The Province at Greenville - an Ewards Companies student housing complex, Greenville, NC
Edwards Companies planned a student housing development at a tract of land near the East Carolina University in Greensville, NC. The site is situated on the east side of Charles Boulevard and along the south side of 11th Street between Charles Street and Anderson Street. The Province at Greenville plan included apartment buildings with a total of 237 units with 738 beds. This development was for the replacement of the existing Green Mill Run Apartments and Kings Arm Apartments, which currently occupy the location and consist of 110 and 120 bedrooms, respectively. The site plan showed three (3) access points on the western and northern sides of the property: one full access on Charles Boulevard directly across from 13th Street and two full access on Lawrence Street south of Eleventh Street.
Davenport Transportation Consulting was retained to provide a transportation impact analysis (TIA) in order to determine the potential traffic impacts of this development and to identify transportation improvements that may be required to accommodate the impacts of both background traffic and new development traffic. DTC analyzed six intersections and provided analysis for various existing and future development scenarios. Analysis was completed for the AM, Noon and PM peaks and included both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
The TIA incorporated a customized trip generation reduction to account for pedestrian and public transit modes of travel in similar development in Greenville. As part of the study, other student housing developments be studied as well, which involved the collection of traffic data from three other existing student housing developments. This data collection included traffic counts of the actual number of vehicles entering and exiting the developments in 15 minute increments for the AM, Noon and PM peaks, as well as data compilation and engineering calculations to determine the appropriate trip generation for The Province at Greenville project.
Pedestrian Safety Review
As a part of the scoping process for this study, the NCDOT expressed a desire that pedestrian safety be evaluated along the 10th Street corridor in the project vicinity and that ideas for pedestrian improvements be presented. The Project location is on the southern edge of the ECU academic campus and situated just north of ECU athletic facilities. As such, the Project location provides walking to campus within just a few minutes. Students living at the proposed Province student housing development cannot drive and park as quickly or easily as just walking or biking. Most resident students are expected to have a vehicle for their use, but they are not expected to utilize their vehicles for attendance to classes. Therefore, DTC provided a few options for providing pedestrian refuge islands on 10th Street for the City of Greenville and NCDOT to review in order to determine feasibity of the concepts.
The signalized intersection of 10th Street and Charles Street included marked and signalized pedestrian crossings. The intersection of 10th Street and Lawrence Street does not provide pedestrian refuge islands. The intersection of 10th Street and Anderson Street currently had a median island on the East approach that provided pedestrian refuge when walking across 10th Street.
Three different scenarios were offered for consideration and suggested different ways to provide a refuge island at the 10th Street and Lawrence intersection. Each scenario included the same concept for providing a refuge island at the 10th Street and Anderson Street intersection which includes providing a median island on the West approach of the intersection of 10th Street and Anderson Street. The two-way left turn lane at this intersection is wide enough to provide a 4-6 foot island while maintaining the left turn lane. The island can extend for approximately 50 feet in length without interfering with or restricting driveways.
