Agenda 03-19-24; 5-a - Zoning Atlas Amendment – 6915-UT Millhouse Road, Chapel Hill

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123 Since the County cannot count on Crown Castle's agreement to move its access road, any requirement imposed upon the Treeist to construct a second access road runs the risk of ending up with two roads traversing the Old Field Creek, the riparian buffer, and the wildlife corridor. Moreover, since neither of these two roads may be well positioned to satisfy access needs of the future soccer complex, a third access road may yet be needed. This outcome, with the land divided by multiple redundant roads, might prompt an ironic parsing of the name "Millhouse Road Park." The Safety of Children Up until now, the brief traffic data note in our site plan has overrepresented by nearly a factor of two the amount of traffic that we will create at this location.'At our present size, we would generate approximately 64 trips per day total.'As we gradually grow this total will also grow. Still, even at our most ambitious size, I project generating not more than 164 trips per day from the new location.' Mr. Stancil foresees a possible future in which "parents and children crossing back and forth across [the access road] to access vehicles or other fields" and that our commercial use of the access road gives him "serious concerns about the safety of future users of the facility, especially small children." It is easy to feel that no cost is too high when attempting to reduce hazards to young children. This, however, is a faulty approach to risk. It would prevent the soccer complex from being built in the first place. For a small child, getting hit by a 3,500 pound Prius is not better than getting hit by a 20,000 pound chip truck. It is, moreover, far less likely for a chip truck to sneak up on you in the way that Prius will. The riskiest time and place for a child will be when none of our trucks are in sight. It will be during a busy Saturday in the crowded parking lot between the soccer games. The most dangerous driver for small children will not be the professional driver of our larger trucks who holds a commercial license subject to more stringent standards. The most dangerous driver 6 1 am at fault for not looking at the traffic data site plan note more carefully. When I was originally considering this question of traffic, I was most mindful of the 800 trips per day threshold that triggers a need for a Traffic Impact Analysis (UDO section 6.17). Knowing that whatever we did we would be far below this threshold, I did not take due care in counting how little traffic we actually would end up generating. 7 Presently we have about eighteen employees who, on a week-day, arrive and leave from our company headquarters on a regular basis (other employees, such as consultants and some office staff typically work from home). Of these, only fourteen of these employees create two, instead of one, to-and-fro trips to our company headquarters per day. If we count arrival and departures as separate trips, we get a grand total of 64 trips per day. 8 Long-term we may have as many as twelve 3-person crews. This is all that our site plan is designed to accommodate. This means that, at maximum, we may have 36 employees who make two to-and-fro trips to the company headquarters. Auxiliary support staff that also need to be at the company headquarters on a daily basis may add about nine more individuals, but these will typically make only one to-and-fro trip. While we will have additional employees, our consultants and some of our office staff will continue to typically work from their homes, as they do now. 5