More questions about the West Branch TIA

aShortChronicle has learned that the town has questions about the Transportation Impact Analysis completed back in March for the massive West Branch project designed by Commissioner Brian Jenest's firm.

Those questions go above and beyond what we raised in this piece, and the Town has questions out to Ramey Kemp, the firm that did the TIA, for more data before it can be accepted.

One of the main concerns we raised was that the baseline data for peak traffic did not completely cover the hours associated with pickup and dropoff times for local schools.

aShortChronicle has since learned that the hours  used in the study do not appear to meet the town's clearly specified planning standard. The planning ordinance says...

"The trip generation counts shall be taken between 6 to to 9 AM and 4 to 7 PM to verify a local, more accurate trip rate."

The detailed trip counts in the submitted Ramey Kemp document only cover 7-9 AM and 400-630 PM.

The "staff" here at aShortChronicle pulled together the below analysis to show how this could miss a portion if the traffic related to the main CMS schools in the area.

This raises a couple of issues.

1.  The town parameters in the afternoon miss a portion of traffic related to the bell schedules.  Considering the number of trips generated as well as the potential for additional pedestrian activity, this is significant.

2.  The Ramey Kemp time frame missed a significant portion of the AM traffic for Hough High than if it followed the town ordinance.

As examples of why this is important, two of the most significant accidents in recent years at the Robert Walker/Davidson Concord intersection occurred during these "missed" time frames. One was the Mason Stewart pedestrian accident which occurred at 630am.  The other involved multiple Hough High School students in a rollover accident at this intersection which occurred just before 3pm.

Additional questions are out to the town on who chose Ramey Kemp to do this analysis.  The town ordinance says...

"All required traffic studies shall be conducted at the expense of the developer by an engineer retained by the town."

One would think the parameters for such a study would be clear.

Add to that these facts...

- the TIA only shows data capture for one and a half days to get a baseline 
- and those days started the day after a holiday (Presidents Day)
- and that day happened to be the day after one of only a couple winter weather events this past season (Feb 15th storm).

Pull all that together and one may get the idea the baseline data might not be all that representative of your typical day.

Stay tuned.  More certain to come on this one.