Developing San Diego's North Coast Corridor TDM Plan

As an important transportation link for commuter, commercial, and recreational travel, the Interstate-5 North Coast Corridor (NCC) is among the most heavily traveled stretches of freeway in the United States, with average daily traffic of over 200,000 vehicles. This is expected to increase to over 300,000 by 2040, with continuous congestion predicted throughout the day.

How we helped

Steer led the development of the NCC TDM Plan, in coordination with SANDAG and Caltrans, which provided multi-modal solutions to help manage congestion during construction and act as a foundation for continued travel behavior change in the area.

Successes and outcomes

The project included extensive market research and stakeholder engagement with employers, schools, residents, special uses, local jurisdictions and other agencies along the corridor to help determine motivators for changing travel behavior. The final Plan included customized and geographically-focused TDM programs as well as overarching initiatives serving to strengthen TDM messaging and communications. Outreach and marketing strategies, performance measures and monitoring, and program administration and budgets were also part of the Plan. Key findings and outcomes included:

• Recommendation to create a more proactive and engaging outreach approach for Employer-based TDM. SANDAG subsequently contracted Steer to create and implement a new employer outreach strategy for the whole region.
• Recommendation to develop construction-focused TDM initiative. Steer subsequently developed a new construction and TDM brand, a web portal and a social media strategy and is creating an outreach strategy for a pilot project in the University City area.
• Teleworking has huge potential in the North Coast but there is a big gap between what employees want and what employers are willing to offer. SANDAG has subsequently developed a pilot project to work with employers to promote teleworking.