I had a lot of housework to do the other night, and about 50,000 green peppers to cook up, so naturally I sat down and read Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project Environmental Impact Statement instead.
I love a good EIS or even better, a TIS. Throw me 500 pages of turning movement count tables and a bottle of Near Beer, and we’ve got ourselves what I call a happenin’ Friday night.
While a portion of the audience for these reports is technical, the general public and nontechnical decision makers need to understand the implications of each alternative. The Alaskan Way Viaduct EIS is a really nice document- there is all of the required technical data, and some well done exhibits that show each alternative and spell out all of the impacts.
One area that caught my eye was some of the traffic information. (See page 28 of the full document pdf to see an example.)
It reminded me of a dataset that Lynda worked on last year where she took accident locations, levels of service, parcels and roads and worked through a series of exhibits that are similar to those created in your typical Traffic Impact Study, or an urban transportation planning project.
How are you making these exhibits? Tell me about your process.
One of the objections that I hear is “But we don’t have GIS data for that stuff.” Really? Why don’t you make your own from the tabular data? If you are working in the same city or region and you specialize in this type of work, why wouldn’t you invest some time making points that mark key intersections and current levels of service?
If you are looking for a little how-to on a buffer analysis, this post I did about rivers spells out the process. Stream Buffer Analysis with Map 3D 2010 (and Civil 3D 2010)
Some other traffic, road and exhibit type posts that might be of interest:
AutoCAD Skills for Civil Work: Traffic Control
Redesigning (and Rethinking) Urban Streets
Conceptual Road Design Ideas
You also might be interested in checking out the CE News webcast on September 22nd entitled: Better Infrastructure Management with Information Modeling. They’re giving away an iPad loaded with Mastering AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012 ebook.
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