TOWN OF BEDFORD November 19, 2018 PLANNING BOARD MINUTES A meeting of the Bedford Planning Board was held on Monday, November 19, 2018 at Ross A. Lurgio Middle School Café, 47A Nashua Road, Bedford, NH. Present were: Jon Levenstein (Chairman), Hal Newberry (Vice Chairman), Karen McGinley (Secretary), Chris Bandazian (Town Council), Rick Sawyer (Town Manager), Jeff Foote (Public Works Director), Mac McMahon, Randy Hawkins, Charlie Fairman (Alternate), Matt Sullivan (Alternate), Becky Hebert (Planning Director), and Mark Connors (Assistant Planning Director) I. Call to Order and Roll Call: Chairman Levenstein called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. Town Councilor Kelleigh Murphy was absent. Mr. Fairman was appointed to vote in place of the regular member vacancy. Mr. Connors reviewed the agenda. II. III. IV. Old Business Continued Hearings: None New Business: None Concept Proposals and Other Business: 1. 206 Route 101, LLC & Bow Lane Bedford, LLC (Owners) Request for design review of a lot consolidation and site plan for a restaurant and a proposed 120-unit workforce housing development, consisting of four 3-story 30-unit apartment buildings, and associated site improvements at 206 Route 101, Chestnut Drive, and Bow Lane, Lots 20-22-14, 20-99-1, 20-99-2, 20-99-3, and 20-99-4, Zoned CO. Mr. Connors stated the application has been reviewed by staff. Staff would recommend that the Planning Board find the application to be complete and the abutters have been notified. Staff would recommend that the Planning Board accept the agenda and in doing so, find the application to be complete. MOTION by Vice Chairman Newberry to approve the agenda as presented. Councilor Bandazian duly seconded the motion. Vote taken all in favor. Motion carried. 1. 206 Route 101, LLC & Bow Lane Bedford, LLC (Owners) Request for design review of a lot consolidation and site plan for a restaurant and a proposed 120-unit workforce housing development, consisting of four 3-story 30-unit apartment buildings, and associated site improvements at 206 Route 101, Chestnut Drive, and Bow Lane, Lots 20-22-14, 20-99-1, 20-99-2, 20-99-3, and 20-99-4, Zoned CO.
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 2 Attorney John Cronin from Manchester stated I have been working on this project for some time. I did attend the conceptual hearing months ago, I didn t have much, if anything, to say but I was present and listened to the commentary. With us here tonight are the project principals Dick Anagnost, Bill Greiner and Brian Michael. Tom Boucher is not with us but he is a principal in this project. Also with us here tonight is Chief Engineer Bob Duval and Tom Burns from T. F. Moran, who is the designer on this project. Attorney Cronin stated the matter before you tonight is a design review for the project known as the Residences at Bow Lane. This project proposes 120 residences on the parcel of land at the end of Chestnut Drive. There will be a workforce housing component to this project as required by zoning. It is a 25 percent requirement, which would result in 30 workforce housing units. There has been some discussion and some controversy in the public about the workforce housing units and the preference not to proceed with any workforce housing units. We recognize that it is required, we recognize that it is a vital need in New Hampshire, but during this process if the Planning Board would like us to forego the workforce component, we would be willing to take a look at the plan and restructure it to exclude the workforce housing component. As this Board knows, workforce housing is recognized in the enabling statute. The State of New Hampshire said that there is a vital need for workforce housing to provide housing opportunities, job retention and job attraction for the people of New Hampshire. The enabling statute also states, expressly states, that no Zoning Ordinance, planning regulation or land use regulation should be unreasonably interpreted or enforced to deny, restrict or diminish reasonable workforce housing opportunities. Attorney Cronin continued with respect to this particular project it is important to note that apartment use is allowed on this site. It is allowed by the Zoning Ordinance. There have been questions about density; initially in the staff report there was discussion about approximately 98 units, there has been some discussion about 95. The Master Plan recognizes that in areas where sewer and water are going to be brought there should be increases in the density. This project contemplates that it will be serviced by sewer and water. We also had a question in the feedback where we are interested to know what the concerns are from a health, safety and welfare perspective if this project were to proceed at 95 units versus 120 units. You may recall at the conceptual hearing there was discussion about 114 units would be the benchmark for the gas company to bring gas to this particular site. That is something that has been discussed with the School District as we recognize that that is an interest of theirs to bring gas to the schools. Attorney Cronin stated during the conceptual process there was some good feedback, some things that you asked the applicants to work on. Since that particular time, the drainage calculations have been completed, there have been ongoing discussions with the School District and some meetings about sewer and gas. The elevations, which were requested at conceptual, have been at least preliminary designed and there are some elevations that we can show you tonight. The traffic study has been analyzed not only by T. F. Moran and not only by your consultant, but because of the many comments and concerns at conceptual about traffic, we thought it was appropriate to undertake our own peer review. The applicants went out and engaged Steve Pernaw, who this Board has heard from many times, he is well recognized throughout the state, to analyze the various traffic reports and render his opinion. Mr. Pernaw is
