NW 86th Street Access Management Plan: Complexities of Managing Access with Plans, Land Redevelopment, and Street Redesign

Access management plans to modify or retrofit developed urban corridors typically outline changes to both public facilities and privately owned accesses. Plans to modify private access points on developed urban corridors can be efficiently accomplished if implemented concurrently with land redevelopment adjacent to the corridor. If the urban corridor is experiencing a high rate of redevelopment or site modification, revising or consolidating private access points as directed in an access management plan can occur naturally through enforced land redevelopment regulations within site plan review. Modifying access on the public street system via corridor redesign simultaneous to the private access modifications can not only control access problems with older development or site designs, but also complement the updated private access designs. However, while public street improvement needs can be addressed in a relatively straightforward manner, improvements for privately owned property, particularly commercial properties, can pose problems for planners and engineers with access management and corridor safety as their forefront concern. NW 86th Street extends through the central business district for the City of Clive, Iowa. Clive is a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa, and has been experiencing rapid growth during the last few decades. However, as a suburb, most of its central business district development occurred since the 1970’s and primarily consists of strip development and stand-alone commercial buildings. The corridor also has several chain commercial uses that are in older, smaller facilities than what would be newly constructed today. It was a City goal to keep the aging corridor vital through redevelopment and upgrades. The City commissioned the NW 86th Street Corridor Plan to plan the complete redevelopment of the corridor through individual parcel redevelopment. The land use plan established the vision for the central business district and the corridor itself, identifying the need for the future economic viability and livability of the corridor, with transportation efficiency and safety as a major goal within the vision. This case study reviews a transportation improvement plan completed by Snyder & Associates, Inc. for the NW 86th Street corridor in Clive, Iowa. The transportation improvement plan was developed to complement the NW 86th Street Corridor Plan, a redevelopment and land use plan for the NW 86th Street corridor. The transportation improvement plan included traffic history and projections, crash analysis, proposed roadway alignments, an access management plan, and a hydrology plan. The access management plan developed for this project was closely tied to the existing and projected traffic operations of the corridor with expected land development based on the NW 86th Street Corridor Plan. The goal of the NW 86th Street and University Boulevard Transportation Improvement Plan was to complete needed background studies to move forward with roadway design; the need for uniform roadway design throughout the corridor that would be in balance with the proposed corridor redevelopment plan was recognized early in the project. The transportation plan would be implemented as the corridor redeveloped, parcel by parcel.