CITY OF SAN MATEO
CITY OF SAN MATEO
Agenda Report
City Hall
330 W. 20th Avenue
San Mateo CA 94403
www.cityofsanmateo.org
Agenda Number: 7 Section Name: OLD BUSINESS Account Number: File ID: 26-10873 TO: City Council
FROM: Alex Khojikian, City Manager
PREPARED BY: Public Works Department
MEETING DATE: February 23, 2026
SUBJECT:
Grand Boulevard Initiative and Central El Camino Real Plan — Appropriation RECOMMENDATION:
Adopt a Resolution to appropriate $70,000 of the City’s Measure A funds to support additional San Mateo-specific studies and community engagement; and receive an informational presentation on the Central El Camino Multimodal Plan being developed in partnership with SamTrans and the Cities of San Mateo, Belmont, San Carlos, and Redwood City.
BACKGROUND:
In February 2025, SamTrans launched the Central El Camino Real Multimodal Plan (Central El Camino Plan), a corridor study for an 8.5-mile segment of El Camino Real (Caltrans State Route 82) within the cities of San Mateo, Belmont, San Carlos and a short segment of Redwood City.
This Central El Camino Plan is a part of a broader effort called the Grand Boulevard Initiative (GBI), which is a collaboration in San Mateo County between 15 local jurisdictions, four countywide agencies, and Caltrans. This effort is supporting cities along the corridor by leading a joint, coordinated Caltrans process to advance local city visions. GBI aims to make El Camino Real a safer and more comfortable place to walk, bike, drive, and take transit by installing streetscape improvements along the corridor.
Over the past year, GBI convened a Task Force and a Working Group comprised of staff representing all cities and various agencies and organizations along the corridor in a series of workshops. These groups provide direction on corridor-wide challenges and needs, potential solutions, public and stakeholder engagement, and the vision for the corridor. These groups meet bi-monthly and SamTrans used this feedback to develop a GBI Action Plan.
The GBI Action Plan is a planning document that evaluates corridor-wide needs, establishes a cohesive vision, and builds momentum toward implementation. Once the Action Plan is complete, SamTrans will lead the first phase of a coordinated Caltrans project development process, called a Project Initiation Document (PID), for all of El Camino Real in San Mateo County. The PID will define the purpose and need for transportation improvements to the corridor as well as establish potential design alternatives.
Because El Camino Real is a state highway, Caltrans has the final authority over design approvals, right-of-way changes, signal modifications, and construction standards. No changes can be implemented on the state highway without Caltrans review and approval, so SamTrans must coordinate closely with Caltrans throughout the PID process.
Central El Camino Real Plan:
The Central El Camino Plan identifies corridor needs, defines alternatives, and selects alternative(s) to be advanced to the next phase based on an analysis of tradeoffs as well as community and stakeholder feedback. This will allow San Mateo to
CITY OF SAN MATEO
identify selected alternative(s) for inclusion in the countywide PID led by GBI.
El Camino Real is the main arterial of San Mateo County, connecting downtowns, businesses, schools, regional transit hubs, and other key destinations. While El Camino Real serves a range of trip purposes and users, its design reflects its historic role as a state highway focused on facilitating high speed auto travel. Consequently, the corridor is a barrier for pedestrians and cyclists and is challenging to navigate efficiently for buses.
Undertaking the Central El Camino Plan provides an opportunity to build upon San Mateo’s efforts related to El Camino Real over the years, including its TOD Pedestrian Access Plan (2022), Bicycle Master Plan (2020), and ongoing Complete Streets Plan. In outreach conducted during these plans, San Mateo residents have indicated concerns related to the heavy traffic volumes, including the lack of safe routes to schools, high-speed traffic, and a lack of bicycle and pedestrian facilities. Themes from past outreach conducted for El Camino Real include:
• Complete Streets: safety and connectivity gaps for walking and bicycling • Pedestrian Access: difficult crossings, narrow/obstructed sidewalks, and limited bus stop amenities • Safety: concerns about speeding, red light running, and crossing conditions The Central El Camino Plan incorporates this input and gathered additional feedback on the Plan through conducting pop- ups, community-based organization meetings, and listening sessions. The Central El Camino Plan identifies similar findings in Phase 1 of engagement, including the need for bus stop amenities and higher bus frequencies, safer pedestrian crossings and wider and better maintained sidewalks, more pedestrian-scale lighting, separated bike facilities, and better bus connections to Caltrain stations. This engagement, as well as findings from local and regional plans, was used to define potential design alternatives for El Camino Real.