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 3 with us tonight and can comment on his review. There has been some further work with respect to the water and the sewer design and the wetland study has been completed. So that you know what is pending; currently pending is a wetland variance, scheduled for next month at the Zoning Board of Adjustment, there is also the density variance and there is also the appeal of the administrative decision. We have had some exchange in dialog with Ms. Hebert about the density, we understand her calculation and how she arrived at it by removing some of the footprint of the Shorty s and the parking area. When we look at the ordinance, we don t see any expressed language regarding a deduction for existing space and recognize that it is a mixed use area. We know that is a matter for another day and we will continue to work with Ms. Hebert on that issue, but I thought it was important for you to know that as we engage in the back-and-forth that is appropriate for design review. You should also be aware that a State wetlands permit is pending and expect that process to progress. Finally with respect to the abutters; the Dumas, and Attorney Sokul, who represents the Dumas family, appeared at the conceptual hearing. My recollection is that he stood up and said he wasn t taking a position but he wanted to make sure that in this process his client s rights were protected. We have had occasion to have numerous communications with him, a sit down meeting, to go over the details of this plan. We are here tonight in part because Attorney Sokul authorized this particular hearing to go forward. We are happy to report that we are making progress and have the skeleton, and at least some progress, towards a definitive agreement, and we expect that that will be forthcoming with respect to the layout that you will be shown tonight of Bow Lane. Attorney Cronin stated having summarized some of the background, I would now like to turn it over to Mr. Duval who can take you through the plan and show you some of the details. Mr. Duval stated I would like to start off with an overall view just showing where the project site is in relation to the neighborhood. As you can see on this posted plan, the site here is in the center, these little orange lines that you see are lot lines, these are the four lots that Attorney Cronin talked about comprising the apartment s parcel, and this is the Shorty s parcel here on the lefthand side, here is Wallace Road off to the left and then Route 101 at the top, and this is the high school of course where we are sitting in the lower right. This is not an inset; this is just surrounded by this orange property line. This is where it is actually in relation to the site. The Dumas parcel that Attorney Cronin just mentioned is to the bottom and this is the subject parcel for the apartments and then of course Chestnut Drive connects with Route 101 here, provides an emergency access to the high school, ends in a cul-de-sac with a cell tower off the end, and then there is Bedford Village Shops on Route 101, some office buildings here on the west side of Chestnut Drive, and a couple of other office/commercial users. These are retail/commercial users here along the front on Route 101. To make a brief comment in regard to density; the question has been brought up, you can see here from a global perspective, we really don t have a density issue. This site is surrounded by commercial properties here in the front and this large high school institutional use here in the back, some conservation land here to the southwest, and then a large open parcel to the south, which is the Dumas property. When we talk about unit density, it is not like there is going to be hundreds of thousands more residential units added because this land is already commercial surrounding it on 3 ½ sides. This residential density, if you take the area of the neighborhood as sort of a large mixed-use district, the residential component is small in comparison to that area. Mr. Duval continued now posted is the site plan. Here is the parcel and here is an overall view
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 4 of the two parcels. The Shorty s parcel is on the left and what is being proposed in that Shorty s parcel is essentially a renovation of the Shorty s restaurant, which we can show some architectural information on shortly. As you can see, Riddle Brook runs between the two properties and then on the other side of Riddle Brook is where the apartment site proper sits. There are four 30-unit buildings and a road that connects from Chestnut Drive at the top through to an easement that runs through the Dumas property and that easement runs through the subject property, more or less as shown by that central connecting roadway, ultimately to Chestnut Drive and down to Route 101. Mr. Duval stated as Attorney Cronin pointed out, we have some other permits pending. We have a Zoning Board of Adjustment permit for an increase of density here and that 120 units is proposed somewhere between 115, if there were no Shorty s, to 95 or so reserving some land for Shorty s would be permitted. Utilities to the site are currently shown running from the site to the Bedford Village Shops, down Chestnut Drive and along the back of Bedford Village Shops, ultimately to Nashua Road. Just the other night the School Board did approve an extension of utilities onto school property here through the back of the site here in this area where the site abuts against the school property allowing a somewhat easier connection for utilities in the back. Through the middle of the site, another reason we are going to the Zoning Board, is that in the middle of the site through this roadway, which is actually an old railroad bed, there are some isolated pockets of wetlands that need to be filled to construct this roadway, so we are going to the Zoning Board for that part of that wetlands that actually runs off the roadway because this Board actually has jurisdiction over the wetland fill and the roadway in that conservation zone, but the Zoning Board would be looking at this small fill of 1,000 feet, of a total of about 6,000 feet, that would be off the roadway itself. We also have other permit applications that are pending in the case of the wetlands permit application for that 6,000-foot fill and we have started on an alteration of terrain permit. But of course the primary reason that we are here tonight is to get some feedback from this Board to see if there are some suggested changes to this plan that we would like to incorporate before we actually finalize these permits. We would like to have your feedback on these things. Mr. Duval continued to show you what we have done so far, as Attorney Cronin pointed out, there has been considerable progress made since the last hearing. This posted plan shows the drainage system, the drainage system layout, and how that works is that the buildings on the left