San Mateo gets feedback on General Plan

The April 15 workshop showed three draft land use map alternatives that represent a range of different approaches to future growth, land-use changes and transportation improvements. The city sought to gather community input on whether the alternatives were the right range of scenarios to evaluate in the next phase of the General Plan update.

The General Plan provides a vision for the city’s long-term goals for growth and conservation in the next 20 years for topics like housing, transportation, open space and land use, among others. The city uses the General Plan to guide decisions about zoning, permitted development, provision of public services and transportation improvements.

The final land use alternative would provide a vision for what can be built and where, at what density and the type of use. The city has produced three options for future land-use changes. Alternative A prioritizes creating a walkable community with pedestrian corridors and safety improvements for pedestrians. Suggestions include implementing traffic calming, safety improvements near highway on-ramps, and a two-block pedestrian-only street downtown. Alternative B prioritized increasing and improved mass transit access at major connections in San Mateo, including prioritizing high-occupancy vehicle and bus lanes and improvements to El Camino Real. Alternative C would combine Alternative A and B while updating the downtown urban design. The city is looking at superblocks inspired by the city of Barcelona that would divert cut-through vehicles to create a pedestrian-focused, car-light space downtown.

Horrisberger said it was too early in the process to make any conclusions or points about Thursday’s meeting, other than it was another step in gathering information through the city’s community outreach process. She attended the meeting but did not have a takeaway yet on the public feedback other than the city will reexamine the comments for more information.

Horrisberger was happy to see around 50 new people at the meeting, as some are still adjusting to the virtual environment. The purpose of the meeting was to identify if the city had the right range of alternatives and to ensure it was the right range and nothing needed to be added. She said common questions were about the three different alternatives and land use.

Major themes from the meeting focused on traffic congestion safety, pedestrian safety, bicycle options, transit improvements, sidewalk and crosswalks improvements and redevelopment options of parts of San Mateo.

Robert Whitehair, a resident of San Mateo, was concerned about the chronic underfunding of pedestrian and bike options and stressed the importance of finding urban planning solutions outside of cars, particularly given the environmental damage they cause.

“The time of the cars is over. If we continue to fund cars, we are going nowhere,” he said.

The city will finalize a single draft alternative and create a preferred scenario after evaluating and comparing alternatives in the coming months. The preferred option will become the updated land use map and transportation network. The General Plan Subcommittee will give input at its May 18 meeting, with input from the Planning Commission in June and City Council in July. An online survey will be up until May 2 on the strivesanmateo.org website on the three alternatives.

curtis@smdailyjournal.com

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