Ever had a sore back?
When your back hurts, it's hard to do much of anything. It's central to your body and affects the function of just about every other limb and organ. Your roads, streets and bridges serve as your community's backbone and skeleton. If they are hurting, your whole community is probably suffering.

Is your community's spine in proper alignment?
Have you taken a big picture look at your roads and bridges lately? Do they get you where you want to go? Are there missing links? Do they adequately serve motorists, bicycles and pedestrians? Do they allow through traffic to bypass residential areas? Are they in good repair? Do they have the capacity to foster the level of economic growth that you want for your community?

At SSM we can help you answer these questions and help make the adjustments necessary for your community backbone to deliver vitality to your whole community.




Like a backbone and skeletal system, roads, streets and bridges provide a structure and shape for your community. We can think of the main routes as the spine and the lesser routes as the rest of the skeleton. Your spine and skeleton also provide a path through your body for nerves, veins and arteries. Even so, your roads provide vehicular and pedestrian circulation for people within your community, but they also provide corridors for water, sewer, storm water, electric, telecommunications and other utilities.

As you evaluate your road system you want to take all of those functions into consideration. The first and most basic aspect is vehicular access. Does your transportation system provide access to all of the relevant areas of your community? Does it do so in a logical manner? Is there a logical network of minor and local streets feeding collector roads? Is there adequate and controlled access to major collector and arterial roads? Do you have limited access highways running through your community? If so, do you have adequate access to them?

One way to help ensure good answers to these questions is adoption of an Official Map. The Official Map can serve to identify the existing street hierarchy as well as to identify future streets that are needed to complete your community's transportation system. The key is that this puts you in a stronger position to obtain the identified future streets when development of that particular area is proposed.

Do your roads and streets serve their intended purpose? To be effective a road needs to be wide enough to handle its intended traffic volume, but not so wide that it encourages excessive speeds. Unless there are parallel and separate facilities for bicycles, the road should accommodate them as well. Roadside pedestrian facilities may be desirable. In more urban settings and especially in village retail areas, particular attention should be given to pedestrian friendly facilities.

What level and type of economic development would you like to see in your community? Economic development needs ultimately boil down to infrastructure. Providing adequate roadway capacity, along with sewer, water and other utilities paves the way for economic growth. Coordinating your future growth plan with your transportation plan will help ensure that both come to fruition.

For more information
Mark Stabolepszy, PE - mark.stabolepszy@ssmgroup.com