hand side of the screen are connected to underground detention systems in the front, here and here, that treat and dispose of some of the stormwater load by infiltration and detention, and then the buildings here on the right-hand side of the screen also manage their stormwater treatment and detention via underground systems here located in the parking areas in the front, and then these systems discharge in three locations along the bank. One location as shown at the top of the site, and by the way, this discharge is 100 percent treated water and it is discharging at the predevelopment rates of flow, so this is no new flow. In fact, we are taking all of the flow, treating it, detaining it, storing it, infiltrating it, and just the overflow is what goes out into Riddle Brook. I showed you the one outfall at the top, there is one here at the bottom of the site adjacent to the Dumas, and the third one is as shown in the middle. The utilities, as I said, come up Chestnut Drive from behind Bedford Village Shops and then run down the central road, sewer and water split off and run to the individual buildings, and then the mains are extended to end at the stub of Bow Lane, which would then be connected to the Dumas property for future
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 5 development. There has been discussion of the size and capacity of these utilities and we are still working with Pennichuck Water Works on the actual capacity of the water but we have determined that at least at a minimum there is more than enough capacity in the sewer and water lines in Nashua Road, which is where both Bedford Village Shops and the high school go to support this development and at least another development this size if not more. That connection would be made available, as I said, here at the south end of the site, adjacent to the Dumas property. Parking is being provided at the required ratio of two per unit. There are 240 parking spaces; approximately half of those spaces are covered underneath the buildings, which are there and parking under, and because of the grading of the site, with the low side of the site being opposite Riddle Brook and the high side of the site being opposite the high school, the way this works is on the back side of the easterly units you would enter the building at the first living level and then you would step down through the building and exit at the parking level facing the central courtyard, and then similarly or opposite, depending how you look at it, you would enter at the first living level on the Bow Lane side of these western units and then the parking would be exposed on the back side. Of course this parking is entirely under cover, there is no drainage leaving that lower level, all of the drainage is collected, as I said it runs through the underground treatment storage systems and then outletting at predesigned, preconstruction levels towards Riddle Brook. So everything is connected there including the roofs, 100 percent collected, before discharge to Riddle Brook, which has been a concern of the Conservation Commission. The project complies with all setbacks including wetlands setbacks and buffers and in particular complies with the wetland buffer from Riddle Brook, which is also a concern to the Conservation Commission. We are substantially outside that line and in the closest location I believe 30 or 40 feet from that buffer line. Also there has been a little bit of confusion about the flood lines, the flood zone, the floodway, and I have an exhibit here which I think can clarify this. The issue stems from the fact that the aerial maps that are published by FEMA are not accurate when you publish them, when you blow them up to the scale of this typical site plan. Aerial maps are at a much larger scale and are known to be inaccurate in most regards when you blow it up to this scale, and in this particular place, where Riddle Brook is so narrow, it is particularly mismapped. Let me show you that other exhibit that hopefully will clarify everything. We have scaled back for clarity the site plan a little bit but you can still see the contours and where the buildings fall. The series of black lines here is where the aerial map of the flood zone is, but in this particular area the flood zone is determined by elevation of the flood zone is about elevation 229, whereas the elevation of these buildings and the top of the existing hill and so forth is at elevation 250 or even 260. Clearly this flood zone here drawn to this depiction is erroneous because it doesn t climb from 229 where it is the calculated profile of FEMA s model shows it to be some 30 or 40 feet up the embankment. In fact, in some parts the mapped flood zone Riddle Brook falls outside the map flood zone that is actually here. This shows Riddle Brook being here, actual Riddle Brook is this green hatched thing to the west of where the FEMA map shows it. I think that is the reason for the confusion, and all of that is to point out that we are staying out of the floodway in the flood zone in this area with all development. Even the drainage discharges fall upstream and outside of the flood zone and the floodway zone here. As a point of information, and this Board has probably seen this in the past, what happens in these conditions is that an application to FEMA is submitted for corrections, which is called a Letter of Map Revision, and that correction to the line, which is based on a more detailed survey is reviewed by FEMA, ultimately accepted by FEMA and then they issue a revised flood map. So the 100-year flood zone and the floodway would be revised to fit where it belongs as part of this project in this
