Countywide Issues

A decade of increasing transit ridership and improving levels of transit service suggests that Peninsula communities are ripe for a revitalization of downtown living. Adding housing around transit centers may be part of the solution to the acute housing crisis and can support efforts to revitalize downtowns all along the corridor. Often dominated by parking lots, wide streets, and underutilized properties, the areas around the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (Caltrain and Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) stations represent enormous unmet potential as centers of community activity that will increase transit ridership and reduce traffic congestion.

A new approach is required to unleash this potential-one that cuts through traditional bureaucratic and administrative barriers and taps the creative visions of local communities. Building on their strategic plan, "Moving from Talk to Action," Samceda and Peninsula Policy Partnership (P3) have joined together with the San Mateo County Transit District (SamTrans), Caltrain and the County of San Mateo to work with communities in the County to identify problems and opportunities for enlivening the downtown districts around their transit facilities. The regional initiative targets communities along the rail corridor-the area bounded by El Camino Real and Highway 101. It parallels and complements SamTrans' collaboration with the City-County Association of Governments of San Mateo County (C-CAG) to develop the Countywide Transportation Plan 2010.

The process used to facilitate the regional initiative is guided by Project for Public Spaces, Inc. (PPS), and begins by bringing together diverse parties with an interest in these station areas to identify problems, share plans, create a vision, and go forward collaboratively to achieve that vision. Because these areas typically have overlapping jurisdictions, stakeholders often include the City government and staff, private sector representatives, merchants, property owners, and residents from the communities, along with representatives from SamTrans-Caltrain, and Caltrans, which operate the transportation
facilities along the peninsula corridor.

Through a participatory and interactive planning process, an overall "Placemaking" strategy for upgrading the areas around or near transit stations is developed to help provide a framework for implementation of both short- and long-term improvements by
the local community, which later can be formalized into planning guidelines and regulations that steer future decision-making by the transportation agencies. The participatory Placemaking strategy's recommendations-including improvements that can be made immediately and at relatively low cost-all aim to create a people-friendly destination, with mixed uses and gathering places. This report is organized according to the following
themes:

• Project Background
  


• The PPS Placemaking Approach
  


• The Place Performance Evaluation Game