Thoroughfare plans establish a vision for future corridor improvements by providing a framework for planning and engineering priorities through context-sensitive functional classification of roadways and establishing design guidelines that include considerations for pedestrians, cyclists and transit services. Stakeholder engagement, growth plans and policy, roadway safety and capacity and future travel demand are essential factors influencing thoroughfare planning.
Burgess & Niple currently leads the planning effort to update thoroughfare plans and related documents for unincorporated Licking County and the county seat, the City of Newark.
The critical tasks for this project include stakeholder focus groups and targeted stakeholder interviews, a review of travel demand model outputs and crash data and the assessment of development trends to define the expected future land use context classifications. Subsequent tasks included defining current and proposed key travel corridors, establishing development context-sensitive typical sections and recommending right-of-way preservation requirements for their construction.
Given the pace of development, defining a future planning context is a particular challenge in Licking County. For the past two decades, portions of the county have been quickly transitioning from farms and homesteads to subdivisions and warehousing. Still, the pace of this growth will likely increase since the announcement of Intel's New Albany microprocessor factory and area utilities expanding their water and wastewater systems.
Outputs from the planning effort included thoroughfare plans for Licking County and The City of Newark and Access Management Standards and Traffic Impact Studies Regulations for the City of Newark.