Traffic/Sprawl

Examples & Resources

• Bozeman 2020 Community Plan, Land Use (2001)
• Comparison of Vehicle Trip Forecasts for Big Box Stores (2004)
• Yakima, WA Wal-Mart Supercenter Store Noise Study Report (2004)
• Town of Greenfield Zoning Bylaws,Major Development Review (1999)
• Site Review Standards, San Jose, California
• View All

Keeping Wal-Mart shareholders happy means a relentless focus on growth—and that growth can come at the expense of traffic and livability. As Wal-Mart presses forward with plans for multi-acre supercenters that dwarf the company’s current stores, the resulting outcry from communities—concerned about the impact on roads, retail, and neighborhoods—can fall on deaf ears. In the meantime, the chain leaves hundreds of abandoned old Wal-Marts in its wake—some 28 million square feet of empty space today in communities across the country.

“Sprawl" is defined by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as “poorly planned, low-density, auto-oriented development that spreads out from the center of communities.” It creates that doughnut effect in some cities where acrylic and asphalt suburban shopping malls form a ring around the dead center, where the old downtown sits decaying. Between 1960 and 1975, the state of Pennsylvania lost a total of 3,600,000 acres of farmland. That’s like losing a geographic area the size of Pittsburg every six months.

Here is how the Bank of America, California’s largest financial institution, described the impact of sprawl in that state:

Urban job centers have decentralized to the suburbs. New housing tracts have moved even deeper into agricultural and environmentally sensitive areas. Private auto use continues to rise. This acceleration of sprawl has surfaced enormous social, environmental and economic costs, which until now have been hidden, ignored, or quietly borne by society. The burden of these costs is becoming very clear. Businesses suffer from higher costs, a loss in worker productivity, and underutilized investments in older communities. .

But small town America started learning a “big lesson” also—one that took years to sink in: saturated retail markets bring deterioration and decay. With retail sprawl development comes a series of economic and social problems for host communities. Sprawl is often mistaken for economic development, and the people it affects the most are least likely to understand it.

10 Sins of Sprawl

• It destroys the economic and environmental value of land
• It encourages an inefficient land-use pattern that is very expensive to serve.
• It fosters redundant competition between local governments, an economic war of tax incentives.
• It forces costly infrastructure development at the edge of towns.
• It causes disinvestment from established core commercial areas.
• It requires the use of public tax support for revitalizing rundown core areas.
• It degrades the visual, aesthetic character of local communities.
• It lowers the value of other commercial and residential property, reducing public revenues.
• It weakens the sense of place and community cohesiveness.
• It masquerades as a form of economic development.

Traffic

For local communities one of the most salient issues surrounding a proposed Wal-Mart is traffic. These people may have no ideological problem with the retailer but they become quite distressed when their already congested local roads are asked to accommodate the influx engendered by 200,000+ sq. ft. supercenters.

It is first important to examine exactly how many vehicle trips a Wal-Mart supercenter actually generates. According to the Institute of Traffic Engineers, a 200,000 sq. ft. discount center on average results in 76,232 car trips per week (with the high end of the range being 92,806).

Yet this astoundingly high number may in fact be much too conservative considering that the Institute’s traffic estimates for “regular sized” discount stores are actually higher than for the larger supercenters. This paradox became quite important when Wal-Mart wanted to build in Pasco County, FL:

If you build a regular Wal-Mart, the traffic experts say the store will draw 850 car trips during the busiest evening hour.

If you build a Wal-Mart Supercenter—which includes the regular store plus a full-service grocery store, hair salon, vision center and tire and lube express—those same experts say the store will draw only 750 car trips that hour.

If you think those numbers don’t add up, you’re not the only one.

According to these liars-for-hire, traffic never is a problem and can always be mitigated with better timed traffic signals, left hand turn lanes and improved off ramps.

Residents opposed to a Wal-Mart in the Tri-Lakes area of Colorado saw this whitewashing in action. By approaching an independent engineer the anti-Wal-Mart coalition was able to deconstruct the study.

These examples are not the only instances of Wal-Mart’s traffic impact causing communities to worry and, in some cases, reject the store:

In Newport News the Planning Commission rejected Wal-Mart’s application due to traffic concerns and the development’s proximity to a residential neighborhood.

The same occurred in Asheville, Buckeye, and Windsor, where the 4,200 new daily car trips generated by Wal-Mart would directly threaten schools close by.

All of this is important to New York City, especially to the outer borough neighborhoods that Wal-Mart is looking to enter into. It will be important to conduct an independent traffic analyses and for various NYC neighboorhoods to then use this data to decide whether it wants Wal-Mart as a neighbor.