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James Lehnhoff, AICP December 7, 2009 <br />City of Arden Hills Page 3 <br />Current trafiic controls include signalization at the key intersection of County Road F and <br />Lexington Avenue. Each of the other key intersections are unsignalized, with side-street stop <br />control. County Road F is a two-lane roadway from Hamline Avenue to Lexington Avenue, <br />primarily serving motorists from Boston Scientific, Land O'Lakes, and other local businesses. <br />Vehicular turning movement counts were collected on November 10, 2009 at each of the key <br />intersections during the a.m. and p.m. peak hour. It should be noted that the south leg of the <br />County Road F and Boston Scientific West Driveway intersection will provide access to the <br />proposed development, but does not exist today. In addition, traffic counts were not initially <br />collected at this intersection. Data for this location was obtained from the Guidant Corporation <br />Traffic Impact Study dated July 2002 and updated to reflect today's conditions. Existing <br />geometrics, traffic controls and peak hour traffic volumes for the key intersections are shown in <br />Figure 2. <br />An operations analysis was conducted for the a.m. and p.m. peak hours at each of the key <br />intersections to determine how trafiic currently operates in the study area. All signalized <br />intersections were analyzed using the Synchro/SimTraffic software (version 7). Unsignalized <br />intersections were analyzed using a combination of the Highway Capacity Software (HCS) and <br />Synchro/SimTraffic software. <br />Capacity analysis results identify a Level of Service (L4S), which indicates how well an <br />intersection is operating. The LOS results are based on average delay per vehicle. Intersections <br />are given a ranking from LOS A through LOS F. LOS A indicates the best traffic operation and <br />LOS F indicates an intersection where demand exceeds capacity. In the Twin Cities <br />metropolitan area, LOS A through D is generally considered acceptable by drivers. <br />For side-street stop controlled intersections, special emphasis is given to providing an estimate <br />for the level of service of the minor approach. Traffic operations at unsignalized intersections <br />with side-street stop control can be described in two ways. First, consideration is given to the <br />overall intersection level of service. This takes into account the total number of vehicles entering <br />the intersection and the capability of the intersection to support those volumes. Second, it is <br />important to consider the delay on the minor approach. Since the mainline does not have to stop, <br />the majority of delay is attributed to the side-street approaches in most cases. <br />Results of the analysis shown in Table 1 indicate that all but one key intersection currently <br />operate at an overall acceptable LOS D or better during the a.m. and p.m. peak hours, with <br />existing traffic controls and geometric layout. The intersection of County Road F and Hamline <br />Avenue (Northbound) currently operates at an unacceptable LOS F during the p.m. peak hour. <br />The poor operation at this intersection is caused by a lack of capacity on the westbound approach <br />and limited acceptable gaps in Hamline Avenue traffic. This lack of capacity was observed to <br />cause significant queuing in the westbound direction during the p.m. peak hour. The modeled <br />average and 95th percentile queues at this location are approximately 175 feet and 400 feet, <br />respectively. These queues occasionally extend beyond the driveway for the business located in <br />the southeast quadrant of County Road F and Hamline Avenue (Northbound), but not to the <br />County Road F and Boston Scientific West Driveway intersection. <br />