Northern Parkway ITS Infrastructure Needs Assessment Study

The Northern Parkway is a regional transportation facility. It extends 12 miles from SR303L to US60 along the general Northern Avenue alignment. When completed, it will create a high-capacity east-west corridor connecting Glendale, Peoria, and El Mirage with central Phoenix. Since the development of the Design Concept Report (DCR) in 2010, there have been several studies refining the corridor concepts. The goal was to balance the operations with population growth and regional connectivity within the fiscal limits of the Northern Parkway Program.

As the Northern Parkway Program evolves, MAG and the Northern Parkway Stakeholders started the Northern Parkway ITS Infrastructure Needs Assessment Study. The study’s goal is to guide the future design, operation and maintenance of the traffic management infrastructure for this corridor. It will also guide the preliminary and final design of the ITS infrastructure for this corridor. The purpose of this study is to develop a high-level framework of ITS infrastructure options and related recommendations for the Northern Parkway Corridor from SR303L to SR101L. The study recommendations will:

• Support enhanced traffic management in the corridor
• Promote the consistency of technology throughout the corridor
• Ensure that future ITS elements are accommodated in the design
• Ensure that affected Traffic Management Systems are upgraded appropriately to support traffic operations on the Northern Parkway
• Ensure that local and regional ITS communications needs are addressed
• Ensure that the resulting projects will be compliant with the regional ITS architecture
• Enhance the availability of traveler information in the corridor

Oversight for this study will be provided by MAG and the Northern Parkway Stakeholders Group (NPSG) to ensure that the ITS infrastructure systems is deployed to meet the future corridor needs.