Plan effort began in November 2022. To ensure the final Complete Streets Plan is consistent with Council’s vision and expectations, staff is bringing different components for Council ’s review and feedback as they are developed. This presentation will cover work to-date on community engagement and the current approach to establishing modal priorities for City roadways.
Community Engagement
Given the nature of the project, community engagement has been a key component to provide information and direction for this project. Based on prior Council feedback, Staff and the consultant team have worked through a three (3) phase community engagement effort. The first phase of community engagement focused on learning about transportation needs and concerns in the community through stakeholder interviews, focus groups, active engagement tours, and pop-up events. Phase 1 included workshops conducted in Spanish and workshops with both English and Spanish speakers where simultaneous translation was provided and utilized. Since this item was last brought for Council feedback on October 16, 2023, staff and the consultant team have completed Phases 2 and 3 of community engagement. These phases of engagement included the following and are summarized in greater detail in Attachments 1 and 2. •Community Engagement: In Phase 2 of community engagement, the project team focused on leveraging connections with the community and the San Mateo-Foster City school district to plan and organize targeted focus groups and workshops to gain insight on specific resident concerns regarding transportation. The team also utilized existing events to engage with people where they recreate or congregate, to gather input from residents and roadway users from all parts of the City. This included tabling at September Nights on B Street, focus groups with Parent Teacher Association (PTA) members at Baywood and Sunnybrae Elementary Schools and with Hillsdale High School students, and a meeting with Shoreview-Parkside residents. The focus groups, given the concentrated audiences, were advertised directly to the school communities and residents through coordination with school administrators and neighborhood leaders.
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During Phase 3 of engagement, City staff and the consultant team hosted three (3) in-person community workshops throughout the City’s five council districts. Following the successful implementation of district-focused workshops for the General Plan 2040, hosting the workshops in this manner provided engagement opportunities nearer to residents' homes, and ability for Councilmembers to more deeply engage with the project. Staff advertised the workshops to attendees via the City’s e-newsletter, the City’s social media channels, emails to neighborhood associations and school stakeholders, flyers for print in multiple languages, and information on the City’s website. Each workshop consisted of an open-house format that was modeled on prior successful engagement showcasing maps of potential improvements along the Plan’s ten (10) identified priority corridors. A presentation was offered midway through the open house to more fully explain the project, with opportunity for Q&A. In response to feedback that residents and other stakeholders appreciate opportunities to participate virtually when unable to attend in-person meetings, staff provided an online survey modeled on the open house to allow similar in-depth comments on each priority corridor. The workshops offered simultaneous Spanish translation, and the survey was available in Spanish as well. •Feedback: The community pop-up event, focus groups, and workshop in Phase 2 provided insight into resident concerns about moving around San Mateo. Some general trends included safety such as traffic safety, speeding, and non-compliance with the rules of the road, concerns about emergency preparedness as it relates to transportation, and a desire to see more pedestrian-friendly infrastructure and safety enhancements.
Phase 3 feedback focused on offering residents opportunity to provide feedback on the priority corridor projects.
Generally, residents were supportive of bicycle and pedestrian safety improvements and efforts to reduce speeds for vehicles, with mixed feedback on the conversion of vehicle travel lanes and/or parking for dedicated bus and/or bike lanes. There was also support for enhanced signage and east-west connectivity for pedestrians and bicyclists, particularly across US 101. Feedback from the workshops and survey will be incorporated into the corridor recommendations in the Plan.
Street Typologies and Modal Priorities
Staff and the consultant team developed four key policies guiding the creation of the Plan, and the Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission and City Council confirmed these policies:
•Prioritize Safety for All Modes
•Rebalance Priorities
•Fund and Implement Projects, and
•Engage our Communities.
As part of the Rebalance Priorities policy, City staff and the consultant team developed a methodology to utilize street characteristics and adjacent land uses to identify modal priorities for roadways throughout the City. Determining modal prioritization based on the width of the roadway available and the land uses that are primarily present enables staff and others to more consistently allocate available right-of-way as well as make operational decisions based on the modal priorities. In having this information available when designing future projects, staff can identify the intended modal priority for a given roadway and design improvements based on those priorities ahead of time, rather than identifying priorities on a project-by-project basis that often results in inconsistency. This piecemeal approach is how the roadway design process is currently completed, but it results in inconsistencies in active transportation implementation.
First, land use types have been identified as neighborhood, mixed-use, and commercial based on the land uses designated in the recently adopted General Plan 2040.
