Town Center Potential Impacts - Traffic

The Town Center Plan updates under consideration includes investments in new local street grids, intersection improvements, expanded sidewalks, safer bike lanes, and multimodal options to mitigate higher traffic volumes in, through and around Town Center.  Increases in housing density enhance the viability of transit long-term.

Analysis has shown that even with 4,000  housing units, traffic impacts would fall within the City's adopted level of service. The exception to this would be traffic on Southeast 8th Street & 212th Avenue Southeast, which can be mitigated.

All projects are evaluated at permit stage through concurrency requirements.  Based on the current rate of growth, it’s expected to take over 50 years to build 4,000 housing units. Even if Town Center was fully built in half that time, this is easily manageable and provides a reasonable timeline to plan for, fund, and construct infrastructure.

New Connector Roads in Town Center Help Address 228^th Corridor Congestion

One of the most frequent comments we hear is around delays and inconveniences associated with traffic on the segment of 228^th Ave between Discovery Elementary and Northeast 8^th Street/Inglewood Hill Road, generally associated with school schedules and lack of transportation network options. The proposed addition of connector roads within Town Center will provide alternative routes and reduce the number of trips and turning movements through key congestion points, primarily 228^th/8^th Southeast and 228^th/4^th Southeast. The addition of new connector streets, such as Southeast 1^st, Southeast 6^th, 224^th, 230^th, and 232^nd with important intersection reconfigurations will provide parallel and alternative travel routes.

Who will pay for improvements?

As with all developments within the city, the developer pays for all infrastructure to serve their project. The city may step in to fill off-site gaps in infrastructure where needed. This is paid for by impact fees and is the intended use of impact fees. The Town Center has produced nearly $5 million in street impact fees and over $1 million in park impact fees. For the remainder of Town Center, the city is estimated to receive between $27 and $36 million in street impact fees and $14 million and $19 million in park impact fees, which can be utilized to address gaps in infrastructure and ensure impacts are mitigated.