Collector road
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A collector road is a low or moderate-capacity road which is below a highway or arterial road level of service. Collector roads tend to lead traffic from local roads or sections of neighbourhoods to activity areas within communities, arterial roads or (occasionally) directly to expressways or freeways.
Collector roads can have many different characteristics. Some urban collectors are wide boulevards entering communities or connecting sections. Others are residential streets, which are typically wider than local roads, although few are wider than 4 lanes wide except in extremely dense areas. Some small-scale commercial areas can be found on collector roads in residential areas. Key community functions such as schools, churches and recreational facilities can often be found on residential collector roads. The same description, substituted for industrial or rural purposes, can be found on collector roads in those areas.
The category is sometimes subdivided into major and minor collector roads, with the former category being for the more important and busier of the two types of roads, although such subdivisions are far less common than with arterials.
Collector roads can originate in different ways: most often they have been planned along with the suburban layout and built especially for that purpose. Occasionally they can fill gaps in a grid system between arterial roads.
The flow of a collector road usually consists of a mixture of signalled intersections (or traffic circles) with arterial roads, either signals, circles or stop signs (usually in the form of a four-way stop) with other collector roads, and smaller intersections which have stop signs only for the local roads. Often, full private access will be permitted onto collector roads.
Urban planners will often consider such roads when laying out new areas of development, as branch sections of utilities such as trunk sewers and water mains can be built through the same corridor.
Speed limits are typically between 20 and 35 mph (30 to 60 km/h) on collector roads in built-up areas, depending on the degree of development and frequency of local access, intersections and pedestrians, as well as the surrounding area (the speed tends to be lowest in a school zone). Traffic calming is occasionally used in older areas on collector roads as well.
