Frank! in County 



Franklin County is linked to Tallahassee by US-98 and US-319. Other 

 north-south travel in the county is extremely light and limited by narrow, 

 circuitous roads. 



ROADWAY CHARACTERISTICS 



In developing a highway inventory, the descriptive variables selected 

 were roadway width, average daily traffic volume, and capacity at level of 

 service C. The problems with such an inventory is that these characteristics 

 are generally changing along a given route according to localized variations 

 in travel demand and intersecting traffic flows. The inventory of roadway 

 characteristics in Table 12, therefore, is only descriptive of selected route 

 locations in each county. 



The roadway widths shown in Table 12 represent the minimum found for each 

 route in each county. Generally, these minimum widths are encountered in 

 rural sections of the counties. These narrow roadway sections are bottlenecks 

 for inter-county travel. 



To indicate the relative use of the roadways in each county, a traffic 

 volume range was produced. The low volumes generally correspond to the aver- 

 age daily traffic reported by the Florida Department of Transportation (DOT) 

 on the narrow rural sections of roadway described above. The high volumes are 

 encountered in towns or at major intersections. In these cases, the roadway 

 widths are generally greater than those shown in the table. 



Capacity computations were based upon procedures documented in the 

 Highway Capacity Manual (Transportation Research Board 1965). The basic 

 parameters applied to minimum roadway width in determining roadway capacities 

 were level of service C, 10% trucks, level terrain, peak hour traffic equal- 

 ling 12% of average daily traffic, and a 60%/40% directional split. 



The 1977 low traffic volumes and capacities in Table 12 show that US-98 

 in Bay County is by far the most congested highway in Northwest Florida. In 

 Escambia, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, and Walton Counties, the reductions of traffic 

 volume on US-90 demonstrate the diversion of traffic to I-IO. 



Historical changes in traffic volumes at spot locations in the State are 

 documented by permanent traffic recording stations maintained by the Florida 

 DOT. The average daily traffic volumes reported at the nine permanent record- 

 ing stations are shown in Table 13. The effect of highway improvements in the 

 area is reflected by numerous reductions in traffic volume observed between 

 1975 and 1980. 



TRAFFIC VOLUME FORECASTS 



The Florida DOT has studied traffic volume changes in each of the coun- 

 ties in Florida since 1929. These observed changes were correlated with 

 county population and motor vehicle registrations. The result of this analy- 

 sis was a set of growth factors, specific to each county, used to estimate 

 future traffic. 



47 