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 6 area. Mr. Duval stated we also have prepared a full set for this Board s review, and I would be happy to talk about the lighting and the landscaping and those types of issues if the Board would like at this point. I could also show some architecture, and if that is your preference, that is what I will do at this point. Chairman Levenstein stated let s do the lighting and the landscaping first. Mr. Duval stated posted now is the lighting plan. It is a very conventional lighting plan with 2- foot average foot candles in parking areas, a little tighter closer to the building, a little brighter closer to the building, and as you can see, most of the lighting is interior facing in the courtyard into the surface parking and their central courtyard, while there is no light spill outside of the property line itself, all of the ISO foot candles, which you certainly can t see at this scale, drop off to zero at the property lines. The lighting would be LED style high efficiency lighting, which you can see we have a little bit here on the right of the plan, LED a little bit more modernistic style fixtures, unobtrusive, that I think they go well with the type of development that we are proposing. Mr. Duval stated now posted is the landscaping plan. We have the required street trees down here through the center of the site. As you can see there is a row of plantings running down here through the site. There is natural buffer to the west and to the north and to some extent to the east between the high school and the development, however, the grading and construction of the site does occupy most of the site along the south property line and also on the northwest property line. So the plantings here are running down the middle to soften the streetscape and then the plantings between the buildings and planting features including a playground and a little dog park feature here in the central courtyard, as well as foundation plantings along the buildings as shown on the screen, and a little shade shelter here as well in that central courtyard. Are there any questions about these plans so far? There were none. Mr. Duval stated I will go to the offsite plan and then I will talk a little bit about traffic. At the bottom of this picture is Route 101 and the Chestnut Drive intersection and then I will jump to the end of the story here a little bit. What is being proposed is for traffic mitigation for this project is restriping Chestnut Drive and widening it slightly at its intersection with Route 101 to provide a right-turn and a left-turn lane, and as we will discuss in a moment, that effectively mitigates the additional traffic that is related from this apartment development. What is shown here is this offsite improvement superimposed on the future DOT buildout. You see that the DOT buildout has four lanes, actually five lanes, in front of the site, shoulders on each side, sidewalks on each side, two travel lanes on each side, and a left-turn lane with about a 200-foot bay and this is independent of this project, this is just being built whether or not this project goes ahead, by DOT as part of their improvements for this section of Route 101. What this plan also shows is the utilities that I talked about earlier coming down from the development site along Chestnut Drive. The drive is right here and sewer and water comes out of the development site and runs down Chestnut Drive and the lower part of Chestnut Drive, this is the hill up where Chestnut Drive starts to climb, the hill is about where this ends here. That part is relatively new and is in relatively good shape, this part here is a little bit shop worn, this lower part, will also be cut up by utilities, so this section would be reconstructed, and repaved here where this work is being done. And then there is also a sidewalk that will be built on the opposite side of Chestnut
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 7 Drive from Bow Lane all the way down to the intersection with the NHDOT sidewalks at Route 101. Those are the offsite improvements, both utility and roadway improvements, and this presumes that the utility connection will go through Bedford Village Shops. If it goes through the high school, then in addition to water and sewer, which would be connected at the back of the site, which we talked about earlier, there would also be a gas connection coming all the way up County Road from past McKelvey school serving the schools, SAU, and individual abutters along the way as they may choose to connect, and connecting to this apartment complex and also being available for extension, as well the water and sewer being as we just talked about. Mr. Duval stated now getting back to traffic. Currently on Chestnut Drive there is a combination of local traffic serving the Bedford Village Shops and the office buildings that abut, and on Chestnut Drive there is a fair amount of school pickup and drop-off traffic that we catch in our traffic counts. We specifically, even though the usual counting period for roadway peak is in the 7:00am to 9:00am and 4:00pm to 6:00pm, we actually ran 6:00am to 9:00am and 2:00pm to 6:00pm to make sure we captured the school traffic as well to see if that was a peak. In fact, the actual peaks were more similar to the roadway peaks from 4:00pm to 6:00pm and 7:00am to 9:00am. Existing traffic is roughly 170 trips in the morning and about 140 trips in the afternoon. This apartment development of 120 units based on ITE Land Use Code 221, which is multifamily housing mid-rise, which is the best study of the land use codes in the ITE for residential uses. We have lots of previous studies, a large database and it has been recently updated for 10 th edition as recently as last year, and those are the numbers that we have used for trip generation. The trip generation comes to 43 peak hour trips in the morning and 53 peak hour trips in the afternoon. When you add this to the traffic that is talked about, 200 or so in the morning and 150 or 160 in the PM, it generates a total of roughly 240 and 200 trips respectively. When you do a traffic analysis of this using these numbers, at the intersection you will find that provided you make these mitigation improvements of the left- and right-turn lanes and provided that the DOT builds this left-turn lane, which they are building, the levels of service are essentially maintained across the development. There is a minor increase in delay of a few seconds, I think it is five seconds in the worst case, and minor increases in the queue, and generally speaking we are talking less than two cars of queuing in the worst case, this is 95 th percentile peak, the longest queue actually happens in the morning as people are exiting, and in any event, in all cases, the expected queuing in the left turn lane on Route 101 is one car or less morning and evening peaks and the expected queuing inside Chestnut Drive is less than two cars. Keep in mind that is the 95 th percentile queue, which means only five percent of the time during the peak hour, in fact it is really based on the peak 15 minutes in that peak hour, is that queue exceeded. So generally speaking you are not going to see any increase over what you are seeing today and in fact in the no-build conditions things are in some cases even slightly worse than they would be after these improvements are made. Now I should point out that the numbers that I just talked about with you are based on a revision to the study that was made. This revision was made at the suggestion of Mr. Pernaw who did an independent review of our study just to make sure that this Board was assured that this was the right information that is being reviewed by a number of people, the Town s own reviewer as well as ourselves in the first place and Mr. Pernaw, who is also here and will expand on this shortly and then all of us are in agreement about what the appropriate trip generation is and what the impacts are. At any rate, Mr. Pernaw suggested a revision to the split of left and right turns, a more appropriate split of traffic heading to/from Manchester and to/from western Bedford. The original study that we did was based on existing traffic patterns but that
