A panel of mayors, county officials, transportation officers and private developers met last Wednesday at Chelsea City Hall to discuss how to alleviate traffic woes on U.S. Highway 280.

Called Horizon 280, the group discussed a study on service roads by consultant firm Gresham, Smith and Partners.

By defintion, a service road, or frontage road, parallels a freeway and provides access via major interchanges.

The study recommended that service roads on Highway 280 could be constructed to direct traffic to major interchanges only, reducing congestion and drive time.

&8220;If you can control the number of access points and side friction, you control road capacity,&8221; said John Stewart, GSP consultant.

Stewart says ideally the service roads would run a mile or longer between intersections.

&8220;If we can get the signals at a mile or better, we would have made a significant improvement.&8221;

Local jurisdictions would have control over service roads and building permits, including the Shelby County towns of Chelsea, Harpersville and Westover. However, Horizon 280 officials stress that a cohesive master plan should be in place.

&8220;Those routes need to be out on paper, so you know actually what to tell developers when the come in,&8221; said Stewart.

Under the plan, developers would have to agree to build the section of service road that crosses their property before receiving a building permit. The roads would be located just off the state&8217;s right-of-way.

&8220;You can pass the cost along to the developers as long as it&8217;s fair and equitable,&8221; said Stewart.

Once a master plan is finalized, ALDOT offices could issue permits mandating that service roads must be built in the future, even if that&8217;s decades from now.

&8220;The most significant thing is to build and plan these service roads early on,&8221; said Stewart.

A date of Oct. 1, 2006, was discussed as a deadline for each jurisdiction to have the needed permit regulations in place. Yet several details still need resolving, including technical specifications for road and curb design.

Founded in the 1980s to foster good traffic and developmental planning along the highway, Horizon 280 will meet again later this month to further discuss the project