Entering the Immaculata: Parking and Access Roads (bonus, part 10)
This is the tenth of a series explaining various aspects of the floor plan of a church. Holy Mother Church has deliberately filled her buildings with great symbolism; this series will introduce some of the many facets involved in designing and building this home for the Immaculata.
“Parking and Access Roads”
by Bill Drew
The Immaculata site is adjacent to the existing Our Lady of Peace cemetery, and the church itself is laid out on the traditional east-west axis with the altar facing east. The plans of the church, surrounding parking, and access roads have been designed to provide close parking, ease of access, and minimal congestion for the number of people and vehicles accessing and leaving the site with multiple entry/exit points.
“The site will have 4 access points for vehicular traffic and
3 pedestrian walks.”
Two drives will connect to Second Street, the main road on the west side of the site, for the bulk of the traffic. Another drive will connect to Mount Calvary Road on the north side, with a fourth connecting to Gideon’s Way on the south side leading to the academic campus. A traffic study was conducted early in the planning process to determine whether the connecting roads could handle the high-volume traffic flow if a full parking lot exits the property at one time. This month-long study was successful in concluding that the roads are adequate to handle the traffic load. The exits were designed with additional turn lanes to facilitate many vehicles exiting in a short time.
NB: These images and renderings are still approximations of the final design. They are meant to give general knowledge and perspective rather than a precise and final version of what will be built.
In 2005 a parking study was conducted on campus showing the average number of people per vehicle as 3.03. In the past 3 years, further parking studies at regular Sunday Masses, as well as at a Christmas Midnight Mass, have shown an average of 3.2 people per vehicle, reflecting an increase in family size. While this increase in family size is relatively small, the number of families, and therefore vehicles, has increased significantly. The current parking on campus provides 233 parking spaces; the new site will have 511 parking spaces, which should accommodate 1,635 people based on the average number of people per vehicle.