Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Illustrating the Street Problem

Here is an overview of the street concern with this potential development.  There has been a lot of talk about the amount of traffic this will generate, etc, and some explanations.  I'm hoping this is the clearest, so you all know what we're talking about here ...


Here's a map of the West End, and the potential development area:


















I've taken the liberty of color coding this thing for easier explanation:


-Yellow = Proposed Walmart site
-Blue Outline = Property bordering proposed Walmart site that is owned by another developer (Orr Commercial)


-Green = These are the thoroughfares that connect the major streets.  Yale could also be green, but its red, and I'll explain why in a minute.  Since the Train Horn thing passed, the only streets that go through to one another from I-10 to Wasthington and connect traffic flow over the train tracks are as follows:


North / South (From Left to Right) - Durham, Shepherd, Patterson, Yale, Heights - 5 total
East / West (From top to Bottom) - I-10 Feeder (future), Koehler, Washington - 3 total


-Light Blue = Future Roads that are definitely being built by TxDOT


-RED- Planned Access roads for the Walmart Site.  What is outlined in Red is Koehler, Yale, Bonner, and Bass.  As you will see, Bonner does not go through to the feeder road (but might after the little jut eastward in the future), Bass will be widened to go through a little bit, Yale will be the largest road to border at least a portion of the development, and then there's Koehler ... and here's a picture of Koehler:


Koehler is obviously ready to handle the traffic load of being one of only two through streets (Yale & Koehler), and 1 of a total of 3 streets that will access the site (READ: Sarcasm).


The figure thats out there is an additional 10K cars per day in the area, that area being Koehler Street and Yale street, and that figure being based off an average sized Walmart Supercenter, because Ainbinder won't give any details out to the public they care so deeply about until they have their money from Walmart.


I found Orr Commercial's site to be very helpful regarding vital stats for the area including traffic demographics:




Traffic Counts:
Washington west of Waugh    = 14,010 cpd
Waugh south of Washington    = 14,74 cpd
Shepherd south of Washington = 33,700 cpd
Washington east of Shepherd  = 14,010 cpd
Washington east of Bonner      = 14,010 cpd
Washington east of Patterson  = 14,010 cpd


So yeah ... add about another 10K (on average) units to each of those, pencil in about double for Christmas time, and thats what you're going to have, on two thoroughfare streets, Koehler and Yale ... Awesome ... And most Supercenters are 24 hours, so maybe that will help evening out the number of cars that will be on my street to an all day and night sort of thing instead of just peak hours.






2 comments:

  1. Thank you for mentioning the Koehler issue. I live off Thompson and Koehler and when people are parked on both sides of Koehler you can barely get one car through at a time, let alone support the traffic that would come with walmart. Because of the drainage and residence they can't widen the roads there and they can't prohibit parking without the residents permission.

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  2. I would be willing to bet that traffic on Center Street between Studemont & Heights will be affected as well. There are a lot of people that use Center Street to avoid Washington traffic.

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