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CITY OF SAN DIEGO
CIVIC SAN DIEGO

Introduction

City centers across the nation are experiencing revival and renaissance. Urbanized communities are becoming increasingly desirable, with more people showing interest in living and working in locations with a variety of mobility, cultural, entertainment, employment, and housing options. A combination of transportation strategies is needed to accommodate these shifting attitudes and accompanying influx of residents, employees, and visitors to urbanized areas – even more so in downtown areas already experiencing high concentrations of residential and employment populations.

The Downtown San Diego Mobility Plan (“Mobility Plan”) presents a balanced, multimodal long-range plan for transportation, setting the stage for Downtown San Diego (“Downtown”) to become a worldͲclass urban center that both accommodates high quality urban living for its residents and workers and attracts visitors from across the nation and world.

With these trends in mind, Civic San Diego and the City of San Diego are committed to a vision for Downtown that supports a lifestyle where active transportation options, specifically walking and bicycling, are comfortable, safe and fun.

Downtown Mobility Vision

An integrated transportation network of greenways, sidewalks, bikeways, transit services, roadways and freeways that provides for the safety of all travelers – including the elderly, youth and disabled – both within Downtown and to surrounding communities. It is a transportation network that provides convenient access to valuable community resources such as employment centers, parks and the waterfront, cultural and entertainment attractions, and civic uses. It is a transportation network that supports community health and well-being, promotes a strong economy, and also builds social capital.

The Mobility Plan emphasizes the development of active transportation networks and the improvement of the walking and cycling environments, as these modes are not as advanced as transit and auto networks in terms of safe, quality facilities.In addition, the City of San Diego has authority over these active transportation facilities while it does not operate transit services within the city.

The development of active transportation facilities will involve the repurposing of Downtown’s roadways with landscaping and greenery, providing streets where pedestrians and cyclists feel safe, and integrating a strong network of protected bikeways so that bicycle travel becomes a true option for the majority of residents and visitors.Taken together, implementation of this Plan promises to transform Downtown into a healthier, greener, economically vibrant city center with far-reaching attraction.

Downtown Travel Context

Downtown is unique compared to other communities in the San Diego region in terms of its mix, intensity, and concentration of land uses. These characteristics in turn create travel demands not experienced elsewhere in the region, supporting the need for a “complete streets” approach to mobility planning that accommodates and balances all travel modes.

When compared to the City of San Diego and the County of San Diego, Downtown residents report a relatively low rate of commuting by car.Downtown residents report much higher walking commute rates (17.7%) than the City of San Diego (2.9%) and the County (2.7%) and slightly higher cycling levels. The share of transit commuters is also higher in Downtown (6.1%) when compared to the City (3.9%) and the County (3.1%).

Notably, these data depict commuters traveling to work and do not reflect school commuters or other nonͲwork trips.In addition to commute mode differences, average commute times vary between these three geographies, with average Downtown commute travel times over 12% less than the County average.

Download full version (PDF): Downtown San Diego Draft Mobility Plan

About Civic San Diego
www.civicsd.com
Civic San Diego is a city-owned non-profit that is the entrepreneurial development partner for targeted urban neighborhoods. We are a one-stop shop with a Neighborhood Development Toolbox that lets us move quickly with public-private development projects and programs.

Tags: CA, California, City of San Diego, Civic San Diego, mobility, San Diego

This entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2016 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Biking, Buses, Congestion, Equity, Infra Views, Land Use, Local, Public Transportation, Smart Growth, Transit, Urban Planning . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.