San Carlos Downtown Specific Plan

The City of San Carlos (CA) sits in the midst of a regional urban ecosystem, between San Francisco and San Jose, with the US101 and Caltrain axes playing a huge role in the definition on its mobility patterns. starting in 2023 and in partnership with the San Carlos community, the city is creating a plan for downtown San Carlos, with the goal of fostering an equitable place offering social, economic, and recreational opportunities. on a mobility perspective, the project vision foresees a downtown with a balance of modes that emphasizes active and sustainable modes in support of a vibrant environment, with the overarching goal of minimizing auto-dependence.

Systematica US was invited by WRT to be part of a multidisciplinary team with the scope of developing a mobility strategy in support to the Specific Plan and develop microsimulations dynamic models to test the design scenarios. The analytical approach was built on an assessment of the demographic and mobility data of the city, defining user-specific mobility profiles, and understanding the relation with the neighboring cities. Moreover, a comprehensive complete street guidelines was developed, outlining best practices and case studies, and concurrently checked against the traffic surveys, to define an overall mobility strategy. This process took into account the plurality of city users, defining user personas to be put in the center of the conversation, both in terms of design process and as a tool to facilitate the engagement meetings the team took part in. Finally, a multimodal dynamic microsimulation model was developed, testing the current and the design scenarios, evaluating vehicles speeds, signal waiting time and intersection Level of Service to ensure that the plan was contributing to the improvement of the complex mobility framework of San Carlos.