AUBURN — The city of Auburn will soon learn where it must pay attention to its roads after the Auburn City Council on Dec. 16 approved a sweeping traffic study intended to guide development and infrastructure decisions moving forward.
That $698,700 study, which Kimley-Horn Associates will perform over the next year, will focus on traffic volume, city-wide travel patterns, capacities and connections between intersections, corridors and the overall road network.
According to documents included in Tuesday’s meeting, the study will particularly pay attention to the Urban Core and Urban Neighborhood-West zones.
The move comes after the council approved a moratorium halting the construction of multi-unit developments and off-campus student housing in those zones until Nov. 30, 2026, at its Nov. 18 meeting.
Councilors originally voted on that measure after city officials warned that the number of those developments already had or would soon overwhelm public infrastructure in and around downtown Auburn.
All traffic counts will be collected during Auburn University’s Spring 2026 semester, and analysis of the downtown area will take six months to complete – months before the moratorium is set to expire if left unamended.
Based on plans provided to the city by Kimley-Horn, the study will be conducted in several phases.
The study will begin with an analysis of crash data from the past five years to determine any additional locations the study should focus on.
Once that data is analyzed, contractors will collect volume data from 41 intersections clustered around Bragg Avenue, College Street, Drake Avenue, Gay Street, Glenn Avenue, Martin Luther King Drive, Magnolia Avenue, Opelika Road, Samford Avenue and Thatch Avenue.
From there, the study will collect similar data at 65 other intersections around Auburn, review signal timings at each intersection where data is collected and create proposals to mitigate traffic buildup where necessary.
Adjustments to intersection timings are expected to be implemented during Auburn University’s fall 2026 semester to give contractors time to record and analyze before and after data before creating the final report.
