8.2. SR 05-19-2014 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Chapter 3: Using the Plan / 11 Elk River Comprehensive Plan ·Which streets should be part of the City’s state aid system and eligible for funding with municipal state aid for streets? ·Are other sources of local revenue available to support this initiative? ·How can the City most effectively leverage funding from the County and State? A key strategy to understand existing conditions and what future improvements are needed would be to complete a pavement rating and program management exercise to rate all of the City’s existing street network. This will inform the City of where we are and where we need to be in the future in terms of our existing street network. Interchange Area Planning While the actual improvement of highway corridors may lie years into the future, the City beneﬁ ts from the continuing proactive approach to planning for the interchange areas. The location and design of intersections with Highway 169 and Highway 10 have signiﬁ cant implications for land use, economic development, and transportation planning. The nature of highway access inﬂ uences adjacent land uses. The conversion from intersections to interchanges or underpasses will change trafﬁ c movements, may require removal of existing buildings, and may create a catalyst for new development or redevelopment. Intersections and interchanges will also become focal points for automobile trafﬁ c. The local street system must be designed to support trafﬁ c volumes and movement patterns. Likewise, the closure of current intersections would alter the movement patterns within the City and would alter development opportunities and patterns at these locations. A proactive approach provides the City with a basis for working with MnDOT on planning for highway improvements. The alternative places the City in a position of reacting to State proposed designs. Street System The City’s Transportation Plan and Chapter 6: Transportation provide a long-term framework for managing the local street system. This initiative focuses on speciﬁ c steps that work to achieve the objectives of these plans. Establish Key Street Corridors Both the Comprehensive Plan and the City’s adopted Transportation Plan discuss broad locations for expansion of the street system. A key to understanding these improvements will be identifying and maintaining the routes of these key street corridors. This initiative should involve preliminary engineering and transportation planning analysis to evaluate the physical factors that affect routing. While several studies have been completed over the past several years, further analysis is needed to proactively plan for future routing of streets. This is important because: ·A designated route allows the city to protect the corridor from land use conﬂ icts. Without the routing plan, the City has no means of keeping development out of the potential right-of-way for the street. Encroaching development increases the complexity and cost of the street projects. ·A designated route gives the City the means of incorporating these streets in future plats. ·This information provides better coordination of roadway planning with overlapping agencies such as MnDOT, Sherburne County and Anoka County. One way of achieving clarity is the creation of an “ofﬁ cial map.” An ofﬁ cial map is one tool for protecting street corridors. It shows existing and proposed future streets, roads, and highways of the City and County, the area needed for widening existing streets, roads, and highways of the City and County, and existing and future county state aid highways and state trunk highway rights-of-way. The statutory authority for the ofﬁ cial map comes from Minnesota Statutes Section §462.359. Undertake Financial Planning On-going capital improvement planning is critical in the success of future street improvement projects. With limited sources of funding, it is particularly important to create ﬁ nancially sustainable street improvement plans. Among the ﬁ nancial issues to consider in this planning are: