Intersection of Holly and El Camino Real

A major arterial road, the historic El Camino Real serves as a major retail street — mainly for strip retail — but acts as a divider between downtown and east side neighborhoods. El Camino Real recently underwent improvements: it was widened and the median improved. The intersection of El Camino and Holly Street has the heaviest turning volumes in San Carlos, with traffic using Holly to and from the 101 Freeway.

Issues

Crossing El Camino Real.

El Camino Real is an extremely busy arterial lined with a rich mixture of businesses; participants noted that there are very few empty storefronts along the roadway, and liked its mix of uses which serve a regional clientele. They also saw its proximity to downtown as an opportunity for growth, and felt that, with slower traffic and with more pedestrian and on-street activity, it could act as a connector between the east and west sides of town.

Participants in the workshops, which included representatives from Caltrans, felt that El Camino Real created a nearly impenetrable barrier. With fast moving traffic, and wide streets, participants found crossing streets very difficult. Sidewalks are very narrow in many locations, and interrupted by driveways. El Camino is a particular barrier south of San Carlos Avenue, where there are no signalized intersections and a continuous median that prevent left turns to businesses on the west side of the street. Vehicles seem to travel at higher speeds as well. At the main intersection at the station itself (at San Carlos), there is a crosswalk on the south side, only. Participants also noted that traffic lanes next to the curb seem excessively wide in some locations, given that there is no parking.

Opportunities

The recommendations that the participants made with regard to El Camino Real, along with their other ideas, add up to an evolution of the arterial from its current status as a relatively pedestrian-hostile environment to a "Grand Boulevard".

An improved El Camino would act as a draw to local residents and visitors, make it feasible for people to live above the stores along El Camino, create a setting for potential new development, support and enhance existing businesses, connect the east and west sides of the community, and be better suited for its role as a downtown Main Street. With this transformation, the road would in turn aid the transformation of the train depot into a central place, provide balanced access, and benefit the lively downtown mix.

Workshop participants recommended landscaping the corridor, planting more trees, and adding diagonal parking on the west side of El Camino Real. They also suggested the addition of public art, street furniture, kiosks with business and city information on the east side, and more interesting retail and restaurants.

Attendees at the workshop suggested frontage roads, like those found along El Camino Real in Millbrae, as a way to effectively buffer local traffic, pedestrians, residents, and businesses, from through traffic. Finally, they felt that a gateway feature would be a suitable ingredient for the grand boulevard, and proposed two ideas: using the bridge at the Holly Street grade separation to identify the entry into San Carlos; and creating a new gateway feature, using a portion of the gas station and the Mexican restaurant to take over the lot as a park. The CAC has suggested the following goals for El Camino:

• Make it pedestrian friendly
• Integrate into the community
• Control excess speeds
• Develop setting for new development
• Support and enhance existing businesses
• Connect east and west sides of community
• Connect to Laurel
• Create a boulevard feeling, not a highway

As part of its work with the City and PPS, Caltrans staff took an initial look at the potential for redesigning El Camino Real. Subject to additional traffic analysis, Caltrans feels that the road has excess capacity that can be "trimmed" to obtain a configuration of two lanes in each direction (northbound and south-bound) with a central left turn lane. Parking can be added where necessary, and extra right turn lanes provided at Holly.

Within this basic constraint, PPS, working with Caltrans, has developed a series of four alternative configurations for El Camino Real in the area of the train station. These alternatives included:

1. Widening the central median

2. Adding frontage roads to the west side of El Camino in front of new development

3. Adding a frontage road to the east side in front of existing businesses.

4. Widening sidewalks with a smaller central median. More discussion with El Camino Real merchants and other stakeholders is needed in the Phase B of the project. Should any of the above changes be recommended as part of the Plan of Development, there should be consensus with all of the El Camino Real stakeholders, however, to ensure that any changes to El Camino are integrated with and help shape development of future land uses and have a positive impact on buses, parking, and pedestrians. The following factors were identified by the CAC in deciding the future El Camino configuration.