Report forecasts 776 new homes by 2035
Estimate will be basis for new traffic impact fee
DOUGLASS (MONT.) >> There are many factors that determine how much more traffic will crowd the roads of the township, the economy in particular.
But one of the most reliable predictors are land use or, more simply, what gets built.
The township will conduct a public hearing on its latest draft report that forecasts what gets built on Thursday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m. in the township building, 1320 E. Philadelphia Ave., in Gilbertsville.
The draft report makes a number of interesting projections, perhaps the most important of which is that 748 new housing units are likely to be built within the next 15 years. It also predicts 560 new jobs being located in the township in that same period.
Each figure is important in calculating the traffic impact fee charged to developers for road improvements.
Housing generates traffic of people driving to and from home, while commercial development generates traffic of people driving to and from work.
As the roads get more heavily used, they need to be upgraded to handle that traffic and Douglass Township is once again turning to a state law to ensure that developers pay their fair share of the road costs driven by the vehicles their developments generate.
That law allows a township to impose what’s called a “traffic impact fee,” which uses a formula to come up with a figure for how much traffic a development will generate, and then attaches a dollar figure to each vehicle trip.
The original fee for each new weekday afternoon peak hour trip, included in the township’s first version enacted in 2005, was $2,415.00.
In February 2009, the peak hour trip fee was recalculated and increased to $2,760.35 to reflect a 14.3 percent increase in costs from 2005 to 2009 based on the Construction Cost Index.
The fee can only be imposed on projects within what the law defines as a “transportation service area” and it cannot be more than seven square miles.
The new area defined in the latest land use assumptions draft is 6.98 square miles and includes 23 intersections, including nine new ones since the last time such a report was done.
The adoption of the land use report, which will follow the public hearing, is only the first step in the process. Next, the township must develop a report analyzing whether current road conditions are sufficient, and then craft a capital improvement plan for those conditions that will need improvement with more traffic.
It is those improvements that will be funded, in part, by the fee developers must pay. Updating all this information is likely to increase the fee.
The report contains an interesting statistical perspective on growth in Douglass, which has a total of 10,524 acres of land.
For example, 40 percent of the township is used for agriculture, helped by the township’s preservation of 35 farms totaling 2,140 acres and fully 20 percent of the township’s land area.
Another 38 percent of land in Douglass is used for residential units.
And 1,323 acres, or 12.47 percent of the township’s land, remains undeveloped.
In 1940, the population was 1,913. By 1990, it had grown to 7,048 and to 10,432 by 2015.
The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission forecasts the township’s population will increase to 12,440 by 2035.
That increase is one way to forecast growth and using the population model, Douglass would see an increase of 2,008 people by 2035 and only 413 more housing units.
The other method, the one chosen by the task force putting the report together, is called the building model, which uses projects already proposed or likely to be built. That method brought the township to the conclusion that 5,040 more people would live in 748 new housing units by 2035.
The report predicts most of those units will be built in the “primary growth area” outlined in the region’s comprehensive plan, which is in the southern portion between the border with Upper Pottsgrove and Hoffmansville Road.
But the report recognizes that development does not happen at a steady linear pace. For example, since 2005, the township has seen housing units develop at a rate of 20.7 per year.
Bur during the housing boom from 2000 to 2004, Douglass saw 90.2 housing units built per year.
“It is unlikely that growth and housing development will remain constant over 10 years given the land development process and construction phasing, and development will, therefore, be greater in some individual years than others,” the authors wrote.
“It can be anticipated that the majority of residential development over the next ten years will be from proposals incorporating townhouse developments, such as the Zern Tract and Holly Road developments,” the report predicts.
It also predicts “it is unlikely that the township will see much major commercial development outside of the Route 100 Corridor. It is anticipated that most commercial development will be concentrated along the parcels that are zoned as Mixed Use to the east of Route 100. It is also possible that additional small scale commercial development may happen in the form of re-use and re-development in Gilbertsville along Philadelphia Avenue, most notably at the former Zern’s Market.”
The report also tries to predict the impact of “passthrough” traffic along its borders, driven by 49 units in the Crossroads apartments in Upper Pottsgrove and another 84 units from Colebrookdale.
Oddly, the report makes no mention of pass-through traffic from the proposed 790 new housing units proposed on 209 acres called New Hanover Town Center along its eastern border with New Hanover Township.