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 8 may not be the same when the apartments are built and that traffic is added, so we concur that what Mr. Pernaw is doing makes sense. It changes the numbers slightly but it does not change the results, which still essentially shows almost a 1-for-1 mitigation against no-build and of course the conclusion remains the same that these mitigation improvements are a good idea and are something that this developer is prepared to pursue as part of this study. Attorney Cronin stated Steve Pernaw came in after we made the introductions. I think you all know him so I am going to ask Mr. Pernaw to let you know what he did and what changes he recommended and why. Steve Pernaw, Pernaw and Company, stated we were asked not too long ago to step in and take a look at the traffic study that T. F. Moran prepared just to put another set of eyes on it. I believe you have a copy of our memorandum, but I will just start off by saying the study area size and the analysis periods are all consistent with a project of this size and type. We noted the traffic counts that were conducted in the study were done in May of 2018, and we did a little bit of research in terms of what the DOT has for data for Route 101 and things correlated pretty well. We are comfortable with the existing traffic counts. The next step in the process, the estimated future traffic projections for 2019 and 2029 without the development, and that is a standard practice, and we reviewed the adjustment factors, the peak month factors and growth rates and we are comfortable with those as well. They would be the same that we would have used. The trip generation analysis you already heard tonight from Mr. Duval that it was 43 AM trips and 53 PM trips. Again, we don t have any issue with their under trip distribution analysis, and, again, this is where you estimate what percent is going to be traveling to and from the east versus the west, and this is the part that you don t just go to a trip generation manual and look up the answer and run with it, it is more of an art than a science. We saw how it was done and we respectfully disagree with it. We ran our own analysis independent and believe that the majority of the traffic is going to travel to and from the east on Route 101. Rather than just stop there we took our trip distribution percentages and applied it to the estimates and more or less redid the analysis because we wanted to find out is this going to really change anything, and when we did that, we found that the level of service and the capacity analysis that is in the report is pretty consistent. I think Mr. Duval said it well; the numbers changed a little, but the bottom line conclusions don t. The other thing that we were a little concerned about is you are going to have more traffic to and from the east and that means that that left-turn arrival move up from Route 101 on Chestnut Drive is going to have slightly longer queues than maybe what the submitted report says. We looked at that and the good news is the DOT design, which you see behind you, has plenty storage for left turning vehicles. We think it is going to be a little longer than what is in the T. F. Moran report, but we do believe that there is ample space with the DOT design. I mentioned the capacity and level of service; the bottom line findings really don t change because we did reanalyze it with our numbers and came up with the same conclusions. There is this diagram behind you where it talks about restriping Chestnut Drive for two outbound lanes and one inbound lane and we noticed conceptually they were showing three 12-foot lanes. Our suggestion was to narrow up the exiting lanes and provide more room for your inbound traffic. The tightest that we would recommend would be 10 foot for your two exit lanes but that is going to buy you 4 more feet for your inbound side, and basically the reason for that is incoming traffic is turning, you have the making of a corner and they are travelling a little bit faster than somebody approaching a stop sign. So it is really a minor type suggestion but I think the
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 9 intersection will work better that way. Mr. Pernaw continued then the last thing that is always important and that is to look at sight distances. As you know, this section of Route 101 is straight and flat so that is good in terms of sight distance, so we don t really see a problem that way. All in all we did come up with one concern on trip distribution, again, it is an art, not a science, and although we think there is going to be more traffic to and from the east, it really doesn t make any difference. You ve got the storage and the capacity of level of service analysis staying the same in terms of the conclusions. I am comfortable with what the study came up with for recommendations and findings and we made a few ourselves. Attorney Cronin asked Mr. Pernaw, tell us if you took a look at traffic generated by alternative uses that were allowed by the ordinance, for example office. Mr. Pernaw responded after we published our memorandum the question came up as to how would this apartment complex compare with an office complex, which I understand is allowed by right. I was given a square footage of 170,000 square feet of office could occupy this parcel, and we went back to the ITE trip generation manual and we came up with results that are apples and oranges. Just as an example, during the PM peak hour you heard 53 trips, which is in and out with the apartments. If