GENESEE COUNTY/City PDC tables Taco Bell matter pending review of traffic study

By Mike Pettinella
For Video News Service

The City of Batavia Planning & Development Committee on Tuesday night voted to put off any action on a proposal to place a Taco Bell restaurant at the corner of West Main Street and Montclair Avenue, instead opting for a third-party review of the traffic study commissioned by the architectural firm presenting the project.

Hospitality Syracuse, Inc., on behalf of Chan Patel, owner of Taco Bell, is looking to move the restaurant from its current location at 413 West Main St. to 244-248 West Main St., the former TimeBuyer location.

Stephanie Albright, senior civil engineer, APD Engineering & Architecture, addresses the City Planning & Development Committee on Tuesday night. Photo by Mike Pettinella/For Video News Service.

Stephanie Albright, senior civil engineer with APD Engineering & Architecture, appeared before the PDC for a second time, providing details of the plan to build a 2,163-square-foot drive-thru Taco Bell. She said she received the traffic report last Friday and expected the board to table it until it could review it.

Albright acknowledged that the move was recommended for disapproval by the Genesee County Planning Board last week but noted that it, too, did not have the traffic report.

The PDC also heard from two opponents of the project, both residents of Montclair Avenue – Charley Boyd, who had sent a letter to the committee dated Aug. 8 with a list of seven concerns, and Tom Clark, who said he has lived on the street for more than 30 years.

Albright once again reported the site will have 22 parking spaces, adding that the NYS Department of Transportation will not allow full access off of West Main St.

“So, we did narrow that down to just the exit out of the drive-thru lane,” she said.

She also said the restaurant is an allowed use as far as zoning is concerned and that the site plan does meet landscape buffer requirements along the residential/commercial boundary line. However, a variance would be required on the Montclair side of the project since there is only 5 feet.

Albright said her traffic report showed that only 30 cars would be added during the peak hours, both entering and exiting, equating to about one car every 10 minutes. “So, there’s not any true rush of traffic,” she said, adding that there would be “sufficient gaps” on West Main Street to make both right and left (turns) from Montclair onto West Main Street.

“The traffic report is done in peak hours … the morning peak hour, the midday, the evening and then Saturday, so there’s four times that they look at,” she said. “During each of those four times, the lowest number of vehicles that could make a left turn would be 143 vehicles per hour that would have enough time to make a left turn out of Montclair. And we’re only talking about a total of 60 vehicles entering and exiting.

“So, there was nothing in his report that was alarming that shows mitigation or any major concern. There is available sight distance. There’s no significant crashes in the area … it’s all below the DOT average for an intersection,” she offered.

Albright said up to 10 cars could be stacked before getting to the end of the drive-thru lane and it would take about 13 cars before potentially being onto Montclair. She said previous traffic studies revealed not more than 2-3 cars stacked in the drive-thru lane at the same time. “The chance of having more than 13 cars stacked in there are pretty small …,” she added.

To address concerns about Montclair being a narrow street, she suggested that city officials place no parking signs from the entrance to the corner.

Following her presentation, Boyd stepped up to the podium to let the committee know that the project is a bad idea.

“It also, near that corner, is a school bus stop,” he said. “And that means you’re going to have kids getting on and off the bus that creates a danger with traffic coming out of that area. Montclair is a narrow street. We only have parking on one side of the street and parking is allowed pretty much … on the west side. That means anybody coming out of Taco Bell could conceivably … sightline will be problematic.”

Boyd said any additional traffic will only make a difficult situation tougher: navigating a left turn from Montclair onto West Main Street.

“Please don’t override the county’s disapproval unless you see something major,” he said. “And if you are going to further study this, please have an independent traffic study of what’s going to happen to Montclair Avenue because it was not designed for this kind of traffic. It is a residential street and even though there is a business on the corner – businesses that have been there before – have been drive in, you go into the store and you leave. That’s a successful model.”

At different times during the meeting, the committee heard from Joshua Rogers, resource manager, for Wendel Engineering, who suggested that Albright make some tweaks to the site plan, such as ideas about snow storage and providing additional details about the “peak hours.”

Rogers said he would oversee a third-party review of the traffic report by his firm and would have the findings to the PDC prior to its September meeting.