Everyone wants the best possible access to their property – whether commuters, shoppers, tenants, or property owners and managers. Site access is not simply a first impression – it’s the experience tenants and visitors have every day.

When it comes to accessing a property – be it a single building or a campus – a chief concern is to maintain a safe flow of traffic that is as efficient (fast) as possible while accommodating the access needs of all commuters, including carpool and single-occupancy vehicle commuters, transit riders, accessibility customers, rideshare users, bicyclists, and pedestrians.  

What Factors Affect Transportation Access to Your Property?

The quality and efficiency of access to a site – be it a retail space, office complex, school, or residential site – is governed by a number of factors, including:  

• physical access into the site itself 
• the ability of commuters to get onto the road from the site 
• the types of commuters that need to be served,  
• the scale of new development around the property, and  
• the average vehicular speed of the roadways that lead to the site.  

In other words, many variables determine optimal site access.  

Steps to Modernize and Improve Site Access

Often, older office, residential, and commercial properties prioritize the use of motor vehicles to access a property, having been designed primarily for vehicular access.  

Times change, however. Sometimes, the development of roadways, neighboring properties, or changes in traffic patterns and speeds lessen the effectiveness of access to a site. And, increasingly, commuters, tenants, and developers demand multimodal access to their sites – in other words, improved access for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users.  

In any of these cases, what property owners and developers really need is the modernization of access to their site. Just as the variables that determine the quality of site access are numerous, so can be the solutions. For example, site access can be improved by:  

• Measuring traffic counts at various time periods to determine actual usage, not the usage for which the site was originally built 
• Forecasting future traffic flow based on a variety of estimates 
• Taking into account newer transportation options of tenants, commuters, and shoppers, including transit, biking, and pedestrian modes 
• Considering the redesign of lanes, signage, traffic signals, and traffic control devices (including pavement markings) 

Better Site Access Via Modern Traffic Engineering

The traffic engineering team at Wells + Associates serves developers, architects, corporations, law firms, and other organizations who need to improve the transportation aspects of their properties and the developers they serve, including site access and circulation on the property and the connections to surrounding road networks and properties.  

Our traffic engineers help:  

• Reduce congestion and improve overall traffic flow 
• Maintain compliance with transportation regulations 
• Improve connections with neighboring properties, neighborhoods, and transportation networks 
• Where possible, connect properties to local transit networks and facilities 
• Develop safer road networks, notably in connection with pedestrian and biking pathways and networks 
• Improve commute times and experiences for everyone accessing the property 

Improving access to a site often begins with a simple conversation or a site analysis. Let us know how we can help you.