that was an office building, it would be 188, so you are dealing with 72 percent less PM peak hour trips with a residential use rather than an office. And our findings were basically the same during the morning peak hour, again, a big difference as well on a daily basis. So in terms of traffic impact and things like that, Route 101 and design life, this is obviously from a traffic standpoint a much preferred alternative over what could be built there by right. That summarizes my short memo and I can answer questions if the Board wants to ask any. Chairman Levenstein stated I think I heard it but I want just to make sure that I did. You are saying that there is going to be two cars stacked up making a left-hand turn out of Chestnut Drive? Mr. Pernaw replied I was looking at Mr. Duval s analysis here and it shows that the left turn departures will have a 95 th percentile queue of two vehicles. Chairman Levenstein asked is that AM or PM? Mr. Pernaw replied AM. PM is basically the same with two vehicles. Chairman Levenstein asked do you know what they are now? Mr. Duval replied yes, they are much longer now because it is a single approach and that is the beauty of separating those approaches. The left turns can wait for their gap and then the right turns can find gaps in the eastbound stream. Another advantage of the new DOT plan here is that it provides a refuge area in the middle opposite this left turn lane for a 2-stage left, so that you don t have to wait for a coincident gap for eastbound and westbound traffic but you can cross the eastbound traffic, wait for a gap in the westbound traffic and then continue. When you calculate that type of a maneuver, it has substantial beneficial affect all by itself on the delays and queues, so that helps to really clear those queues up by first getting the left turns out of the way, letting the heavy right turn move to do its thing and making the 2-stage left turn, which actually improves that move even for left turns. Chairman Levenstein asked is that considered a safe maneuver with a car out there in the middle of the road? Mr. Duval replied absolutely. Mr. Pernaw stated as long as you have the median width, that is generally accepted. I will share a story; those of you who might be familiar with Exit 20 up I-93. I happened to pull in this morning to the Common Man for breakfast on my way north, and that is an example where the DOT installed this type of a wide median so vehicles exiting that gas station and the Common Restaurant and Dunkin Donuts and
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 10 whatever can do it in two stages. I am familiar with that operation before that 2-stage left turn was available and you would have to wait a long, long time. In my view it would improve the safety of it because you do have a lot of thru traffic on Route 101; there is no question about it. During the AM and PM peak hour periods and waiting for that safe gap this is going to be much like Exit 20. Mr. Foote asked that is a raised island there as well at Exit 20? Mr. Pernaw replied yes. Mr. Foote asked did you look at the safety of the intersection with the two driveways adjacent to the intersection? What may happen is if you have more than two people stacked going out and then going in to make a left hand turn into TD Bank, have you addressed that and concerns there with anyone? Mr. Duval replied yes of course we looked at that. Again, this is a preliminary plan, it is not trying to show the complete and total offsite design, which we wouldn t presume to do without consultation with DPW as well as the DOT to make sure that our improvements will be jiving, and we recognize that that will be an operational concern for this roadway. But I think as a practical matter, with the peak hours the way they are and this being primarily retail on the left and medical use on the right, there isn t the kind of conflicting peak hour traffic at those driveways that you would see, certainly not in the AM, and in the PM we think it is going to be manageable because the turn profiles are actually more favorable in the PM with less queues even in the PM versus the AM, so I think this will be manageable. Not to say the DPW may not want us to look at other alternatives, but in my professional opinion, these driveway configurations can work with the levels of traffic that we are talking about even the build condition, and as part of this improvement we will certainly do what we can to try to channelize them a little better to make sure that they stay safe. Mr. Foote asked why is the sidewalk on the side towards TD Bank versus on the opposite side? Mr. Duval replied for the most part because there is more room in the right-of-way on that side, at least in the lower part, and we also think there are more destinations on that side. And maybe the number one reason is that that is the side I have noticed the school kids are walking down. Some of them are actually walking in the woods and heading to the back of the Bedford Village Shops but that seems to be the side that they favor for walking down Chestnut Drive, so I think it makes sense to connect that up on that side. Chairman Levenstein asked did you happen to discuss this with DOT? Mr. Duval replied yes; we broached the subject informally that there would be connections here and the purpose of that conversation actually was to make sure that I am using the latest plan in making my connections going up here. And then I have also talked to District 5 about the traffic numbers that we are talking about, the traffic study, and of course they are going to want to review that traffic study. In principle they saw no objection to what we are proposing here as long as we match what they are building, as long as the development is of the magnitude that we are talking about. Mr. Sullivan asked do you know if there is a similar configuration being set up for the entrance for the Shorty s restaurant? Mr. Duval asked do you mean in terms of left and right and so forth? Mr. Sullivan replied yes. Mr. Duval responded no; we were proposing to leave that configuration alone actually. This doesn t extend that far so to leave the existing configuration alone, which is how the DOT is going to be leaving it, and there would be no change in traffic there really other than the difference from one restaurant to another, but it is just a renovation of the restaurant within its footprint, so no increase in seats or parking spaces or square footage or so forth.
