The City of Westfield has adopted a public works policy change to address the effect of the city’s rapid development on local roads.
Johnathon Nail, director of public works for Westfield, said the zone improvement plan is an amendment to the city’s comprehensive plan specifically related to road impact fees.
“We collect road impact fees from developers who are developing primarily vacant land. Those developments generate additional traffic, or trip generation, for those developments,” Nail said in a presentation to the Advisory Plan Commission July 1. “The fund allows us to improve roadways to handle future growth, and every five years we do a study to update that road impact fee.”
The 2,000-page study took existing data for traffic volumes and applied future weekday trip generation to those volumes to create a traffic analysis. ‘Trips’ are a calculation of each time a vehicle utilizes the road in a 24-hour period. For example, driving children to school would require four ‘trips’ — to and from school at the start of the day and the end of the day.
“This study requires a tremendous amount of data collection of existing traffic volumes within the study area, which is Westfield Washington Township,” Nail said. “We identify every intersection and every roadway segment as well as vacant land in the township that we expect to develop in the next 10 years.”
The survey identifies what traffic engineers deem acceptable and unacceptable traffic volumes based on 24-hour trip generation.
“That helps us determine which intersections need to be improved in that next 10-year timeframe, which is the basis for the calculation of road impact fees,” Nail said. “The point is to fairly charge developers the impacts that they are causing in our roadway network so we can budget correctly and correct those intersections and segments in advance before it becomes a major issue for our residents.”
The document determined an updated road impact fee of $362.44 per trip, an increase of approximately $25 per trip over the current rate. The one-time fee is paid when developers are approved for permitting.
Road impact fees are determined by multiplying that per-trip fee by the estimated trip volume over a 24-hour period within various types of developments. Single-family developments are estimated at a lower trip count than multifamily or general retail developments.
“There is an increase there to keep us caught up with future development,” Nail said. “It is really important to understand that road impact fees are one of many costs for developers. We want to make sure we’re being competitive. We don’t want a draconian rate in place because it does stifle development in some cases.”
Nail told the Westfield City Council that many of the intersections in the survey that would move from acceptable to unacceptable traffic volumes with future growth are already included in the city’s long-term capital improvement plan.
A public hearing was held before the APC prior to the commission certifying the amendment. There were no comments at that hearing. The city council approved a resolution adopting the change July 8.
Estimated construction costs to determine road impact fees are based on 2024 construction costs.
The text of the plan is available at westfield.in.gov/egov/documents/1719408300_49498.pdf.
