The level of service for streets in Lynnwood is generally determined by the intersections that control through travel; however, this presumes compliance with design standards to assure that the full potential of the street between intersections is maintained to serve traffic through major intersections, and to provide appropriately for pedestrian, bicycle, and transit modes.

The Growth Management Act only requires cities to manage level of service on arterials (including collector arterials) and not local streets. The city may however establish additional standards for local streets for its own purposes. In order to minimize traffic disturbance within neighborhoods, the LOS for local streets in Lynnwood is established as LOS “C” during the p.m. peak hour.

The LOS for the majority of the city arterials takes into consideration the need to protect neighborhoods from excessive pass through traffic. The level of service for non-city center arterials and non-state highways is established as LOS “D” during the p.m. peak hour.

The city center is expected to operate with more congestion. Not only are there more trip ends per acre in the city center, there are more opportunities to move about without a car. Businesses are closer together, making walking easier, and transit service is more frequent. The LOS for city center arterials is LOS “E” for the city center during the p.m. peak hour.

In order to make the Lynnwood transportation concurrency system more flexible, and to not allow one congested intersection to stop all development in an area, the city’s LOS standard allows 20 percent of the city’s intersections to be below their associated LOS standard before concurrency is considered to be failed, and for this purpose only signalized intersections will be considered. (Ord. 3153 § 3, 2015)