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 11 Mr. Hawkins stated back to this intersection; is there any concern as the queue on Route 101 left turn inbound to the development crosses potentially staged cars who are doing that 2-stage left hand turn out, because that has the potential to get very sloppy where one car is staged, another one says this has been too long and I want to stage, so then their next to each other there and their preventing that left-hand turn if there are cars in that queue looking to inbound while folks are queuing to outbound. There is no traffic signal there, it is all stop sign generated, and it has the potential to get contentious if those things are counter correct. Do you have any thoughts about that? Mr. Duval replied I think Mr. Pernaw, and Mr. Pernaw I invite your opinion on this too, but he pointed out that in a far more congested situation with far more traffic volumes, with greater traffic volumes anyway, they work well. In fact, this is what allows full-access driveways on multi-lane roads, it is what allows it to happen because otherwise it would be very, very difficult for any driver to make a left turn on a multi-lane road, but being able to make it at a 2-stage left actually improves the safety over existing conditions because people now will tend to take a shorter gap because they don t have a chance, there is no option, there is no 2-stage left now. So all of the full access driveways there on that section of Route 101, with essentially the same mainline volumes, have to make that one maneuver, so giving the opportunity to do that in two maneuvers, in my opinion, greatly increases the capacity and frankly from a safety point of view, when we look at accident experience in those conditions, and we have looked at a lot of them over the years, I am not aware of any decrease in safety as a result or increase of accidents as a result. Mr. Fairman stated I know you have gone by all of the rules and all the tables and everything else on your traffic study, I don t know enough to agree with your conclusions or not, but Mr. Pernaw mentioned that it is really not a science, but I would like to put a little science into it and suggest that we do an actual traffic count at the Bedford Hills apartment complex. That complex is a little larger but we could account for that. I would like to see a week-long hour-by-hour traffic count at that complex and come back with the numbers as to what percent it is and let s use those numbers. The thing that is hard for myself, and I think a lot of people, to understand it is 120 apartments, that is at least 120 people working, probably 170 people going to work and coming back from work, it is hard for me to believe that there are only 43 cars during the peak hour. We have the opportunity, I think, to put some science in it, do a scientific count of the similar apartment complex and let s make sure we get just the apartment not the people going into the industrial building or Dunkin Donuts. I think there are three exits there, including the one right out of the garage that comes into the intersection, so let s catch all three and do a real count. Thank you very much. Ms. McGinley stated at the Bedford Village Shops it has a central location for people to turn in, where you turn in and there are shops on both sides. I don t see as many turns into where the bank is. I would like to know what the traffic count is for the people going in and out that one as opposed to this entrance. Mr. Duval asked do you mean the middle entrance on Route 101 or the middle entrance on Chestnut Drive? Ms. McGinley replied the middle entrance on Route 101. Mr. Duval stated we didn t count that. I have the DOT s counts from 2014 or 2015 that could give us a comparison. I don t have that information with me but we can certainly provide that information. Ms. McGinley stated for instance, on the evening traffic there are probably people who go in that middle one and there is still traffic heading west when they come out, so that
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 12 would be important to know the types of cars that currently do that. It is existing, the number of people that go into that finished row of shops probably would have the same turning habit that they do now and that would show the impact on the additional traffic coming down. Mr. Duval stated I am not sure I understand completely what you are suggesting. You are suggesting that we look at the existing driveway usage of Bedford Village Shops other driveways and see if that would change as a result of this? Ms. McGinley replied we have just been talking about this entrance and the Bedford Village Shops customers don t necessarily always come out that end, the west end, when they are going to continue going west. I thing those turns would affect, maybe favorably or not, the amount of queue, the size of the queue coming out on the west side and wanting to turn west. Vice Chairman Newberry stated going back to the left-hand turn. I would like to see a scaled drawing of that specific intersection showing vehicles and how they could maneuver through that intersection. You are asserting that the geometry there supports it; I would like to see a diagram that shows that, better yet an animation, but certainly a diagram that shows a vehicle making both left- and right-hand turns in that intersection and that the intersection be drawn to scale, the actual scale that it will be constructed at. Mr. Duval responded this one is to scale; of course we always draw plans to scale just to make sure that they are clear. I would be happy to do that and I think your suggestion of showing an animation is a good one, and I think when we come back we could show an animation of how this would all come together. That might be helpful. Mr. Duval stated one other thing I just want to mention before we move off the subject of traffic and