That’s why they could require it. The TIA showed that the university would have an impact on the public system and the city could require them to mitigate that impact, and the university chose to build a parking circle and dedicate out as city ROW as its mitigation measure.

A local restaurant generating maybe 200 trips a day isn’t going to have the necessary traffic impact for the city to demand infrastructure upgrades.

Now, a mega-development generating thousands of daily trips is a different story. They have to mitigate.

But they can still choose how to mitigate, and it’s usually a dedicated turn lane and a traffic signal. Because if a developer has the choice between saving 1 penny and building a development that truly serves the interests of the city and the future tenants, they’ll take the penny every single time.