Orange County NC Website
12 <br /> 330 Charity Kirk: So, it would become a conditional zoning district anyway? <br /> 331 <br /> 332 Cy Stober: Well, pending approval by the county board of commissioners and the recommendation of the <br /> 333 planning board, but yes. <br /> 334 <br /> 335 Charity Kirk: Okay. <br /> 336 <br /> 337 Cy Stober: It would go through the same process, regardless of whether it was conventional subdivision or a <br /> 338 conservation cluster. <br /> 339 <br /> 340 Charity Kirk: Okay. While you figure that out, the traffic stuff because that was a big discussion point, and it <br /> 341 seems like it is a problem along that road. And you're not proposing any solutions; you're waiting <br /> 342 for the DOT to do something. <br /> 343 <br /> 344 Beth Trahos: Well, and I'm going to ask Josh Reinke to come forward, but I would say, no traffic-impact analysis <br /> 345 was required either by county regulation or by NCDOT. And we have had Josh do some <br /> 346 investigation, and I'll let him tell you about it. <br /> 347 <br /> 348 Josh Reinke: Yeah, so and I guess in terms of when you say solutions,you're saying like turn lanes and things <br /> 349 like that, correct? <br /> 350 <br /> 351 Charity Kirk: Yeah, I mean people brought up the stoplights down the road that, I mean, is not even on your <br /> 352 property, but yes, center turn lanes, things that could address the community issues and the <br /> 353 issues that I heard expressed on the board for the increased traffic load, and also this packet that <br /> 354 was left that's talking about the traffic study being, I don't know if you saw. <br /> 355 <br /> 356 Josh Reinke: Yeah, I've seen it. <br /> 357 <br /> 358 Charity Kirk: The traffic study not being estimated correctly because the homes are going to be four bedrooms <br /> 359 not two and a half bedrooms. <br /> 360 <br /> 361 Josh Reinke: Correct. And I'll talk a little bit about that kind of high level and kind of dive into what you're <br /> 362 asking. So, in terms of the traffic study, because I saw, I called ITE, I got this bit of information. 1 <br /> 363 took this bit from here, kind of cobbled something together. DOT, I mean, it's in there. We even <br /> 364 had county staff talk to DOT recently. We did the traffic study following guidelines of the county <br /> 365 and NCDOT. That's how I'm required,as a professional engineer pre-qualified. I can't take a <br /> 366 piece here and a piece here and sort of cobble it together. A lot of the stuff was talking about the <br /> 367 average size of the house, and then ITE does this,and why didn't we use bedrooms and things <br /> 368 like that. There are guidelines we have. It's based on downloading units. They look at, <br /> 369 nationally, different sized houses, so some might be larger,some might have less bedrooms. It's <br /> 370 the way NCDOT does require it. Now, keep in mind,they didn't require a traffic study;the client <br /> 371 asked me to perform one just to see those impacts. And we provided it to NCDOT. They did <br /> 372 provide a review. They agreed with our findings. So,this is where it comes into some of that stuff <br /> 373 of what are we going to do there is typically, in terms of when a traffic study isn't required, NCDOT <br /> 374 says you still need to get a driveway permit from us. You're going to have to dive into that design <br /> 375 stuff. We're going to tell you if you need turn lanes at your site driveways, things like that. So, <br /> 376 essentially,this is indicating no,we're not; no,we're under the threshold to require us to study off- <br /> 377 site intersections and improve things that are already a problem. We're looking at what is the <br /> 378 impact of our development. So,we have,just to kind of be proactive is we had our survey team <br /> 379 go out there and look at the site distance. It's been submitted to NCDOT. They have to do a field <br /> 380 evaluation,also, to check that and then they will let us know. And by let us know, I mean whether <br /> 381 it's restricting a driveway;and I'm not speaking on behalf of DOT; I'm saying these are options. <br /> 382 They might say we want a center turn lane. Get that traffic out of there. They might say we want <br /> 383 to restrict it to a right in, right out, because we have some concerns there where we don't want the <br /> 384 left-turning movement because the site distance isn't good enough. There are all sorts of options <br />