Agenda - Council - 04/23/2013 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Ramsey Town Center Traffic Analysis Some trips generated by a mixed -use development of the project type will move between uses within the development site and not reach intersections external to the site and should be excluded from traffic. assignment at those locations. This internal trip making is attributed to the interaction between various land uses in a development. Additionally, some trips will take alternate forms of transport, which can be bicycling, walking, and use of transit. The presence of sidewalks, street network density and proximity to transit facilities affect the amount of trip making by non -auto modes. Because of the limited nature of transit service to the site, no reductions have been made for alternate mode use. Rather, a single factor was used to calculate the percentage of trips that would remain internal to the proposed redevelopment. This factor considers the diversity of uses within the project and their potential to create linked trips among the project land uses. This factor is based on ITE data for mixed -use developments and is a function of the size and mix of land uses. For the proposed project, the diversity factor indicates that approximately nine percent of AM peak trips and about 16 percent of PM peak trips would be internal. No adjustments for pass -by or diverted traffic9 within the site were made, although some of the uses would warrant incorporation of such reductions. Accordingly, the amount of linked trips is conservatively low in relation to the scale and mix of land uses. Trip generation and linked trip calculations are shown in the Appendix. Northstar riders who would park and ride from the site were included in the analysis, but were added directly to the intersection traffic assignment and are not shown in the trip generation numbers in Table 1. Trio Distribution/Traffic Assignment Trip distribution refers to the distribution of new trips entering and exiting the site from various directions. The direction of approach percentages for the site -generated trips were estimated using forecast data for zones in the project area from the Metropolitan Council's regional travel demand forecasting model. Figure 6 shows the estimated percentage of future direction of approach trip distribution from the proposed site. The regional forecasts used for this analysis did not include the new river crossing. Accordingly, traffic distribution is highly biased with about 43 percent of the trips being made to and from the south and east along TH 10 (this also includes traffic destined south on TH 169). It should be noted that with the new Mississippi River crossing, approximately one-third to one-half of the project trips on TH 10 to the south and east would redistribute to the new crossing.10 Assignment of the project trips to turning movements at various intersections was conducted using a TRAFFIX model of the study area. The model used the directional distribution percentages shown in Figure 6 and provided a detailed assignment of trips to streets inside the project site as well as to the external network. The Future with Project conditions were developed by adding the project trip generation to the Future Base volumes and adding 150 peak hour Northstar rider trips to the resulting assignments. Since the existing site is largely vacant and not generating any traffic, no adjustments were made to subtract existing trips from the project site. Figures 7 and 8 show the AM and PM peak hour turning movements for the Future with Project conditions. 9 Pass -by and diverted trips are opportunity trips that are already on the street system and divert to a new land use. As such, these trips are included in the counted traffic volumes (other than at site access points) and are double - counted in the trip generation rates for some retail uses. 10 See Ramsey Smart Growth Twin Cities Opportunity Site (Calthorpe Associates, 2003) March 2003 Meyer. Mohaddes Associates. Inc. 11