The east-central region of Florida, including Orlando, has experienced extremely dynamic growth in the past two decades. This has placed a continual strain on the existing transportation network. The region's primary transportation artery, Interstate 4, is experiencing much of this strain. In order to alleviate this strain on I-4 and prepare for the future growth of the region, the State of Florida Department of Transportation (District 5) is preparing a comprehensive master plan to guide future improvements to I-4. Alternatives vary in scope from the simple addition of lanes, to the addition of extensive high occupancy vehicle lanes, park and ride facilities, and urban rail systems. As alternatives have been developed, GIS has been introduced as a means of evaluation to decide which ones best meet the overall needs and concerns of the region. It is the purpose of this paper to describe the alternatives and illustrate how GIS is aiding planners in this complex decision making process. Two primary GIS applications will be described: the determination of wetland impacts and right-of-way acquisition costs. Each application will include a discussion of database design and creation with high resolution aerial photography, the spatial analysis, final reporting procedures, and benefits of using GIS versus previous methods of evaluation.
The MIS process for transportation projects involves the compilation and analysis of data for a number of inputs. Specifically, environmental, land use, social, cultural resource, and traffic data must be assembled and analyzed in some platform that will provide for easy interpretation at the decision making level. Integrating the traffic model into ArcInfo provides the project manager with the ability to assemble, query and display the necessary information for decision making and public display. The purpose of this paper is to outline the possibilities of GIS for Major Investment Studies in transportation, highlight the benefits of an integrated traffic model and discuss the interaction between the analyst and the decision maker. The authors will discuss a MIS currently in the completion stage.
Travel characteristics studies have traditionally collected and analyzed data at the zonal level (e.g., traffic analysis zones). This aggregate approach precludes the possibility of examining potentially important variations of travel characteristics at a finer geographic scale. With the address-matching and map overlay capabilities available through a GIS, transportation planners should no longer limit themselves to the constraints imposed by the traditional aggregate approach. This paper will report the procedures of implementing a GIS approach to the Treasure Coast Travel Characteristics Study conducted in south Florida. This study collected household and detailed individual travel log data geocoded to either street addresses or street intersections. ArcInfo address-matching function was used with the enhanced TIGER/Line address coverages of the three-county (Indian River, St. Lucie and Martin Counties) study area to create a complete household and travel characteristics GIS database. This point coverage is accessible to users through ArcView 2 to make queries and to display travel patterns down to the details of individual trip end locations. In addition, the current Florida Standard Urban Transportation Modeling Structure (FSUTMS) uses only household type, household size and vehicle ownership as the structure variables in the definition of trip generation tables; therefore, it implicitly assumes that geographic locations have no (or insignificant) impact on the trip generation patterns. In order to evaluate the validity of this assumption, this paper uses buffer and overlay functions to classify the trip ends according to two schemes of geographic locations: proximity to central cities and proximity to major highways. Summary statistics on selected key travel characteristics (e.g., average trip rate and average trip length) are computed for the different zones based on each of the above two proximity criteria. Statistical hypothesis tests are then conducted on the summary statistics. A test result of rejecting the null hypothesis indicates that geographic locations may be an important variable to be included in the definition of trip generation table structure. This paper then proposes a set of GIS procedures to derive the necessary data to be incorporated into the FSUTMS trip generation modeling.
Applied Geographics, Inc. (AGI) developed GIS applications to assist the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (VNTC) in evaluating selected areas for their potential as high speed ground transportation corridors (HSGT). AGI, as a subcontractor to Parsons Brinkerhoff, developed a GIS database and methodologies for placing and analyzing corridors from Boston, Massachusetts, to Charlotte, N.C., and areas in the "Chicago Hub." This paper will present the details of how ArcInfo was used to accomplish this project. ArcInfo was used to support several of the project's requirements, including: handling the large area affected by the corridor; placing alignments and curve geometry; making changes in the construction type, stationing and location of an alignment; and, handling the three dimensional nature of the terrain traversed by the corridor. AGI collected a variety of vector data, including existing rail and other transportation routes, land use information, and political and urban boundaries. These were integrated with raster satellite data into an ArcInfo GIS database. This integrated database provided the foundation for siting the alignments. After the corridor was preliminarily sited using ArcInfo, the coordinates were passed to another program to generate a highly precise geometric alignment, with proper curves, spirals, and other characteristics needed to accommodate the requirements of high speed ground transportation. This alignment was integrated into ArcInfo where it could be mapped and where the affects on land use, proximity to urbanized areas, and other factors could be quantitatively analyzed and reported.