01-19-12 Regular, Public Hearing and Workshop Meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission

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The City is also comprised of local streets which help to move residents through the community from their homes to employment and shopping centers, schools, and places of leisure. As development and redevelopment continues in and around the City, ensuring through movement along the arterial street system, adequate connectivity, and ample options for travel on the roadway network will be important in enhancing local mobility. The City is already well- interconnected and given limited resources (i.e., financial) and constraints (i.e., limited vacant areas for new thoroughfare placement), maximizing existing roadway assets through access management, and other techniques (e.g., adding connections) will be important in enhancing local mobility. The majority of the City's older residential areas are on a grid system, providing good connectivity within and through neighborhoods. Even many of the City's more new neighborhoods (e.g., Fairmont Park West) have relatively good connectivity where there is multiple access points and limited reliance on dead -end and cul -de -sac streets. As detailed later in the actions and initiatives section, there are some residential areas where it is recommended to extend existing streets to make needed connections. Many of these connections were identified in the previous thoroughfare plan and are still important today. However, there was one previously identified connection, Farrington to S.H. 225, which, due to changing conditions, may no longer be as important today as it was in the past. Over the past 10 years, the City has proactively determined that Lomax area should remain rural in character, which also has a direct correlation to transportation and traffic, as rural areas should have lesser traffic volume and a more rural appearance (i.e., open grass swales vs. curb and gutter). In addition, both arterials on either side (i.e., Underwood Road and Sens Road /Bay Area Boulevard) have been, or will be improved to ensure an efficient roadway network in that area. Therefore in that area, it recommended to extend Farrington Boulevard just to Lomax School Road and to extend the stubbed out Valley Brook Drive which would provide a northern entry/exit point for the Glen Meadows subdivision. Key Planning Considerations Key planning considerations regarding the planning needs to ensure a maintained, safe and efficient street transportation network include: 1) Improving roadway conditions through reconstructing failing streets, striping roadways, seal -coat or overlay those needing surface improvement, installing and /or improving underground or ditch drainage systems, replacing traffic signs and synchronizing traffic signals. 2) Implementing a comprehensive streets- to-standards program to concentrate on bringing all roads throughout the community to an equivalent standard. This program is essentially a City -wide initiative to inventory all street conditions and institute a pavement management system. A COMMUNITY VISION FOR LA T't?RTE, TEXAS - 010 UPDATE