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With increased contiguous urbanization a more closely spaced grid of arterials must be developed to preclude the necessity of ultimately spending substantial funds to extensively widen existing facilities in order to increase their capacity. Because of the transportation corridor nature of the "panhandle" portion of the County, decisions must be reached in a means of increasing the capacity of present facilities within the system, Because of the lack of river crossings other than 694 in the east- west corridor, consideration must be given to the development of a Northtown facility. Opportunities Opportunities for development present themselves in a direct relation- ship to accessibility, all else being equal. A hierarchy of development opportunities are, and will become, available to the County based on future developments in the transportation system. That is to say, the areas most ripe for development are those located near metropolitan-wide transportation facilities, specifically near land access interchanges. Development opportunities are not restricted to proximity to metropolitan- wide facilities, but are present to a lesser degree at the points of confluence on the County arterial system. This implies, of course, that the County and state road networks can work to shape development in the County. Opportunities exist to control development through increasing the accessibility to areas where development is desirable but presently constrained because of lack of accessibility. Increasing accessibility to any area of the County will generally increase its potential for development. Therefore, a primary policy which should be utilized in developing the County arterial system is to increase accessibility to areas where growth is desired in the form of an arterial grid which will help insure compactness of development and avoid the "leap frogging" which occurs when accessibility to land is not uniformly available. Through the recent development of Highway 10 and 1-35W and 35E and the potential development of a Northtown arterial, the County has a unique opportunity to optimize the effect of these facilities prior to extensive development adjacent to their access points. Without an arterial system to support the presently provided access on these freeways, extreme development pressure will occur near the interchange points. However, if the area of accessibility can be increased through an expanded arter- ial system, development can be constrained to compact units which can be easily served. By providing a system which gives land-access to develop- ments at points other than adjacent to an interchange, congestion at the interchanges can be reduced. 32 I I I I I I I I I I ! I I !