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Utilizing GIS To Facilitate Public Participation In Access Management Issues: A Case Study |
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Kurt J. Schulte
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The City of Titusville, Florida and their consultants recently completed an access management study of two constrained corridors, state roads 50 and 405 in Titusville Florida. Currently, these two corridors are experiencing highway access management and development pressures due to population influx and developmental burdens over the past few years. The study team realized that these pressures need to be addressed in a comprehensive manner, in order to preserve corridor capacity, enhance corridor appearance, and promote public safety. Also, the team was aware that an important aspect of a comprehensive approach is the solicitation and facilitation of public participation. A geographic information system (GIS) gave the team the tools they needed to ensure this comprehensive approach was utilized. Combining data collection, data analysis, and data presentation capabilities in GIS, the study team was able to share a collection of alternative improvement scenarios for highway access, bike/pedestrian facilities, stormwater management, landscape plans, and intersection analyses with local agencies, public officials, property owners, interested citizens, and the business community. In short, public response was positive and participation was increased due to the effective and efficient use of GIS to facilitate data sharing and information exchange.
For years traditional planning activities have made use of Geographic Information Systems(GIS) technologies. Throughout the United States county and city governments have been using GIS systems to display and analyze volumes of information. Land use planners have used GIS systems to determine future development boundaries, commercial and industrial zones. Also, with the use of GIS systems, water management districts have been able to inventory environmental areas and organize wetland information for use in categorizing plant and animal species. County property appraisers are using GIS technology to manage real estate data throughout their particular counties. From property location ID's to assessed property values, the property appraisers are finding that GIS systems are an excellent way to streamline their business operations.
The data that has been created by local governments, property appraisers and private consultants can be obtained and used on a multitude of planning projects for virtually any planning or engineering challenge that might occur. This paper focuses on how in an engineering environment, GIS information was obtained and used to complete a transportation corridor enhancement study for the Florida Department of Transportation and how this data improved the facilitation of public participation.
Planning 101 tells us that data collection is one of the first tasks for just about any kind of planning or engineering study. During data collection, days or weeks are traditionally spent making phone calls and spending money to obtain paper maps, aerials, volumes of accident data, or FEMA flood maps for your particular scope of work. Transportation studies in particular rely heavily on receiving as much information as soon as you can get it, and then, with the help of graphic artists and technicians produce graphics for both public meeting and reports. For the State Road 50/405 study all data was collected in a digital format, from the Brevard County Property Appraiser's GIS division for use in our ArcView GIS system. The data that was purchased from the property appraisers office was already in an ArcView format and was ready for delivery on CD ROM within one day. The team coordinated what type of data was needed and the limits of my particular project and they would copy the requested files onto a CD for my immediate use.
Obtaining the data in this way allowed the study team to spend more time and money with the analysis and less time producing graphics. A novice GIS user can open the data and begin to create great looking graphics without the aid of the local GIS guru. Being that this was a transportation corridor study the following data was gathered to complete this project: aerials, tax maps, land use, zoning, flood zone, wetland boundaries, traffic zones(Models) and soils data.
The key to applying this technology to a corridor study is knowing where to get the data and what data is already created. On this project, the study team simply took the planning technology that has been available to local government planning offices for years and used it in an engineering environment. An understanding of the project requirements along with the data available is the key to the successful completion of a project utilizing GIS technology. The following project history will provide an overview of the study requirements and the reason that GIS as a tool was used on this project.
The case study area is located in northern Brevard County, Florida and within the City of Titusville. The limits of the study area along the two corridors are as follows: SR50 from its western approach starting at The Great Outdoors development entrance road to its intersection with US1; and SR405 from its intersection with Fox Lake Road to its intersection with US1 (Figure 1).
Figure 1:Location Map
From a historical perspective, the SR50/SR405 corridors have been experiencing increasing development pressures. While the population of the City is not increasing at the present time, an effort to encourage economic development in the SR50/SR405 corridors has been a major goal of the City. Providing good access and visual enhancements, such as landscaping and sidewalks, has been identified by the City and the business community as important ways to make the corridors more attractive to development. As a result of various development issues that have occurred, a committee was formed (the SR50/95/405 Association) to better coordinate with the City in addressing their business and development concerns. The Association has an immediate concern with the segment of SR50 from I-95 to SR405 sparked by recent access modifications to SR50 as a result of new development. A new Lowes store, located west of SR405 and north of SR50 behind the Ramada Inn, constructed a driveway connection south to SR50 approximately 800 feet west of SR405. Because of safety concerns with the Lowes traffic, the existing full median opening in front of McDonald's and Ramada Inn (and now Lowes) is scheduled to be modified to a directional median. Also, just west of I-95 on the north side of SR50 a new Cracker Barrel restaurant has been constructed resulting in a full median opening being modified to a directional median for safety considerations. While these new developments are certainly well in tune with the City's goal of encouraging more economic growth, the access modifications have not been welcomed by local businesses and residents that feel impacted by the modifications. The City approached the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) to conduct a joint planning study for the SR50/SR405 corridors which would address transportation issues related to current and future development. Understanding the scope of this project shows that GIS technology can be used for all types of projects and is not only feasible but desirable. With the scope of this project so expansive and with extensive public involvement, the use of GIS technology for the production of alternative design scenarios was crucial given the six month time frame of this project. The overlay capabilities between alternatives and environmental areas, property boundaries and land use areas afforded us with the ability to quickly query between data sets and create alternative matrixes. The traditional planning methods commonly used would have occupied too much time and money and could have jeopardized the success of this corridor study.
