Big Wave Traffic & Parking

Do you wonder why the Big Wave daily trip estimate dropped from 3,787 to 2,123 between the 2008 and 2009 Traffic Analyses?  Trouble getting your project approved due to too many cars?  Just relabel your Office Park “mixed use” and add in an assortment of other uses that don’t produce so many cars.  Whose gonna enforce the percentage of use types in the building anyway?

40% general office, 25% R&D, 15% storage, 20% light manufacturing—and voila!  225,000 sq.ft. of office space becomes 158,513 sq.ft. equivalent office space for purposes of specifying daily trips and parking requirements. 

225,000 sf office space requires 1125 parking spaces
158,513 sf equivalent office space requires     737 parking spaces
BW Parking exception request results in     635 parking spaces

In spite of all these cool angles and the new lower daily trip estimate, the Traffic Analysis (still using the original traffic counts from 2007) still predicts Cypress/Hwy 1 east-bound left turn LOS “F”, with no improvements possible other than signalization.

If you lived over here and depended on that intersection you might think well, at least we’ll get a traffic signal, but don’t leap ahead.  The EIR proposed mitigation schedule looks like that might take 10 years.  The project takes 3 yrs to build if all goes well, then developer submits bi-annual reports re need for signal, then if it’s determined we’ve all been sitting in traffic long enough, developer pays their “fair share” for signal within 5 yrs of date of report.