but I am curious why you keep calling that road an “access road”

Probably a bit of a holdover from Dutch civil engineering. We split roads here in three main types: The first type are “Flow roads” (stroomwegen) whose purpose is to have unimpeded traffic flow without obstacles. Think highways without level crossings.

The third type is the “Living street” (erftoegangsweg), which is mostly unmarked and has no signals, the kind of street that’s walkable and bikable, leading to houses and stores and parking areas.

And then there’s the thing in the middle, which is what you put between option 1 and 3, which is the (gebiedsontsluitingsweg), which literally translates to “area unlocking road”, but better translates to accessroad. It has level crossings with traffic lights or roundabouts, and serves to connect different areas like suburbs to town centers.

This road is some kind of deformed hybrid between 2 and 3, intended to connect different areas and moving traffic, but constantly interrupted by crossings and traffic signals. You have to stop two whole lanes of longer-distance traffic, just to get to a parking spot at a single store. As a result, you need a crazy-wide road with multiple turning lanes, just to make room for all the waiting cars. This contraption creates constant interaction between two intirely different types of traffic, and mixes two uses of roads that really don’t combine well. You shouldn’t have to stop multiple lanes of longdistance traffic just because I want to move from the pharmacist to the supermarket.

This one massive slab of asphalt could be a 2-lane area-unlocking-road with seperated exits leading to living streets. It would take far less road surface and massively improve the flow of traffic, because you’re not mixing fast through-traffic with slow destination-traffic.