safety, and that is we also checked the existing driveway or intersection of Chestnut Drive for crash frequency just to see if there is a problem there now. It turns out that this location has less than the expected number of crashes. The expected number of crashes are based on volume and it is really just sort of a broad average but it is a way of measuring the actual accident experience of a location against an average experience. When the local is greater than the average, it doesn t mean there is a problem necessarily because it is a broad average, but when the local is less than that average, that is a good indicator that conditions are safe and I think in large part it is because the volumes are relatively low of a couple of hundred cars an hour max and there is great sight distance there. So the crash experience today is low and I would say that I expect the crash experience to stay low because we are actually improving the safety of that location concurrent with the DOT s improvements. Mr. McMahan stated you probably covered it; did you take into consideration any traffic that might come north, the bank and the other businesses that are going to come out to Chestnut Drive and then make a right so they can get into the left turn lane at Route 101? We have had feedback that sometimes right now people have to do that or else they can t leave the bank or those other businesses. Mr. Duval responded they currently have, and will continue to have, a way of accessing the back of the queue fairly easily. Mr. McMahan asked did you use those estimated numbers in your calculations? Mr. Duval replied we used the actual numbers in our calculations. We didn t specifically route individual vehicles coming from the front driveway, but anybody who is doing that movement now is captured in the counts that we did take and all of those drivers right now have the ability to use this back driveway. So if by chance there is a maximum queue that is three or four cars long, or even probably up to eight or ten cars long, they can still get behind that queue by using this back driveway here, and that is not just TD Bank but
Planning Board Minutes November 19, 2018 13 that whole development has access to the back as well as the front. Mr. McMahan responded okay. Thank you. Town Manager Sawyer asked what percentage of trip distribution did you end up using? I didn t hear the actual percentage east versus west. Mr. Duval responded I have the numbers not the percentage. Mr. Pernaw responded what I do recall looking at the T. F. Moran percentages is the majority was to and from the west. When we did our little in-house analysis, we came up closer to 25 percent to the west and 75 percent to the east. Town Manager Sawyer asked the intersection at Route 101 as you have shown it there won t require any changes to the Route 101 work that is currently taking place like curb lines or radiuses? Mr. Duval replied their proposed curb-to-curb width here at this road is 36 feet and that is why we just started out with 12, 12 to 12, and as Mr. Pernaw suggested, that could be differently apportioned between the various lanes, but the DOT is building 36 feet and that is what we used in our conceptual drawing. Town Manager Sawyer stated my only question on Chestnut Drive, I think agreeing with what Mr. Foote said that the sidewalk seems to be on the wrong side of the road to me. If it was on the other side of the road, it would be on the side of the high school, it would be on the side of the housing project. I believe I counted six driveways on the side of the road that proposed sidewalk is on and I believe only three on the opposite side. I guess it is a good question as to whether or not everybody that lives in the apartments is going to the Bedford Village Shops or not, but to me it just feels naturally like it should be on the opposite side, where we are not forcing the students to cross Chestnut Drive. It is a dead-end so there shouldn t be opposing traffic but just something to continue to look at and work with staff to decide what is the best route there. Mr. Duval responded we are certainly not married to one side or the other, so we would be happy to work with staff on that. Mr. Foote stated the other reason I mentioned that was because when you get to the top of the hill, you have an additional crosswalk there. I am not sure what the sight distance limitations are going to be at the top of that hill. Town Manager Sawyer stated the crosswalk at the top of the hill, mid-block essentially, I know it is at your site driveway but it really looks out of place and not something that we would typically do. Mr. Duval responded okay. Robin Bousa of VHB stated I prepared some slides and I don t think we need to go through them because Mr. Pernaw helped cover some of what I was going to talk about. I think a couple of things we can put to rest with regard to the traffic counts, including the school traffic, we also confirm that school is in session when the counts were done, so anyone using Chestnut Drive to do drop-off and pickup was included in that base number for the analysis. I don t disagree in looking at some additional trip generation that helps put peoples minds at rest, but I will tell you that everything done in the study was done by standard and that is exactly how we would have done it if we were doing the study as well. The numbers look low for 120 units, but the reason being is that not everybody leaves for work in the same peak hour. I leave at 6:30am, my husband leaves at 7:30am, we are not going to be counted in the same peak hour, so that is why analyzing one hour of traffic, traffic generation occurs during the peak hours over a couple of hours. That is why Mr. Duval says 7:00am to 9:00am and 4:00pm to 6:00pm are typically when you see most of the traffic coming out, but we are only analyzing that one peak hour and that is why the numbers might look a little bit low.