Morrisville Unified Development Ordinance - April 2019

Article 5: Development Standards Section 5.8. Access and Circulation 5.8.6. Vehicular Access and Circulation

b. Required vehicular cross access between the adjoining lots shall be provided through the use of a frontage or service street (if the lots front on a major thoroughfare right-of-way), a single two-way driveway or drive aisle, or two one-way driveways or aisles that are sufficiently wide to accommodate traffic by automobiles, service vehicles, loading vehicles, and emergency vehicles. c. The Planning Director, in conjunction with the Town Engineer, may waive or modify the requirement for vehicular cross access on determining that such cross access is impractical or undesirable because it would require crossing a significant physical barrier or environmentally sensitive area (e.g., railroad, watercourse, floodplain, wetlands, steep slopes), or would create unsafe conditions. d. Easements allowing cross access to and from properties served by a vehicular cross-access, along with agreements defining maintenance responsibilities of property owners, shall be recorded with the Register of Deeds for the county in which the properties are located before issuance of a Building Permit for the development. The purpose of the access management standards in this subsection is to control vehicular access to developments from adjacent streets in a way that preserves the safe and efficient flow of the traffic on the streets while providing property owners a right to reasonable access to a general system of streets and highways. Specifically, the standards are intended to limit the number of traffic conflicts, separate basic conflict areas, separate turning volumes from through movements, and maintain progressive speeds along thoroughfares. a. Limitation on Direct Driveway Access Along Thoroughfares Direct driveway access to a development’s principal origin or destination points (including individual lots in a subdivision) may be provided directly from a major or minor thoroughfare only if: (1) No alternative direct vehicular access from a lower-classified accessway (e.g., collector street, local street, alley, or driveway) is available or feasible to provide; (2) Only one two-way driveway, or one pair of one-way driveways, is allowed onto lots with 250 or less feet of lot frontage on the major or minor thoroughfare, and no more than one additional two-way driveway or pair of one-way driveways per additional 250 feet of frontage; or (3) The development(s) served by the driveway is expected to generate an average daily traffic (ADT) count of 1,000 trips or less, or the Planning Director determines that the origin or destination points accessed by the driveway will generate sufficiently low traffic volumes, and the adjacent major or minor thoroughfare has sufficiently low travel speeds and traffic volumes, to allow safe driveway access while preserving the safety and efficiency of travel on the thoroughfare. Driveway Intersections

E. Vehicular Access Management Purpose

b. Limitation on Direct Driveway Access Along Other Roadways

The following standards shall apply to vehicular access along a roadway other than a freeway or a major or minor thoroughfare. (1) For single-family detached, duplex, manufactured home dwellings, and pocket neighborhood developments, no more than two direct driveway access points are allowed.

(2) For bungalow courts, no more than one driveway access point is allowed.

April 23, 2019

Morrisville, NC

Page 5-54

Unified Development Ordinance