Historically, implementing changes on this Caltrans facility has been difficult for cities with only a patchwork of improvements occurring over the past several decades. The development of the Central El Camino Plan is essential for San Mateo, in partnership with SamTrans and neighboring cities, to advance roadway safety and active transportation improvements. The Central El Camino Plan will fill a critical corridor planning gap that is necessary for San Mateo and its neighboring cities to complete the requisite planning for the first stage of the Caltrans project development process being led through GBI.
Relevance to Caltrans Paving Project:
It is important to note that the Central El Camino Real Plan and GBI are separate from the 04-4W730 State Highway Operation and Protection Program (SHOPP) project, which involves pavement resurfacing and upgrading of curb ramps to Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards on State Route 82 / El Camino Real from 43rd Avenue to E. Santa Inez Avenue in the City of San Mateo. The 04-4W730 SHOPP project is led by Caltrans, but City staff and SamTrans staff have been engaged throughout the project development process. This collaboration is critical to ensure that spot improvements that are safety critical are incorporated in the repaving effort as they can be delivered on a faster timeline.
Feedback Received from Sustainability and Infrastructure Commission:
SamTrans presented the Central El Camino Real Plan to the Sustainability and Infrastructure Committee (SIC) during Phase 1 of outreach on July 9, 2025. The following feedback was received:
• Commissioners encouraged SamTrans staff consider prohibiting and/or restricting left turns during rush hours in the downtown areas of the City on El Camino Real. SamTrans staff confirmed that this is a feature that is being considered as part of the Central El Camino Real Plan.
• Commissioners reinforced accessibility and narrow sidewalk concerns and curb cut issues.
SamTrans presented the Grand Boulevard Initiative to SIC on October 8, 2025. The following feedback was received:
• Commissioners expressed support for the Grand Boulevard Initiative but frustration over how long planning has taken. They raised concerns about El Camino’s poor pavement, traffic backups, and the need to explore limiting left turns during peak hours. They emphasized challenges around adding protected bike lanes due to parking or lane-removal trade-offs. Finally, they asked whether a full feasibility study of transit, biking, and walking improvements on El Camino has ever been done.
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Public Engagement:
SamTrans, in collaboration with the cities of San Mateo, Belmont, San Carlos and Redwood City, is conducting public engagement in three phases:
•Phase 1 (Spring/Summer 2025): Identify corridor gaps and needs •Phase 2 (Winter 2026): Present corridor alternatives and trade-offs •Phase 3 (Summer 2026): Present preferred alternative and implementation plan Phase 1 engagement included community pop-ups, meetings with community-based organizations, multilingual listening sessions, presentations, and an online interactive mapping tool along the corridor limits:
https://fp.mysocialpinpoint.com/central-el-camino-plan. For San Mateo, SamTrans hosted a pop-up table on the 4th of July at Central Park. A total of 310 comments collected through the Phase 1 engagement interactive mapping tool related to San Mateo.
