Letter from Tallman Trask on Durham Impact Fee

Marcia Conner City Manager 101 City Hall Plaza Durham, North Carolina 27701

Dear Marcia:

Thank you for your March 29 letter in response to Duke's street impact fee rate appeal. We have studied the report by Kimley-Horn & Associates (KHA) with interest and were pleased to note that it agrees with our view that the initial numbers were incorrect and that there should be a significant reduction. We do, however, still question key assumptions used in calculating the trip generation rate and projections of new traffic. Consider this our protest of the new proposed rate and classification.

Having concluded that the former classification doesn't work, the KHA report now recommends that a new category, "Major Research University," be created. This will apply to Duke (and only to Duke as far as we can tell; a policy category with only one member is, on the face of it, suspect.) It assumes that employment (and by implication student enrollment) will grow in direct proportion to added square footage, and that traffic will grow proportionately based on average trip rates from the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation Manual.

We take issue with this approach for several reasons, including the following:

KHA recommends basing the trip generation on data collected for the ITE land use category University/College. The data set is very limited, collected for only four campuses, with the largest being just over 2,000 employees (compared to Duke University's approximately 28,000 employees). Two of the four campuses had less than 300 employees.

KHA recommends using the average trip rate observed for these four small campuses, rather than an equation that recognizes trip rates declining as the number of employees at a site increases. While we acknowledge that the data is very limited, we disagree with the selection of a "worst-case" rate that is both based on small campuses, and does not allow for the non-linear relationship between size and trip rate.

In addition to the small size of the surveyed campuses, the ITE Users Guide states that "Data were primarily collected at suburban locations having little or no transit service, nearby pedestrian amenities or travel demand management (TDM) programs. At specific sites, the user may wish to modify trip generation rates presented in this document to reflect the presence of public transportation, ridesharing or other TDM measures, enhanced pedestrian and bicycle trip-making opportunities..."

Duke is proud to be located in the city of Durham; it is not in a suburban location. In addition to charging everyone for parking, already has multiple trip reduction measures in place: DATA, Duke University Transit (serving both on and off-campus locations), on-campus housing (for more than half our students), opportunities to bike and walk to campus, mixed uses, on-campus amenities for pedestrians and bicyclists, and a TDM program. In addition, the regional rail system is scheduled to be operational as far as Ninth Street by 2007 and to Duke Medical Center several years later. Beginning in 2007, the Ninth Street station will be connected to West, Medical Center and Central campuses by University-provided shuttles. We would expect to receive mitigation credits for all of these things. And we would undertake additional measures to mitigate traffic before paying the proposed fees.

The recommended trip rate for assessing the traffic impact at Duke is based on data that is both limited and inappropriate. We asked our transportation consultants, Martin/Alexiou/Bryson, to identify campuses in somewhat similar settings for which complete traffic data was available. They calculated the following per employee trip rates:

University of Maryland, College Park: trip rate is 72% of that recommended by KHA,

University of Washington, Seattle: trip rate is 44% of that recommended by KHA

It is noteworthy that both campuses have a much greater student/employee ratio than Duke, and therefore these rates reflect a much higher level of student travel than at Duke. Neither campus has rail transit conveniently serving the campus (University of Maryland has a Metro station about a mile away that is well served by shuttles, while Duke will have direct rail access). The University of Washington has a very effective trip reduction program instituted more than a decade ago, before I left there to come to Duke. These data sets are far more relevant and suggest a substantially lower trip rate than recommended by KHA.

Our consultants, who have conducted transportation studies for a number of major campuses, believe that a very substantial reduction should be applied to the KHA trip rate to account for Duke's urban setting, availability of alternative modes of transportation, and mixed use (including a high amount of on-campus housing). None of this has been done in the City's calculations.

The city's calculations assume that employee and student growth will increase proportionately with space growth. They also assume that current commuting patterns will not significantly change, even with the TTA rail service. In reality, Duke anticipates only minimal increases in employees and students with its growth plans, since new and expanded buildings are planned primarily to serve our existing population.

Duke is committed to constraining traffic at, or perhaps even below, existing levels. The University manages its entire parking system, effectively controlling the proportion of commuters who may drive to the campus. Duke can reduce traffic by adjusting parking pricing and availability, improving its transportation services, working with other agencies to improve alternative commuter modes of transportation, and offering incentives not to drive. The U-Pass program at the University of Washington has resulted in traffic remaining below 1990 levels, despite more than a decade of construction and growth. I am more than a bit troubled by the city's unwillingness to recognize the possibility of such efforts or the impact of the rail system. If the TTA train won't reduce traffic, why does the city support it?

We fear that that the issue of future traffic has the potential to delay approval of several of our major projects. This must not happen.

Sincerely, Tallman Trask III Executive Vice President