Objectives of Ultimate Capacity

“Ultimate Capacity” is a growth management tool that attempts to provide an answer to the following question: How do communities facilitate enough high-density development to support transit without triggering concurrency restrictions on development? Snohomish County has adopted rules and regulations that essentially allow a lower level of service on roads designated as ultimate capacity.

One of the main objectives of GMA is to create more compact, viable, livable urban areas utilizing increased densities, especially within urban centers. This creates challenges for the transportation systems because increased densities create increased traffic congestion. Concurrency is the GMA tool that places a limit on the amount of congestion that communities will tolerate in certain areas before stopping further development. The long-term ‘solution’ to the traffic congestion in the most urbanized areas is good local transit service which is only ‘economically viable’ when high density residential and commercial development are in place. Thus there is a challenge. How do communities facilitate high-density development, to the point where transit becomes viable, without triggering concurrency restrictions on development? The following table shows the GMA objectives addressed by Snohomish County’s rules and regulations for ultimate capacity.