and travel. This includes utility easements, railroad rights-of-way, and drainage canal rights-of-way. Pages 29 thru 31 of the Recreation Element of the Comprehensive Plan cover Corridor Open Space, which includes rights-of-way and easements that can accommodate traffic or utility facilities. This section describes the ability of the county to use right-of-way and easements (including canals). County staff indicated that they have had luck in the past converting abandoned railroad right-of-way to trails, mentioning the Trans-Florida Central Railway. Acquiring drainage canal rights-of-way for trail conversion, however, has more been difficult. The Conservation Element of the Comprehensive Plan also mentions “land acquisition, development clustering requirements, conservation easements, transfer of development rights, and mitigation banks to conserve natural system.” Although not presently used for corridor preservation, strategies such as this could be helpful in greenways and trails acquisition, and in blending greenway/conservation work with other infrastructure projects. Street Network Connectivity Regulatory standards for traditional neighborhood design and mixed use development require projects to contain a network of interconnected streets, sidewalks and pathways. Streets must be designed to balance pedestrian and automobile needs, to discourage high automobile speeds, to effectively and efficiently accommodate transit systems, and to distribute and diffuse traffic rather than concentrate it. Orange County Orange County has a variety of ongoing planning activities relative to mobility planning and corridor management. For example, the County has designated Alternative Mobility Areas (i.e., transportation concurrency exception areas) that are subject to Activity Center policies and Mixed-Use Corridor designations aimed at promoting multimodal mobility enhancements. Mixed-Use Corridors are intended to promote redevelopment of suburban corridors and transit-oriented development, including transit design standards, in conjunction with Activity Centers and transit planning efforts. These efforts are coordinated with projects and investments in the County Capital Improvements Element. Below are additional specific aspects of the process relative to corridor preservation and management. Orange County Comprehensive Plan Orange County does not have a specifically defined corridor preservation program. However, Map 1 of the Transportation Element represents the Orange County 2030 Long-Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) and acts as a basis for right-of-way needs identification and planning (Orange County Transportation Planning Divison, 2017). The map identifies planned and programmed County roadways, alternative mobility areas, alternative analysis corridors, Transit Multi-use Corridors, and other relevant designations. Through designations, Orange County ensures that considerations for the acquisition and preservation of corridor rights-of-way are for multimodal transportation, not only automobile traffic. The Orange County Comprehensive Plan includes policies for Guiding Principles for Corridors, which were identified through the East Central Florida Corridor Task Force (ECFCTF) in 2014. The ECFCTF was a cooperative effort between FDOT and regional partners, including Orange County, to envision and plan for the next 50 years of major statewide transportation corridors. One such Policy states (p. T-28), “The County shall make early decisions about the location of new or enhanced corridors to ensure effective coordination with conservation and land use decisions and to enable timely reservation, management, or acquisition of property necessary to accommodate existing and planned transportation facilities.”
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