Chick-fil-A Traffic Impact Study, Sunset Hills

KEG engineers performed intersection traffic counts along Rott Road, Lindbergh Boulevard, and Watson Road.  The Synchro software product was utilized to develop existing peak hour traffic models to analyze the existing operation of the intersections of the access points to the Sunset Hills Plaza development with the adjacent public roadways.  The existing Synchro models showed the intersection operation of the study intersections during the AM, mid-day, and PM peak hours without any development-generated traffic.

The results of the Synchro analyses showed that the minor approaches of the intersections are already experiencing delays during peak hours due to traffic volumes on the major approaches (Watson Road and Lindbergh Boulevard).  The background traffic volumes were adjusted for minimal future growth along the roadways and trip generation calculations were prepared.  The development-generated traffic was assigned to the existing access point to the Sunset Hills Plaza development.

This study was unique in that the City of Sunset Hills required the trip generated rates for Chick-fil-A to be utilized in the trip generation calculations rather than utilizing general ITE trip generation rates.  This study was also conservative with the analysis to conform to the City’s requirements in that no reductions for internal capture or pass-by trip reductions were applied to the development-generated traffic volumes.  The future years’ traffic analyses showed only minimal increases in delays on the minor intersection approaches due to the combination of growth-adjusted background traffic and development-generated traffic.  Construction of the development was completed in 2013.