Merlin, Louis A.

This thesis examined the road impact fee realities of 11 of Palm Beach County’s public and private sector land development stakeholders. To learn more about how the county’s road impact fee ordinance works in practice, in 2021, 11 stakeholders were interviewed about their experiences with the county’s road impact fee program. Transportation impact fee programs may help relieve development-driven traffic externalities and cost burdens, so long as suitable methodologies are applied (Burge & Ihlanfeldt, 2013; Stahl, 2021). In 2021, Palm Beach County’s road impact fee ordinance required all county development applicants to pay a specified road impact fee dollar amount, regardless of the proposed project’s location and traffic impact, with exceptions (Moore, 2021b; Salour, 2021). Key arguments for and against the county’s road impact fees touch on differences between travel needs, land use patterns, and transit potential in the county’s urban and rural/suburban communities (Clemente, 2021; Hernandez, 2021; Salour, 2021).

Suburban sprawl, automobile dependency and the current parking requirements have led to an ineffective and inefficient use of land which presents added cost to land owners and residents. The current standards often have limit quantitative reasoning and often exceed the peak demand for parking. The current requirements may seem as a necessary evil to address transportation and consumer habits, but in actuality it is only further facilitating the dependency on the automobile. Modifications to the current standards such as the amount of parking required and the required size of parking spaces will help decrease the amount of land and cost related to parking facilities. Other alternative modes of transportation also need to be invested in to make these options more convenient. The continued support of the automobile through parking regulations will accentuate the effects of urban sprawl and in the end, this is not environmentally or financially feasible.