Agenda Packets - 2002/04/01 - Laserfiche WebLink

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The basic 3-C (continuing, comprehensive and coordinated) comprehensive planning approach was used to examine demographic and land use issues along the TH 10 corridor. One-on-one meetings with each community were held to obtain a variety of land use, zoning, and population data. This data was then reviewed and summarized by growth segment and sub-area along the corridor. The information suggests significant population increases (on the order of 60 to over 400 percent) and a strong growth trend in commercial development can be expected in the corridor. The forecasted future residential, industrial, and commercial development could result in high levels of traffic generation and demands for additional access to TH 10. To obtain an understanding of the environmental constraints and opportunities within the TH 10 corridor, a series of regional and statewide databases were reviewed and various regulatory agencies were contacted to identify environmental resources and assess the potential for impacts. This environmental overview was not intended to be a comprehensive review of all environmental concerns and does not constitute an environmental review document (Environmental Assessment or Environmental Impact Statement). The review process indicates that environmental issues exist throughout the corridor at some level and that additional (more detailed) analysis of possible environmental consequences will be required for any subsequent TH 10 improvement projects. Identification of Deficiencies The process of identifying deficiencies along the TH 10 corridor consisted of comparing the previously documented key existing and forecasted roadway conditions in each of the twelve roadway segments to ten the established corridor performance measures for traffic operations, safety, mobility, access and the potential for traffic signal proliferation. This process was developed to answer the following critical questions: • Are there deficiencies in the corridor? • If so, where are they? • What are the characteristics? The process was set up to answer these questions prior to developing potential improvement strategies because not all roadway improvements are equally capable of mitigating the entire array of transportation deficiencies. Therefore, having a basic understanding of the characteristics of the problem allows for the development of the most cost-effective solutions. Identification, Evaluation, and Selection of Alternatives In order to mitigate the deficiencies identified, a variety of alternative roadway improvements were developed and evaluated. Basically, the improvements focused on improving mobility and reducing congestion by either increasing the number of through lanes along TH 10 or increasing the efficiency of the existing through lanes by converting them from an expressway to a freeway design (this