Phase 2 engagement will run from January – February 2026 and will include the following activities in San Mateo listed below:
Activity Date Communications
Online survey January 12 – February
28 City and SamTrans social media, city
newsletters, signs at bus stops, printed
materials, mailers
Community-based organization
meeting outreach Mid to late January Focused engagement with community- based organizations
Pop-up community outreach at
the San Mateo Downtown
Library
January 12, February 7
City and SamTrans social media, city
newsletters
Virtual listening sessions February 4, 11, and 12
Focused engagement with target
audiences through
commissions/chambers (including the
Downtown San Mateo Association),
mailers
City Council presentation with
GBI February 23 City and SamTrans social media, city
newsletters
Virtual community workshop February 26 City and SamTrans social media, city newsletters, printed materials
The online survey provides cross section examples for the cities of San Mateo, Belmont, San Carlos and Redwood City, and prompts the user to select which alternative they prefer. For the City of San Mateo, the alternatives are as follows:
• Existing: What El Camino Real looks like today
• Transit: Faster bus service, wider sidewalks, and more trees • Pedestrian: Wider sidewalks and more trees
• Bicycle: Continuous separated bike lanes, wider sidewalks, and more trees Spot improvements which are anticipated to be included in all build alternatives are as follows:
• Safety
oTraffic calming
oTraffic signal gap closures
oMedians
oLighting
• Active Transportation
oCrosswalk improvements
oMore opportunities for crossing
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oStreet trees or urban greening
• Transit
oBus stop enhancements
oTransit signal priority
oAccess improvements
The focus of Phase 3 of the engagement process is to gather further input from City Council and stakeholders, to assist in selecting alternatives to be advanced into the Caltrans project development process.
The proposed alternatives have the potential to remove parking along El Camino Real. In Spring, City staff is proposing to supplement SamTrans’s engagement process by conducting an expanded parking occupancy study along El Camino Real to build upon SamTrans’s August 2025 parking occupancy study and to provide door-to-door engagement for businesses and gather additional feedback about the proposed alternatives. Staff is requesting a $70,000 appropriation of Measure A funds to support this effort. Feedback from this data gathering efforts will be summarized and presented to City Council together with the findings of the Phase 2 Engagement effort later this year. A resolution is proposed to appropriate these Measure A funds. If funds are not appropriated, staff would be reliant on the August 2025 parking occupancy study, which evaluated parking conditions only along El Camino Real and did not assess side-street or on-site parking capacity. Staff would also be unable to conduct door-to-door business engagement or support other additional data collection to inform Council’s selection of a preferred alternative.
More information about the project, the online survey, and upcoming engagement efforts is available at:
https://samtrans.com/CentralElCamino.
Next Steps:
Following completion of the Phase 2 engagement period, in late Spring or early Summer 2026, SamTrans staff will return to City Council with a summary of the feedback received through this community engagement and seek feedback from the City Council to select an alternative or alternatives for inclusion in the countywide PID led by GBI.
It is anticipated that it could take up to 8-10 years for full implementation of the project including construction, following completion of the Central El Camino Plan.
BUDGET IMPACT:
The Central El Camino Plan is funded by SamTrans and a Transit Performance Initiative (TPI) grant awarded by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). The study cost is $732,000, funded by a $407,000 MTC Transit Performance Initiative grant and $325,000 in SamTrans funds.
The GBI Action Plan and Project Initiation Document are funded by SamTrans, through a $2 million grant from the MTC, as well as a $250,000 grant of local transportation sales tax dollars from the San Mateo County Transportation Authority.
The City is providing in-kind staff support. Funding for in-kind staff time is supported by the Regional & Citywide Transportation Program Management (46r030) project. Funding for supplemental outreach for the Central El Camino Real project beyond in-kind staff time was not included in the Fiscal Year 2025-26 project budget but is recommended through the requested appropriation of $70,000 in the City’s Measure A funds to support a more robust data gathering and community engagement effort as part of this project.
ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINATION:
This Council action is exempt from CEQA, as it involves feasibility or planning studies for future City actions which has not been approved, adopted, or funded. (CEQA Guidelines Section 15262.)
NOTICE PROVIDED
All meeting noticing requirements were met.
CITY OF SAN MATEO
ATTACHMENTS
Att 1 – Proposed Resolution
STAFF CONTACT
Jay Yu, Engineering Manager
[email protected]
(650) 522-7323