Traffic and 17 Herff

In the Agenda for Tomorrow's City Council meeting, city staff state in the 17 Herff Agenda Item Summary that “There is scientific data that supports staff’s view that multi-family development generates less traffic than single family residential.” This does not provide the complete picture.

In the higher density myth/fact (attachment 9 in the Agenda), it states that apartments generate 6.3 trips per day and single family homes generate 10 trips per day. So, not including traffic from the multiple restaurants and businesses, the 250 apartments would generate in 1575 trips per day.

This number would be much higher if it were to include the significant amount of traffic generated from the numerous restaurants and businesses proposed at the site.

If zoned R-1 (which requires 7,800sq/ft lots), the entire property could hold a maximum of about 130 homes. This would generate only 1,300 trips per day, 275 fewer trips than the apartment alone would generate. Again, this is omitting the traffic from the commercial businesses.

There are 3 planned entrances in the site plan and the traffic light only offers access to the apartment side (see image). Vehicles attempting to enter the restaurants and businesses will likely cause even more congestion.

The traffic information presented by city staff in the agenda omits the fact that the proposed development would actually be much more impactful than a maximum density R-1 neighborhood. They also leave out any analysis of the commercial traffic impact.

We certainly aren't advocating for 130 homes on this site. There are other very reasonable alternatives. For example, if zoned RE (residential estate) with .5 acre lots (similar to the homes just north of this site on the east side of Esser Road), this site would hold about 50 houses and would only generate 500 trips per day.

Additionally, the expansion of Herff Road was intended as traffic relief for Esperanza. Esperanza alone with 2,480 homes is 2.6 times larger than Trails of Herff Ranch (576), Champion Heights (172), and The Woods of Boerne (186) combined. Keep in mind that Esperanza is just beginning to sell houses. And then there’s the Ranches at Cibolo Creek’s 898 lots that haven’t started selling yet and Boerne did not anticipate. Esperanza and the ranches combined will add 3.6 times the traffic to this area.

When all these development’s are built out, they will account for a total of 4,312 single family homes. This will generate 43,120 trips per day. According to the traffic study from the city, in 2017 Herff Road had just 14,000 daily trips. Can it handle 3.6 times more traffic?

It's very difficult to see how the Herff Road expansion will be able to serve as traffic relief for Esperanza if we add high-density developments along it. If we were to stop approving new developments today, and just build out what is currently approved, Herff Road traffic will continue to get worse for a long time.