•Neighborhood: Primarily residential, with schools, parks, and some small businesses. Multimodal safety and urban greening are prioritized with a balanced approach to residential parking management. •Mixed-Use: Characterizes newly developing neighborhoods and transit-oriented communities. These areas are highly walkable with multimodal access to higher density homes and businesses. •Commercial: Larger businesses less oriented to the street, including malls and office parks. Circulation is focused
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on enhancing safety and multimodal access. Also includes service areas with light industrial uses.
Generally, streets have been identified as compact, intermediate, or broad based on existing street widths; these designations in combination with adjacent land uses will be used to identify specific types of implementations in the Complete Streets Plan. While it is anticipated that these designations may lend to modifications in Caltrans-specified roadway classifications, they are not intended as a one-for-one replacement. •Compact: Very narrow roadways, providing local access to homes and businesses. •Intermediate: Midsize roadways that provide circulation across land use contexts, with multi-modal needs strategically prioritized based on modal networks.
•Broad: Very wide roadways that carry more multimodal circulation and have high need for safety management.
The combination of land use type and roadway width provide the street typology, which aligns with design specifications in the Design Standards Manual. For example, a roadway classified as mixed-use intermediate would align with certain lane widths, bike facility types and widths, and sidewalk requirements that are all outlined in the Manual.
Street typologies were utilized to develop modal priorities, or transportation modes that are prioritized for that type of roadway and are crucial in determining the types of tools that may be used on each corridor. Staff will summarize the approach to assigning modal priorities to each roadway, but in general, it starts from a framework of specific modal priorities being assigned to each category of land use type/street typology and is then refined based on information in existing transportation plans, local context, general city circulation goals, etc. A modal priority may be pedestrian, transit, bike, or auto; not having a certain modal priority for a roadway does not mean the mode will not exist on that roadway.
Rather, it means that people utilizing the priority mode need additional support for safe mobility and access.
In creating general modal priorities based on land use, lane width, and roadway characteristics, the Complete Streets Plan provides detail on what infrastructure improvements and enhancements should be prioritized across the City. In practice, this allows the City to prioritize modes on roadways based on common characteristics, rather than on an individual project level basis, and provides continuity and consistency in design and implementation. Some examples of proposed modal priorities include the following.
•Neighborhood Streets: Safety is prioritized for all users on these streets, including those who live, walk, bike, drive, take transit, and play there. Design on these roadways will focus on safety for all modes, and speed management. •Bicycle and Pedestrian Priority: These roadways will prioritize bike/pedestrian transportation, indicating these modes need additional support for safety on these corridors. This does not preclude or remove autos from the corridor.
•Automobile and Bicycle Priority: Roadways with specific characteristics, like those that cross US 101, have modal priorities for bicycles and autos to facilitate and enhance safe connectivity for these modes given the limited connectivity across these large barriers.
Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission Feedback
Staff presented this information to the Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission during the May 8, 2024, meeting.
Commission feedback included the following.
•Bicycle and auto connectivity on east-west corridors is important for circulation but difficult with limited roadway widths.
•Be mindful of potential parking removal in projects and identify that early in the design process. •Maintaining north and south access into the Downtown is important. •Commissioners supported safety for all modes on neighborhood streets. •Consider a second-tier priority for bicycles on El Camino Real if feasible.
Requested Feedback and Next Steps
To ensure Council consensus on the approach to assigning modal priorities to City roadways, staff is seeking feedback on the following questions:
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1. Does Council have feedback on how the street typologies were developed?
2. Does Council have feedback on how modal priorities were assigned to each street typology?
3. Does Council have feedback on the resulting modal priorities map? Staff and the consultant team will incorporate feedback from the Council and Commission, in addition to community feedback. Staff expects to bring the additional elements of the Complete Street Plan for Commission and Council feedback in summer 2024, with the draft Plan being prepared for review later in 2024.
BUDGET IMPACT:
There is no budgetary impact associated with the recommendation of this agenda report. The funding for the Plan is budgeted in the Complete Streets Plan Project (46R014) and is provided in part through a Caltrans Sustainable Communities grant with local matching funds.
ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINATION:
This Complete Streets Plan update is not a project subject to CEQA, because it is an organizational or administrative activity that will not result in direct or indirect physical changes in the environment. (CEQA Guidelines Section 15378(b)(5).)
NOTICE PROVIDED
All meeting noticing requirements were met.
ATTACHMENTS
Att 1 - Phase 2 Community Engagement Report
Att 2 - Phase 3 Community Engagement Report
Att 3 - Draft Modal Priorities Map
STAFF CONTACT
Sue-Ellen Atkinson, Principal Transportation Planner
[email protected]
(650) 522-7288