01123078

Component

Engineers, planners, and designers are interested in scientifically based tools to assist in the evaluation of transportation corridors. In this study, the authors assessed the visual quality of a mid-western agricultural highway corridor by applying various billboard treatments. The authors explored two factors: the interval of billboards (every 1/2 mile, every 1/4th mile, every 1/8th mile, and every 1/16th mile), and billboard right of way distribution (on one side of the right of way and on both sides of the right of way). The study employed Sketch-up to construct a digital virtual environment to assess the treatments and a visual quality assessment predictive equation that explains 67 percent of respondent preference, with an overall p-value for the equation <0.0001 and a p-value <0.05 for each regressor. Difference in scores of about 10 points indicates a perceived and detectable difference in visual quality. The study revealed that the highway corridor had moderate visual quality scores in the high 60s with no billboards present and that as the density of billboards increased the visual quality changed slightly to scores in the 70s. Yet perceptually the scores were not significantly different, meaning that someone traveling the corridor would perceive each of the treatments as similar. This means that even with a high density of billboards along the agricultural corridor, the impact of the billboards did not significantly alter the visual quality of the environment (p<0.10).

01120148

09-2700

English

9p

2009

Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures; Photos; References (42) ; Tables (3)

Agricultural industry; Design; Quality control; Roadside advertising; Roadside improvement; Roadside structures; Transportation engineering; Transportation planning; Visualization

Landscape

Design; Highways; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2009 Paper #09-2700

TRIS, TRB

Jan 30 2009 7:04PM