Thursday, March 28, 2024

Leland’s taking on the art (and practicality) of street design

The town of Leland is rapidly growing. (Port City Daily photo | COURTESY TOWN OF LELAND)
The town of Leland is rapidly growing as are its streets (Port City Daily photo / COURTESY TOWN OF LELAND)

LELAND — Leland is looking to make sure its roads are built to standard.

Most people don’t think twice about getting from point A to point B, they simply walk, bike, or drive from one location to the next without much thought of how the road they are travelling on came to be. But street design takes work, that is why the town of Leland has created the Town of Leland Street Design Guidelines, a nearly 100-page document created to guide the town, as well as private developers, when it comes to building new streets.

As Leland continues to see exponential growth both residential and commercial, the development of new infrastructure is a common occurrence. The Street Design Guidelines will act as a plan for both the design of new roads, and the improvements to existing roads.

But a plan of this volume takes some time to get right; in fact, the process started almost four years ago.

“Town staff began seeking assistance to draft a street design manual from the Wilmington Metropolitan Planning Organization (WMPO) in September of 2014.  The WMPO provided a grant to the town to fund the preparation of the manual.  The WMPO solicited proposals from traffic engineering consultants and signed a contract with VHB Engineering NC, P.C. on March 22, 2017,” Economic and Community Development Director Gary Vidmar said.

The new guidelines will help provide a common goal for future infrastructure construction, as well as improvements in the future.

“The street design guidelines manual will be used as a tool to steer new development in the town towards the construction of streets that better align with the town’s vision in terms of connectivity, multi-modal activity, maintenance, design, and safety,” Vidmar said. “The Leland Street Design Guideline Manual will include the provision of both technical standards to be used by engineers in their plan sets, and conceptual tables/graphics which will more easily convey the impact of technical standards on the physical landscape to the public and elected officials.”

Though Leland and other organizations already have other such guides for land use and development, including the Leland Master Plan, the Leland Pedestrian Plan, and the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization Comprehensive Transportation Plan, the Street Design Guidelines take a very specific look at roadway development. The guidelines are meant to help with the implementation of previously adopted plans, and ensure uniformity across the board.

“The town’s current ordinance makes general reference to the accepted policies of the state Department of Transportation (NCDOT) and design standards taken from AASHTO.  The broad references and wide variety of manuals that fall within those sources no longer suit the town’s transportation design needs in our growing community,” Vidmar said.

There are still several steps in approving the street design plan, but once it is complete and approved by town leaders, it will make its way into becoming a standard in the town.

“Once the manual is approved by Council it will be presented to the Planning Board for a recommendation and to Council for approval as a text amendment to the Town zoning ordinance,” Vidmar said.


Send comments and tips to Michael Praats at Michael.p@localvoicemedia.com

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