It’s no secret that there are homes, stores, offices and educational facilities located along each of the Connector alternatives. One of the challenges we face in planning for the project is to determine how to design and build ways for indirect access to the roadway.

One of the benefits of the Connector is that it is a limited access roadway to provide higher performance and reduced congestion. To accomplish this, many current access options will not be available. People who live, work and visit services located on the alternatives currently turn directly into and out of parking lots or driveways—but that will not be possible along the expressway sections of the Connector route. One indirect access option is that a homeowner would drive a short distance on a frontage-type road to access a Connector interchange instead of making a left turn out of their driveway.

Determining how to facilitate indirect access requires us to look at the various land uses along the alignments and try to determine if that land use will still be there in 2045. As you probably know, a lot of the work we do is based on projections, which makes planning more challenging.

Along with determining the probable land uses, we must determine the most efficient and effective method to allow for that indirect access to the Connector. There’s a lot of design work involved in any circulation system, much less one that will be applied across a lengthy corridor with varied land uses. We will be seeking community input as we work through this planning and design process to ensure that community needs will be met by the proposed solution. The goal is to minimize disruption and maximize benefits for landowners and those who regularly travel the corridor.

We’ll keep working, and applying some of the best brainpower in the business, to find good solutions to these challenges. We’ll keep you posted.