| Background: | The proposed ordinance would amend the Transportation Element and the Capital Improvements Element of the Comprehensive Plan to incorporate into the Comprehensive Plan the results of the extensive transportation planning efforts undertaken by the Town in the last few years. Since 2013, the Town has completed the Commute Trip Reduction Plan (CTRP) (2013), the Greenways and Trails Master Plan (2014), and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Sidewalk Master Plan (2015) and the Alternative to Concurrency Study (2015), the latter of which recommends replacing the Town's traditional traffic concurrency program with a mobility fee. Additionally, the Town has recently completed an update to its Strategic Plan through a process which identified transportation and mobility issues as the top concern of both the Town's residents and the Town's businesses. Concurrently with development of the Strategic Plan, the Town in July 2015 conducted a Transportation Summit, the results of which, and the transportation planning efforts stemming from it, have led to the development of an extensive set of improvements and initiatives to be included in the Strategic Plan. This includes five major strategies, each of which includes a number of specific actions. The five strategies are: 1) Improve Transit and Pedestrian Mobility; 2) Improve Distribution of Traffic (Spatially and Temporally); 3) Improve East-West Connectivity; 4) Targeted Improvements at Trouble Spots; and, 5) Provide Mobility Alternatives for Intra-Town Trips.
Significantly, the Town Council directed staff to include the development of a complete streets policy and programs into the Strategic Plan and Comprehensive Plan.
Although transportation planning should be a continuous process, it is necessary at this to integrate many of the strategies and initiatives into the Comprehensive Plan, and this proposed ordinance will accomplish that.
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