City of Monrovia Analyzing Possible Solutions to Traffic and Parking Concerns

Identified traffic and intersection improvements are highlighted on this map. – Courtesy illustration / City of Monrovia

Monrovia City Council held a joint session with the city’s Planning Commission on June 4 to review and discuss additional parking and traffic mitigation plans in the vicinity of Station Square.

As the city prepares to consider entitlement of the next wave of development projects, staff has been at work to find additional parking mitigations for consideration. City staff has developed a policy for consideration that would require all major residential projects to establish in their lease agreements a requirement that prohibits tenants from parking on city streets. Under this proposed condition tenants who continuously violate the parking ruled can be evicted from the housing complex.

City staff has also analyzed the potential cumulative traffic impacts that could result from proposed development projects. As part of a recently completed review of the city south of Huntington Drive, staff analyzed 29 separate traffic intersections and modeled what would happen if all currently identified projects were approved.

Assessment priorities of the review included:

• Minimum acceptable operational level during peak hours for each intersection as identified in the city’s General Plan.
• Modeling future traffic conditions through 2040 to project what might happen if nothing is done to improve the situation.
• Including in the assessment regional growth patterns, known development projects and other projects allowed by the General Plan by 2040

Based on the city’s analysis, the review concluded that by 2040 development patterns will add a total of 2,048 morning peak-hour trips and 3,457 afternoon peak-hour trips. The review also indicates that if nothing is done to ameliorate the situation, by 2040 12 of the 29 studied intersections will be operating at less than the requisite level of service as stipulated in the General Plan.

Given these results, the state allows the City of Monrovia to assess a Traffic Impact Fee on all new development that would require project proponents pay for their proportional share of the additional traffic being generated by their developments. The city is now working to institute a Traffic Impact Fee in Monrovia. If approved, the fee would raise funds from each of the new developments to make traffic and intersection improvements identified in the study.

All of the proposed development projects, along with the city’s current development mitigation program, can be found online at buildingmonrovia.com.

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