Transportation Plan - Town of Garner

5.1 Best Practice Design Guidance
The Transportation Plan is intended to be a comprehensive examination
of transportation facilities within and connecting to the Town of Garner.
One component of this plan is the development of a Street Catalog and
best practice guidance for street design. The Catalog contains an
inventory of roadway design elements along existing streets within the
Town Limits or in nearby communities, where necessary. The Design
Guidance in Appendix E illustrates additional, multimodal design
considerations.
The Street Catalog is one of the tools used for input into the future street
design standards that will be developed through the Garner
Transportation Plan. Other inputs will include: street design
recommendations from the 2006 Comprehensive Growth Plan, the
Garner Streetscape Plan, the Town staff, and the Transportation Plan
Steering Committee.
What is a Street Catalog? A street catalog is a collection of photographs
from existing streets. The catalog outlines the unique design elements of
those streets that can then be used to develop new roadway cross
sections for the Town of Garner. The Transportation Plan Steering
Committee will use this catalog to identify and define various elements to
roadway design that should be incorporated into the design elements of
the plan. The street catalog documents pedestrian facilities, sidewalk
buffers, bicycle facilities, travel lanes, parking lanes and land uses along a
dozen various streets in and around Garner.
Thinking about Streets in their Context. Different users have different
needs along different streets. The Garner Comprehensive Plan addressed
these different needs and provided some conceptual street design
techniques that the Town should explore as part of the Transportation
Plan. The driver who wants to quickly get from home to work will likely
prefer a higher speed facility with as few distractions as possible. The
child walking to school needs an environment that ensures safety while
navigating driveway crossings and intersections. The bicyclist needs space
within the street that will minimize conflict with vehicles and/or
pedestrians.
Considering these diverse yet interrelated needs to design a street that is
accommodating to all users can become a challenge. In order to
understand what is needed across different contexts within Garner the
evaluation of street design begins with land use, then evaluates the
needs of the different types of users in that context. For this reason, the
street design considerations can be examined by zone.
Chapter 5: Implementation Page | 90