(a) The agency, with approval of the governor, may designate and establish new facilities, or existing highways, as included within a limited access facility. The agency, with approval of the governor, may eliminate intersections at grade of limited access facilities with existing state and town highways, by grade separation or service road, or by closing off those highways at the right-of-way boundary line of the limited access facility.

(b) After the establishment of any limited access facility, no highway which is not part of the facility shall intersect it at grade. No highway or other public way may be opened into or connected with any limited access facility without prior written consent and approval of the board. Its approval and consent shall be given only if the board, after conducting a public hearing and giving due consideration to the technical recommendations of the agency, finds that the public interest will be served. Notice of the date, time, and place of the public hearing shall be given to the secretary of transportation, the legislative body of the municipality, the municipal planning commission, the regional planning commission, and the agency of natural resources and shall be published in a newspaper having general circulation in the municipality in which the limited access facility lies. (Added 1985, No. 269 (Adj. Sess.), § 1; amended 1989, No. 246 (Adj. Sess.), § 17; 1997, No. 144 (Adj. Sess.), § 25.)