Trip Generation - Home-Based Business

[tjdeng]

I am working on a project that will re-develop a small lot on a state road. The property currently has one building that was used as a residence on the first floor and a small water conditioning company was run out of the first floor (sold additives to soften water, may have provided service calls for wells, etc.). The new use will be a medical office. I need to calculate the difference in PM peak hour trips between the previous use and the new use to determine the traffic impact fee. Establishing the trips generated for the new use is easy enough with ITE Trip Generation. I am having trouble finding any studies related to trip generation for home-based businesses. Has anyone come across anything that could help establish the existing PM trips for such a use? Thanks!

 

[fel3]

I am not a traffic engineer, but I have a couple of thoughts:

[1] Home-based businesses are usually low traffic operations due to zoning restrictions, but your case (especially being along a main road) may be different than most. In addition, the range of traffic counts for home-based businesses probably varies widely. I have a hunch that traffic generation for home-based business has not been seriously studied, or if has the studies show such a wide range of traffic counts that the information would be of limited use.

[2] So, rather than look for studies, would it be possible to get actual data from the owner of the water conditioning company? For example, in-store sales plus regular deliveries would be the lower limit for traffic, to which I would add something for "window shoppers." This latter category is probably small for this type of business and the owner may have a good estimate anyway.

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"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

 

[IRstuff]

But, this will be a medical office, right? Depending on a few factors, the standard is 4 - 6 appointments/hr for a primary care doctor.

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[tjdeng]

Thanks fel3. I did not expect there to be much/any data on this type of use as far as trip generation goes, but thought I would throw it out there. We may try to contact the previous owner of the property but last we heard he was not in good health. My best estimate is that for the PM peak hour:
1) 1 or 2 customers may stop by on their way home from work to pick up supplies (Total of 2-4 trips)
2) 1 or 2 work vans return to the office and the employees leave in their own cars (Total of 2-4 trips)
3) The owner may run out to the store and back (2 trips)
So, overall I am looking at only 6-10 trips. This is about the best I can figure unless I find out they had more evening customers or evening service calls. Thanks for your input.

 

[fel3]

tjdeng…

Your estimate seems reasonable except that I think item 2 should be doubled because the work van trips and personal vehicle trips can be added together (car in, van out, van in, car out). This brings the estimate to 8-12 trips.

fel3

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"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill