1999 Eugene Arterial & Collector Street Plan

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Purpose The primary purpose of the Arterial and Collector Street Plan is to provide the City of Eugene with an updated and adopted street classification map that identifies the community's major streets, and with appropriate street design standards and guidelines to apply to construction, reconstruction and im- provement of these streets. The Arterial and Collector Street Plan, along with the companion Local Street Plan adopted in 1996, focuses on the continued development of a multi- modal street system for the City of Eugene that accommodates all users of the transportation. system and supports compact urban growth. Together, these two plans provide an essential set of tools to help the city implement key aspects of the transpor- tation-related policies contained in the Eugene Growth Management Studer and the Eugene_ Springfield Transportation System Plan (TransPlan). These policies promote community livability by: • maintaining and enhancing mobility for all modes of surface transportation, including automobiles, bicycles, pedestrians, transit vehicles, emergency responders, and freight vehicles; • seeking to create atransportation-efficient land use pattern; and • achieving a better balance between all modes of transportation. This document deals with the city's major streets; that is, those streets that function as arterials or collectors. Typically, arterial and collector streets carry significant amounts of traffic, much of it having longer trip distances and therefore requiring somewhat higher speeds and less land use access than local streets. Arterials and collectors carry higher volumes of traffic than local streets, and require special design considerations and a high degree of inter-connectivity. At the same time, arterials and collectors must provide for public transit, bicycle and pedestrian travel, usually at a higher level than local streets. Arterials and collec- tors should be designed to accommodate these users, and to provide for their safety, comfort, and convenience. Many of the region's major streets will experience considerable growth in traffic volumes over the next 20 years. The City's ability to expand street capacity to accommodate increased traffic volumes is very limited. Preserving the traffic movement and mobility functions of the community's existing arterials and collectors is a crucial aspect of efforts to maintain community livability. The recently adopted Eugene Local Street Plan recognized this and states: "For an interconnected local street system to work successfully...arterhaland collector stn:ets must function eFFectively to collect and distribute traffic throughout the community, allowing local stn:ets to be used for local traffic. If collector or arterial streets arse congested, drivers may cut through local neighborhood streeets despite local steet designs to discourage such traffic, resulting in higher traffic volumes and speeds and impacting neighborhood livability." Street Classification: Eugene's arterial and collector streets are part of a larger system of Eugene-Springfield metropolitan major streets. A classification scheme for this street system has been in use for a number of years to comply with federal and state requirements for transportation planning. In 1992, the Metropolitan Policy Committee (MPC) adopted this classification system for the metropolitan area. The City's adopted long-range transportation plan, TransPlan, incorpo- rates this system of arterial and collector streets and includes a list of proposed improvements to a number of those streets. Various adopted neighbor- hood refinement plans also contain street classifica- tion maps (some adopted, others merely descriptive) for the area included in each plan. The Arterial and Collector Street Plan builds upon these existing plans and proposes adoption by the City Council of a city-wide network of arterial and collector streets, classified according to criteria which are included in this document. Street classification is an important and useful planning tool in efforts to create a comprehensive, understandable transportation system. The classifi- cation of streets serves several purposes. The classification map: • Allows city officials to clearly communicate the functional purpose of a street to the general 9