Transportation System Plan 2018-2038

Prelim inary inform ation about freight m ovem ent from the RVMPO freight planning study , as well as inform ation collected from other regions, indicates truck activity does not account for a high proportion of peak hour traffic at any specific location. Furtherm ore, peak tim es for freight m ovem ent are ty pically not the sam e as the peak for autom obile traffic as they generally occur during the m idday time period. ODOT’ s I-5 State of the Interstate (2000) report indicates that trucks com prise approxim ately 12 to 15 percent of the daily traffic stream on I-5 through Me dford. The RTP identifies the following arterial street intersections in the Medford UGB as having the highest volum es of truck traffic: • Rogue Valley Highway (Highway 99) and McAndrews Road • Biddle Road and Table Rock Road • Crater Lake Highway (Highway 62) a nd Rogue Valley Highway (Highway 99) • Interstate 5 ram p term inals and Cr ater Lake Highway (Highway 62) • Central Avenue and Main Street • Biddle Road and Airport Road Truck traffic at these m ajor arterial street intersections varies between three and five percent of the traffic during the m orning and afternoon peak periods, and between five and ten percent of the traffic during the off-peak period. Good freight m obility within the Medford UGB requires that the arterial and collector street sy stem provide both an adequate level of service and good connectivity to interm odal facilities and inter-regional routes, such as Interstate 5 and Highway 62. Som e guidance on the standard of perform ance necessary for freight m ovem ents is found in the 1999 Oregon Highway Plan. The Highway Plan sets mobility standards using volum e-to-capacity ratios (v/c) rather than Level of Service letters, to identify the presence of congestion. If the v/c ratio for a highway segm ent exceeds the v/c ratio established in the plan, then the highway segm ent does not m eet ODOT’ s minimum operating conditions. Acceptable v/c ratios are higher for urbanized areas than for sparsely settled rural areas, which m eans that relatively greater congestion is acceptable in urbanized areas than in rural areas. Acceptable v/c ratios for freight routes are slightly lowe r than for other highway s. This m eans that freight routes should be less congested than non-freight routes. The m aximum acceptable v/c ratio for the Rogue Valley metropolitan area ranges from 0.80 for I-5, to 0.85 for Highway 62. Pavem ent conditions and lack of restrictions on large vehicles along truck routes are also im portant for the efficient m ovem ent of freight. According to the I-5 State of the Interstate report, pavem ent conditions along I-5 are generally good. However, the RTP iden tifies several freight routes within the Medford UGB that currently have restrictions on vehicle size and/or poor pavem ent conditions that affect freight mobility . These include: • Highway 99 (Rogue Valley Highway ) from the Central Point city limits to the intersection with Highway 62 (Crater Lake Highway ) – poor pavem ent conditions • Highway 238 (Jacksonville Highway ) from Lozier Lane westward out of the UGB – restrictions on overlength tractor and sem itrailer com binations Medford Transportatio n System Plan 3-24 Existing Conditions