2010 Wyoming Statutes
Title 24 - Highways
Chapter 6 - Access Facilities

CHAPTER 6 - ACCESS FACILITIES

 

24-6-101. Purpose.

 

The legislature hereby finds, determines, and declares that this act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety, and for the promotion of the general welfare.

 

24-6-102. Access facility defined.

 

For the purpose of this act, an access facility is defined as a highway or street especially designed for through traffic, and over, from or to which owners or occupants of abutting land or other persons have no right or easement or only a limited right or easement of access, light, air, or view by reason of the fact that their property abuts upon such controlled access facility or for any other reason. Such highways or streets may be parkways, from which trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles may be excluded; or they may be freeways open to use by all customary forms of street and highway traffic.

 

24-6-103. Highway authorities to plan access facilities; scope and limitations of authority.

 

The highway authorities of the state, counties, cities, towns, and villages, acting alone or in cooperation with each other or with any federal, state, or local agency of any other state having authority to participate in the construction and maintenance of highways, are hereby authorized to plan, designate, establish, regulate, vacate, alter, improve, maintain, and provide access facilities for public use wherever such authority or authorities are of the opinion that traffic conditions, present or future, will justify such special facilities; provided, that within cities, towns and villages such authority shall be subject to such municipal consent as may be provided by law. Said highway authorities of the state, counties, cities, villages, and towns, in addition to the specific powers granted in this act, shall also have and may exercise, relative to access facilities, any and all additional authority now or hereafter vested in them relative to highways or streets within their respective jurisdictions. Said units may regulate, restrict, or prohibit the use of such access facilities by the various classes of vehicles or traffic in a manner consistent with W.S. 24-6-102.

 

24-6-104. Powers of highway authorities generally.

 

The highway authority of the state, county, city, town, or village may designate and establish access highways as new and additional facilities or may designate and establish an existing street or highway as included within an access facility. The state or any of its subdivisions shall have authority to provide for the elimination of intersections at grade of access facilities with existing state and county roads, and city and town or village streets, by grade separation or service road, or by closing off such roads and streets at the right-of-way boundary line of such access facility; and after the establishment of any access facility, no highway or street which is not part of said facility shall intersect the same at grade. No city, town, or village street, county or state highway or other public way shall be opened into or connected with any such access facility without the consent and previous approval of the highway authority in the state, county, city, town, or village having jurisdiction over such limited access facility. Such consent and approval shall be given only if the public interest shall be served thereby.

 

24-6-105. Design and regulation of access to highway.

 

The highway authorities of the state, county, city and town are authorized to design any access facility and to regulate, restrict or prohibit access as in their opinion may best serve the traffic for which the facility is intended. When an access facility is established under the authority of this act and if rights of ingress or egress are granted and designated by the highway authorities at specified points along the access facility as provided, the means of ingress or egress to and from the access facility shall be limited to the use designated by the transportation commission. In the event the commission grants a private and not a commercial entrance or access to the highway, the entrance or point of access shall not be used for or in connection with the conduct of any roadside business or other commercial enterprise. The highway authorities are authorized to divide and separate any access facility into separate roadways by the construction of raised curbings, central dividing sections, or other physical separations, or by designating separate roadways by signs, markers, stripes, and the proper lane for such traffic by appropriate signs, markers, stripes and other devices. No person shall have any right of ingress or egress to, from, or across access facilities to or from abutting lands, except at such designated points at which access may be permitted, for the use for which access may be permitted, and upon such terms and conditions as may be specified by proper authority from time to time, or as specifically provided for.

 

24-6-106. Acquisition of public or private property.

 

For the purposes of this act, the highway authorities of the state, county, city, town, or village may acquire private or public property and property rights for access facilities and service roads, including rights of access, air, view, and light, by gift, devise, purchase or condemnation in the same manner as such units are now or hereafter may be authorized by law to acquire such property or property rights in connection with highways and streets within their respective jurisdictions. All property rights acquired under the provisions of this act shall be in fee simple where conditions permit, otherwise by appropriate easement.

 

24-6-107. Agreements respecting financing and planning.

 

The highway authorities of the state, city, county, town, or village are authorized to enter into agreements with each other, or with the federal government, respecting the financing, planning, establishment, improvement, maintenance, use, regulation, or vacation of access facilities or other public ways in their respective jurisdictions, to facilitate the purposes of this act.

 

24-6-108. Property rights of abutting residents.

 

No access facility shall be constructed without providing for the property rights of residents whose homes or places of business are now located on or abut the said proposed access facility. In all such cases, provisions shall be made to afford said residents access to said facility within five hundred (500) feet of their homes or places of business; or in the alternative, and at the option of the proper highway authorities, service roads shall be built so as to afford said residents a convenient route to the nearest city, town or village adjoining them.

 

24-6-109. Local service roads or streets.

 

In connection with the development of any access facility the state, county, city, town, or village highway authorities are authorized to plan, designate, establish, use, regulate, alter, improve, maintain, and vacate local service roads and streets or to designate as local service roads and streets any existing road or street, and to exercise jurisdiction over service roads in the same manner as is authorized over access facilities under the terms of this act, if in their opinion, such local service roads and streets are necessary or desirable. Such local service roads or streets shall be of appropriate design, and shall be separated from the access facility proper by means of all devices designated as necessary or desirable by the proper authority.

 

24-6-110. Prohibited acts.

 

 

(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to:

 

(i) Drive a vehicle over, upon, or across any curb, central dividing section, or other separation or dividing line on access facilities;

 

(ii) Make a left turn, a semicircular, or U-turn except through an opening provided for that purpose in the dividing curb section, separation, or line;

 

(iii) Drive any vehicle except in the proper lane provided for that purpose and in the proper direction and to the right of the central dividing curb, separation section, or line;

 

(iv) Drive any vehicle into the access facility from a local service road except through an opening provided for that purpose in the dividing curb or dividing section or dividing line which separates such service road from the access facility proper.

 

(b) The performance of a prohibited act shall not be unlawful if necessitated by an emergency resulting from the then existing condition of such access facility or local service road. If access to the facility is made by means of cutting or removal of a fence or gate, the person so doing shall be liable for its repair or replacement under the direction of the department of transportation. Any person who violates any of the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon arrest and conviction shall be punished by a fine of not less than five dollars ($5.00) nor more than one hundred dollars ($100.00).

 

24-6-111. Service stations not to be constructed or located within right-of-way.

 

No automotive service station or other commercial establishment for serving motor vehicle users shall be constructed or located within the right-of-way of, or on publicly owned or publicly leased land acquired or used for or in connection with, an access facility, as defined by W.S. 24-6-102.