Evaluating the Design of the Streamlined GIS‐based Transportation Corridors
Nobrega, R.A.A, O’Hara, C.
[email protected], [email protected]
Geosystems Research Institute, Mississippi State University
2 Research Blvd, Starkville MS, 39759, phone 662 325‐0821, fax 662 325‐7692
Abstract:
Context sensitive design, smart growth, and sustainability have become key factors in the planning and design of modern transportation projects. Nowadays more factors and attributes have been considered in transportation planning decision making process than in the past decades. Geographic Information Systems and Multi‐Criteria Decision Making are between the instruments used to lever the modernization of the process. However, most of the present practical efforts on corridor planning follow the traditional manual‐oriented approaches. The traditional corridor planning delivers trustworthy alternatives to be analyzed on the field regarding NEPA guidelines, thus innovations in methods and data must be adequate to the goals and policies of transportation planning. The purpose of this paper is to compare and quantify the geometric design of the highway alternatives derived from automated GIS process in relation to the final alignment of the I‐269. The analyses were performed in two steps: by distance and by the area occupied by the corridor. The results show up to 95% in similarity between the lengths of the corridors generated from automatic approach in comparison to the reference corridor. In the best case scenario we found 92% matching between the 1000‐foot right‐of‐way corridors of the innovative approach and the I‐269. Furthermore, when highway design geometric smoothing is applied to the automatic pathway, the selected alignment can be shown to almost exactly correspond to the human‐derived design. Therefore, metrics computed using linear comparative analysis by the end of the process suggests significant increasing to the design of the 300‐foot construction corridor after blend in highway design character. Keywords: Transportation planning, MDCM, alignment, validation, linear correspondence analysis.
1. Introduction:
Transportation planning can become a contentious process. It always involves a large collection
of data, present and future perspectives and a substantial amount of issues to be considered prior to the
construction phase takes place. According Sadasivuni et al (2009), delays to projects are frequently due
to opposition, conflicting interests and differing opinions from stakeholders, resource agencies, planning
organizations and others.
On the other hand, transportation planning is in evolution. Today, one of the targets set for
transportation projects is sustainability, which involves environmental, socio‐economic and risk
assessment (Nobrega et al 2009). According Gallis et al (2008) the environmental‐related projects today
consider more variables than the projects taken in the past decades. The volume of the data as well as
the complexity is time‐limiting factor for effective use in an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
study without compromise the project. Traditionally, due to the many factors affecting the decision
making process, the transportation planners design quite a few concurrent alternatives to be surveyed
through ground work. Given the complementary information, the alternative corridors are compared
based upon several factors (bio‐physical, socio‐economic and cultural). The analogical process reflects in
identifying the best‐feasible solution in terms of minimum environmental impact, minimum cost,
maximum safety and best performance.
Despite the positive results, the traditional approach forces the transportation practitioners to
digest the plurality of opinions and end up with Computer‐Aided Design (CAD) based technologies to
design the alternative corridors without consider the possible of automation achievable when using
Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In this sense, most of the decision processes have been
manually‐oriented, so the traditional approach reflects in lengthy and costly processes (Nobrega and
O’Hara 2009).
GIS are capable of handling massive amounts of data (Clevenger et al 2002, O’Hara et al 2000,
Singleton and Lehmkuhl 1999). In terms of transportation planning, the integration of economical and
ecological information in a spatial context is a valuable advance for strategic policy development and
decision‐making (Hill et al, 2005). On behalf of finer decision making process in transportation, the use
of Multi‐Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is becoming popular. MDCM is a systematic methodology to
generate, rank, compare, and select multiple conflicting alternatives using disparate data sources and
attributes. MCDM coupled with GIS is a key solution to bring in decision making processes focusing on
the sustainability (Spellerberg 1998, Malczewski 1999) and on the domain of transportation roadway
planning (Sadasivuni 2009, Sharifi et al 2006).
Aiming to promote the modernization of transportation systems, the U.S. Department of
Transportation ‐ Research and Innovative Technology Administration (USDOT‐RITA) has supported
several research initiatives. The National Consortium on Remote Sensing in Transportation ‐
Environmental Assessment (NCRST‐E) is one of the four consortia established by the USDOT and NASA
to lead in the application of remote sensing and geospatial technologies in the transportation industry.
