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

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62 student needs a separate ride to and from school, this generates 1040 trips-per-day. Looking at only the Chapel Hill Public Works parking lot that is located in the Rural Buffer, I count what appears to be 125 employee vehicles. The staff represented by these 125 parked vehicles likely represents 500 trips-per-day.' If Orange County fulfills its plan to build six lighted soccer fields in the adjacent parcels, we could expect 1,920 trips-per-day for the soccer complex on a weekend game day.4 Peak Traffic Times Traffic is mainly a problem when it leads to congestion. Congestion is created when lots of vehicles are trying to use the road at the same time. The traffic we create occurs almost entirely on weekdays between 6:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. This is when crew members are arriving for their 7am start time and then leave with their crew vehicles to work throughout the area during the day. Part of the benefit of starting this early is that our employees largely avoid morning traffic from school and commuter traffic. When we have occasionally delayed start times by an hour or two, we have found that employees arrive to work late due to traffic delays.5 At the end of the work day, the flow of our vehicles is more staggered with crews returning when their tasks are accomplished. Keeping an 8-hour work day, however, means that our employees have typically left our lot by 3pm. Again, this is earlier than most commuter traffic, and certainly earlier than high usage weekday hours of the anticipated soccer complex. County soccer fields generally only experience high usage during weekends or on weekdays well after school lets out. It is rare for our tree crews to be working during evening and weekend hours. The exception is for tree-related emergencies, typically caused by extreme weather events. Vehicle Routes Direction of travel and high-use routes are also worth noting. We anticipate that the vast majority of our usage of Millhouse Road will be for the portion south of the residential locations. We 3 I assume that Public Works employees park their personal vehicles and then, in a manner similar to our crew staff, will at some point during the day leave and then return to the lot in some Public Works truck or vehicle. I am not including the obvious service vehicles in the adjoining areas, nor the approximately 150 additional employee parking spaces south of the buildings, which is likely parking for staff who primarily work in offices. 'Assume that each soccer team has 12 players and 2 coaches. Each child and each coach arrives in a separate vehicle. Four of the parents simply drop their children off at the game, driving back to pick them up afterwards. Two grandparents arrive in separate vehicles to watch their grandchildren play. All told, this yields a total of 40 vehicle trips per team per game. Since there are two teams per game, there are 80 vehicle trips per soccer game. If there are six soccer fields this gives us 480 vehicle trips per game slot. If there are four game slots per game day, we have a total of 1,920 vehicle trips per Saturday during soccer season at the soccer complex. 5 Posted online office/business hours confirm our on-the-ground experience. While our business hours are weekdays from 7am to 3pm, the posted hours of Emerson Waldorf's office is between 8am to 4pm during the school year and even later during the summer. Staff at the Public Works are typically available between 8am and 5pm. 2