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45 <br />The 1999 Orange County Bicycle Transportation Plan was utilized in the development <br />of the bicycle element of the CTP. Orange County currently contains the Mountains to <br />Sea Trail, also known as NC Bike Route 2, which runs along Old Greensboro Road (SR <br />1005) within the planning area. Although much of the bicycling that presently occurs in <br />Orange County is for recreational purposes, the proposed network of bicycle <br />recommendations in the CTP, when combined with connections recommended in <br />neighboring plans by Durham - Chapel Hill - Carrboro (DCHC) MPO and Burlington <br />Graham MPO, will present additional commuting opportunities as well. Detailed <br />coordination was specifically performed with the draft DCHC MPO 2040 Metropolitan <br />Transportation Plan (MTP) and CTP as it was under development, to ensure consistent <br />connections across planning boundaries throughout the county. <br />Orange County also has a pedestrian plan in progress that was utilized in the <br />development of the pedestrian element of the CTP. <br />Inventories of existing and planned bicycle and pedestrian facilities for the planning area <br />are presented on Sheets 4 and 5 of Figure 1. All recommendations for bicycle and <br />pedestrian facilities were coordinated with the local governments and the NCDOT <br />Division of Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation. Refer to Appendix A for contact <br />information. <br />Land Use <br />G.S. §136 -66.2 requires that local areas have a current (less than five years old) land <br />development plan prior to adoption of the CTP. For this CTP, the 2030 Orange County <br />Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2008, was used to meet this requirement and is <br />illustrated in Fiaure 6. <br />Land use refers to the physical patterns of activities and functions within an area. <br />Traffic demand in a given area is, in part, attributed to adjacent land use. For example, <br />a large shopping center typically generates higher traffic volumes than a residential <br />area. The spatial distribution of different types of land uses is a predominant <br />determinant of where, where, and to what extent traffic congestion occurs. The travel <br />demand between different land uses and the resulting impact on traffic conditions varies <br />depending on the size, ,type, intensity, and spatial separation of development. <br />Additionally, traffic volumes have different peaks based on the time of day and the day <br />of the week. For transportation planning purposes, land use is divided into the following <br />categories: <br />Residential: Land devoted to the housing of people, with the exception of hotels <br />and motels which are considered commercial. <br />Commercial: Land devoted to retail trade including consumer and business <br />services and their offices; this may be further stratified into retail and special <br />retail classifications. Special retail would include high- traffic establishments, <br />1 -15 <br />