The San Mateo Peninsula and surrounding communities experienced a time of tremendous prosperity during the tech boom, the benefits of which included economic growth, low unemployment, and burgeoning personal and state government budgets. But the Peninsula also suffered some negative impacts of this prosperity: communities throughout the County have experienced increased traffic congestion, air pollution, and a near nonexistent and prohibitively expensive housing stock. Local school districts, law enforcement and fire protection agencies, hospitals, and professional trades have reported that it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract and retain quality employees because of these problems. Similarly, companies upon whose success the County's economic prosperity depended began to report that many of their employees were no longer willing to commute for hours a day from and to their homes in other parts in and around the Bay Area.

Since the tech bubble burst, office space has become increasingly less expensive while housing has not. The lack of afford-able housing in many parts of the Peninsula is primarily the result of high barriers of entry to developers and a tendency of local communities to choose land uses such as big box retail, auto sales and hotel which contribute tax revenues to help replace real property tax revenues capped by Proposition 13. Because of this, those who succeed in finding places to live are becoming an increasingly rarefied lot; this will have a detrimental effect on the County's economy.

Even before the "dot com bomb," in August 2000, The San Mateo County Economic Development Association (SAMCEDA) helped form the Peninsula Policy Partnership (P3) to form public and private partnerships to address County-wide issues through consensus among local residents, business leaders, government officials, and transportation, housing, environmental, and planning experts. Through a series of Countywide workshops, the group embarked on a strategic plan that comprehensively addresses the fundamental transportation, land use, housing, and economic needs of the Peninsula and is documented in their publication "Moving from Talk to Action,". As a member of P3, SamTrans has assumed the lead funding role along with contributions from the County and the participating cities to work with communities in San Mateo County to create consensus among local community leaders and the public to create a plan which strategically addresses transportation, land use/housing and economic needs of the Peninsula. SamTrans, as both the regional transit provider and managing partner of Caltrain, contracted for the services of Project for Public Spaces to conduct the planning process because of the organization's holistic approach to the issues of concern. The name of this plan is the Peninsula Corridor Plan.

The plan's goal of creating vibrant livable communities which link housing, transit and public spaces dovetails an effort being undertaken by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)-Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS), the policy initiative to better address the natural, cultural, and built environments around State roads. The transportation community is turning its attention to local communities and the linkage between land uses and the transportation systems that connect them and the need to re-instate America's main streets on the state highway system.

For years, context insensitive solutions were applied to main streets across the United States as state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) widened them to the point that they no longer served as comfortable, walkable shopping streets; sidewalks were narrowed, on-street parking removed, and street trees replaced with asphalt. In the last few years, though,
the Federal Highway Administration and several state DOTs have become increasingly interested in flexible, context-sensitive, and dual-purpose projects. Focus is shifting away from just the roadway, bus stop, or sidewalk to how transportation facilities can help make places more economically stable, safer, and more productive. This is a more synergistic approach than the one that has traditionally been used, one that sees transportation as part of a greater whole rather than as just an end in and of itself.

Caltrain and SamTrans are also adopting this synergistic approach. Caltrain has experienced 50% growth in rideship over the last five years, and has increased its level of service from 60 to 80 trains on weekdays. It has also been improving its infrastructure with new stations in San Francisco, San Mateo, Hayward Park, Belmont, San Carlos, Redwood City, Menlo Park, and Mountain View; grade separations in Millbrae, Belmont, San Carlos, Redwood City, and 5th Avenue in unincorporated San Mateo County in the past five years; and new or rebuilt track, grade crossings, signals, and bridges along the corridor. In the future, Caltrain expects additional increases in rider ship due to additional population growth, improvements to the level of service, and economic expansion.