The transportation corridor study that is the subject of this case study was a jointly funded project between the Florida Department of Transportation and the City of Titusville, Florida. Given that the project had two clients, business associations, and neighborhood groups involved there was a tremendous need for public involvement. Public involvement was an extremely important element in the success of this study. A combined effort from the City of Titusville, Brevard County, the SR50/95/405 Association, the FDOT and the general public provided valuable information in developing proposed improvements in these two corridors. Being that the study team only had one month between public meetings, developing a way to quickly modify alternatives was necessary from a time frame standpoint and for a budgetary perspective. Meetings were held on several occasions between the aforementioned agencies, their consultants and others to evaluate alternatives and assist in the development of the study recommendations. In addition to the interagency meetings, three public workshops were held to solicit citizens' input and to discuss issues of concern. Approximately 500 notices were mailed to property owners within 300 feet of either corridor prior to each of the three scheduled workshops. In addition, individual letters were mailed to various public and elected officials soliciting their input and inviting them to participate in the public workshops. The workshops were held between 5:30 PM and 8:00 PM in an "Open-House" style format with the public invited to view exhibits and discuss their concerns one-on-one with study team representatives. With more than sixty people attending each of the three public meetings, the public was well involved and many important issues were identified during the public involvement process.
Much of the success of this study was a result of the quick turn around time that was allowed with the use of a GIS system. Public comments were evaluated and graphics were updated without much labor power. Also, with the property data that was received for the appraisers office, the team was able to place a 300' buffer around our project corridors and extract all of the property owners that would be effected by any transportation modifications. Once extracted, a comprehensive database was imported into Microsoft Access where mailing labels can be easily developed. This technology proved extremely helpful in determining who showed up at each of the public meetings. Cross referencing the 300' buffer data set with the sign in sheet from each of the public meetings, a graphic representation of public turnout can be generated and used to re-evaluate how effective the public outreach techniques were.
Using GIS as a tool on this study provided the study team with the ability to make modification and create additional graphics without much effort. Much like the buffers that were created and used to identify public participants, the same technology was used to generate a stormwater management GIS database. In this application, regional pond sites were identified by the team's drainage engineer and while sitting behind a computer these potential pond sites were analyze against property values, wetland boundaries, and flood zone areas. This technique allowed the engineer to generate meaningful graphics while at the same time providing the engineer with the technical data needed for this analysis (Figure 2).
Figure2: Stormwater Management Plan
The use of aerials on corridor studies has been commonplace for many years. A growing trend to use digital raster images has also been catching a great deal of attention and use in the engineering and planning communities. However, most engineers are using CADD packages to generate and manipulate aerial raster data. While using CADD is a step up from putting tape on Mylar aerials, without working in a GIS environment the ability to cross reference between property data, environmental information and soils data has been diminished. The cross-referencing of various data sets is the essence of GIS and without the ability to overlay data sets and query land uses with population data the tasks of data creation and analysis are not seamless. Receiving aerial data from the county in digital format made the task of overlaying simple. As shown in (Figure 3), aerial raster data with property lines were easily manipulated and used to present on both large graphics for public meetings and reduced size for report graphics. In addition to the graphics capabilities, the study team was able to generate areas of potential property take with actual property values to assess property damages.
Figure 3: Raster Aerial Image
In addition to aerial and stormwater GIS graphics, land use, flood data, soils, and level of service graphics were generated using a GIS platform. Being that the county already had land use, soils, and flood data in an acceptable format these graphics were relatively simple to generate. On the other hand, the level of service graphics had to be imported into ArcView from the Florida Department of Transportation's adopted transportation model software FSUTMS(Tranplan). This application was completed with the aid of a third party package GISTM, a software package that runs on top of ArcView to provide model translation abilities. Once the model data is converted to an ArcView format, the levels of service can be easily displayed and analyzed. Once again, because this entire project was done in ArcView, the overlay abilities have become limitless.
Another aspect to this project was the bicycle and pedestrian master plan that was developed. With GIS road data received from the County, the task of identifying alternative bicycle routes became much easier. Brevard County already has an adopted bicycle master plan, our task was to evaluate their planned facilities and within the State Road 50/405 corridor's identify suitable bicycle and pedestrian routes. The process was fairly easy with the aid of our GIS system, as a result of parks, schools, and roads already being in a GIS coverage, providing a nexus between all these elements were given more attention not the production of graphics. As a result, the process of collecting school and park locations were minimized and the real business of providing adequate connectivity to the local parks, schools, and existing bicycle and pedestrian systems could be focused on, all the creative energy was spent on the design not the production (figure 4).
Figure 4: Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan
Through the entire project duration GIS provided the study team with a valuable tool to allow multiple tasks to be completed simultaneously. Combining the data collection, data analysis, and data presentation capabilities in GIS, the study team was able to share a collection of alternative improvement scenarios for highway access, bike/pedestrian facilities, stormwater management, landscape plans, and intersection analyses with local agencies, public officials, property owners, interested citizens, and the business community. Public response was positive and participation was increased due to the effective and efficient use of GIS to facilitate data sharing and information exchange.
The ability to adapt to any situation or alternative with the use of GIS information allowed the team to concentrate on the more pressing alternative issues. This transportation corridor study GIS methodology is paving the was to the future of transportation planning. With the help of the Internet, data sharing and resource applications are only going to be expanding to where everyone is applying GIS technology to planning and engineering studies. The future for transportation planners lies on the depth and ability to access information and to apply that information in creative ways to expedite the rational planning process.
Kurt J. Schulte
Wilbur Smith Associates