TOWN OF GILBERT

and then you must go north up to the 60 and come back around or Guadalupe and through so it is
essentially a two mile detour. In past experience with schools it has shown that once parents are off the
school site the school has no authority or jurisdiction and it is the Town that must deal with those traffic
issues. A two mile detour to get back to Greenfield, if you live directly west of the site, is a difficult
movement to make. Another issue that makes the site difficult is the existing driveways and the way they
are built. They have various short storage lengths of approximately 40 to 60 feet which is not conducive to
putting a traffic signal in because you can stack 2 to 3 cars before you start losing efficiency of the traffic
signal. The major issue that traffic has with the traffic analysis is that it has shown that to get out of the site
without everyone making a right, the Town has a concern that traffic will try to make U- turns or cut
through the commercial properties. They may have people monitoring the site, but the way that they have
the traffic signals coordinated there is a very small window for people to make a left out onto the site. The
school drop off area for the archway is approximately 150 feet from the driveway and their analysis is
showing that the queue will extend past and backup any sort of on-site traffic. It is the same thing with the
preparatory if that is the main point of access to make lefts the analysis is showing that the queue will
extend past the driveway. Essentially what they are saying is that everyone is going to be making a righthand
turn. The new analysis that was just received by staff shows that they will have traffic going over to
Greenfield and there is no way for a monitor to see what sort of stacking is happening at the Greenfield
driveway because of buildings obscuring their view. The traffic analysis does not show, because they did
not report it, that the intersection, if they shift the traffic over there, will cause great delays and blocking of
that driveway and the business access. There was a previous plat on the site for 75,000 feet of medical and
dental office. Mr. Guderian stated that he wanted to show the comparative trip generations that they were
talking for different types of land uses that could go on the site and referred to the following chart:
Mr. Guderian stated that the figures on the chart come out of the traffic study that the applicant has
prepared and that the site will generate 913 trips which include both inbound and outbound trips in the AM
peak hour and 654 in the PM when school is getting out. On the previous plat there would be 179 trips in
the AM peak hour or 1/5 of what the school is generating. With regular office building the numbers would
be slightly less. They also looked at general retail of a shopping center where the AM peak hour is
decidedly less and trip generation increases in the PM peak hour.
Chairman Wittmann asked if the traffic impact analysis study submitted by the applicant did not include the
school located to the South.
Mr. Guderian said that was correct. In their previous iterations of the traffic study they were just showing
access out onto Baseline and so staff really focused on the intersections along Baseline. In the new study
that was submitted recently the only access point that they really looked at and do not have traffic counts
for, they assumed some traffic would access on to Greenfield but did not look further south.
Planning Commission
Regular Meeting 10-2-13
11