Livingston Parish committee backs draft road-classification rules to guide future development

Chair opened the Infrastructure Committee and yielded time to a staff presenter to explain proposed changes to the parish Unified Development Code (UDC).

The presenter said the package starts with a ‘‘Division 3 — Streets and Drainage’’ that would be implemented in the UDC and include a unified street-classification manual. "So what you have is, some documents, and what we're working on right now is a very beginning of a draft," the presenter told the committee. He described traffic-calming design elements — contours, bump-outs and islands — that developers would be required to include when a road meets specified criteria.

Why it matters: Committee members said a formal classification system would let the parish prioritize limited dollars, require appropriate right-of-way widths and design features for different road types, and give the parish a defensible basis for targeting funding and negotiating developer contributions. The chair said, in part, that a parishwide traffic-count program is needed to justify any impact fees and to ensure fees are spent in the areas affected by development.

Key details: The presenter walked the committee through proposed LPA categories (for example, LPA 1 as a parish arterial with higher ADT and a wide right of way; lower categories for rural local roads), and sketched how requirements would differ by class (lanes, lane widths, sidewalks in developed areas, right-of-way minimums). He cautioned that curb-and-gutter designs transfer subsurface pipe maintenance to the parish: "If it's curb and gutter, everything's ours." The draft also references design material standards and cross-references existing ordinance language.

Next steps: The presenter said he would refine the draft and bring a criteria manual and proposed UDC language back to the committee by the next monthly meeting. Committee members asked staff to map existing roads to the new categories and to work with planning partners on a parishwide traffic-count program to build the technical basis for impact fees.

The committee took no formal vote to adopt the UDC language at the meeting; members agreed to continue review and meet monthly to finalize language for referral to the P&Z/ordinance process.