Integrating Transportation and Land Use: Land Development Plan Standards and Evaluation Tools
Creators: name: Leos-Urbel, Anna
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2006
Subjects: North Carolina. Dept. of Transportation.

description: The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) and local governments in North Carolina on how to structure local Land Development Plans so that they can be used in long range transportation planning. The impetus for this guidebook is the 2001 amendment to the General Statutes requiring towns that request NCDOT involvement in transportation projects to have a qualifying Land Development Plan. The amendment has not yet been fully implemented, due in part to the lack of guidance to local governments and NCDOT regarding the necessary plan contents. Additionally, NCDOT has not received sufficient guidance on methods of evaluation for the Land Development Plans, in order to assess whether they comply with the plan requirements. The lack of guidance has caused problems in some areas around the state, delaying transportation planning efforts. In order to bridge these gaps, this document provides the following: Detailed discussion of the necessary land development plan components and the rationale for requiring them; Plan evaluation questionnaire; Detailed discussion of appropriate preparation methods of plan components, with increased guidance to NCDOT regarding how to assess whether the plan preparation is adequate; and Suggestions for how to explicitly address transportation issues within the Land Development Plan. It is not the purpose of this document to provide detailed planning support to local governments. The North Carolina Division of Community Assistance (DCA) is the appropriate state agency for local planning assistance; there are also other agencies and organizations that can provide planning assistance. A list of planning-related resources is provided in Appendix 1. This guidebook also will not address macrolevel policies, as they are assumed to come from federal or state mandates beyond the control of local governments. Figure 1 provides an illustration of the land development planning process and how it feeds transportation planning. To determine the necessary contents of the Land Development Plan, this document starts with the land use forecast that must feed the transportation planning process. Baseline (current year) land use data feeds the forecast, and also provides the basis for any future growth pattern scenarios. Local development management policies, determined in part through the public involvement process, inform the future growth pattern scenarios and the forecast. Finally, the future growth scenarios, informed by macrolevel policies, public involvement, baseline conditions, and development management policies, provide the land use forecast map and data that feed into transportation planning.The following chapters focus primarily on the creation of the land use forecast and the elements of the Land Development Plan that feed it: local development management policies, future growth pattern scenarios, the public involvement process, and environmental analysis. Part One provides the background and context for the project. Part Two explores the land development-related data required for transportation planning--both data for transportation models as well as relevant policy information. This section ends with a list of necessary data elements and policies, and the corresponding Land Development Plan components that produce them. Part Three provides greater detail on the Land Development Plan components, and potential methods for their creation. Part Four discusses explicit ways to connect the Land Development Plan to transportation issues, primarily by addressing projects in the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) and access management. Because public involvement is a critical piece of the planning process, Part Five is dedicated to discussing the importance of and best practices in public involvement. A questionnaire for local planners about public involvement techniques will eventually be created out of this section. Finally, Part Six discusses overall plan evaluation in the context of transportation planning, and provides an evaluation questionnaire for CTP Team members and/or NCDOT planners to use to evaluate local Land Development Plans.