The Streamlining Environmental and Planning Processes (SEPP) project conducts structured research to
streamlining the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process for a specific on‐the‐ground
transportation project. NCRST‐SEPP research is designed to demonstrate the innovative application of
commercial remote sensing and spatial information technologies in specific environmental and planning
tasks and activities, validating the use of those technologies by conducting rigorous comparison to
traditional methods (Dumas et al 2009).
Based on NCRST‐SEPP developments, our initial hypothesis was that transportation corridors
computed in semi‐automatic GIS‐oriented approaches can provide results close to the results obtained
from traditional methods. This paper addresses the first round of the validation of our results. Thus,
making use of the information from the recent approved I‐269 bypass traversing the Metropolitan
Memphis‐TN to the East, the objective of this paper is to quantify the accuracy of three alternative
corridors resultant from different perspectives of MCDM in comparison with the final design of the I‐
269. The methodology used GIS resources to compute the matching between the I‐269 corridor and the
corridors resulted from SEPP. The analyses considered two different buffer‐widths to make the
evaluation compatible with the typical 1000‐foot right‐of‐way and the 300‐foot construction corridors.
2. Streamlining Environmental and Planning Processes
SEPP aims to modernize the planning process preceding the EIA ground survey. In the core of
the SEPP project is a novel approach to integrate best‐available multi‐scale geodata and inputs from
decision makers into a semi‐automatic GIS‐oriented framework to rapidly design corridors alternatives
sensible to potential environmental impacts. The method focuses on selecting values that appropriately
capture and integrated the NEPA guidelines.
This enhanced method is based on remote sensing and spatial information technologies and
delivers low or high‐predicted environmental costs per feature criteria and cumulative predicted costs
while preserving local values and plans. Data are analysed and computed in a recursive multi‐scale
process. In practice it is a top‐down approach that starts from a wide regional corridor towards the
narrow engineering potential alignments. The SEPP outputs provided clear indications that the effective
use of data determined from structuring best‐available Federal, State and local spatial information
databases combined with appropriate rankings in a decision making framework can deliver results that
closely resemble traditional methods. Furthermore, SEPP is supported by rational and objective
processes that are traceable, repeatable, and readily adapted to consider adjustments to criteria as well
as inclusion of additional factors or data layers.
The Final Environmental Impact Statement – FEIS (USDOT 2006) supported the development of
the SEPP. It provided a baseline on comparing the results delivered by tradition EIS approaches and the
results of SEPP project. The comparison indicates that SEPP can speed up and automate the delivery of
feasible alignments that narrowly approximate the aligment designed for the final I‐269.
The Fig. 1 shows the I‐269 corridor bypassing Memphis‐TN at East produced by traditional and
SEPP approaches. Note how the SEPP corridor encapsulates the official alignments produced to EIA
ground work. From behind the scenes, SEPP employs MCDM to compute cumulative cost surfaces
(grayscale background) that are used to delineate the least environmental impact corridors (multi‐color
corridor). The analogy of MCDM, cumulative cost surface and least cost path implementation in GIS are
reported in details in Sadasivuni et al (2009).
Fig. 1: Overview of the 60‐mile long I‐269 bypass of Memphis‐TN. The initial alternatives for EIA ground survey at left and the respective multi‐scale corridors computed by the innovative SEPP approach at right.
Given the positive aspects of the SEPP research as well as the relevance of the method face to
the necessity of innovative solutions for best transportation projects, the methodology is being
assembled into a toolkit. The Environmental Corridor Optimization & Planning ALignments (ECO‐PAL)
Toolkit encompasses the planning process from regional corridor definition to pre‐EIA survey, as
illustrated in Fig. 2. This paper deals with the quantification of the designed corridors that correspond to
the ending processes of the scope of ECO‐PAL. It reports statistics of the comparison between SEPP
corridors and the corridor officially defined by the USDOT after the EIA.
Fig. 2: Workflow proposed on Environmental Corridor Optimization and Planning Alignments Toolkit.
3. Study Area and Material
The SEPP project compiled diverse scenarios in a top‐down approach. The scenarios were
constructed using different combination of input data and weights factors within the MCDM. The
evaluation of the GIS‐based transportation corridors concentrates into the 15‐mile along the approved I‐
269, between the I‐55 and the US‐78 in Desoto County, Mississippi. This particular area has an
extraordinary variety of local geodata ranging from LiDAR topographic surface to meticulous long term
plan, which were used on SEPP project to compute the alternative corridors. In behalf of quantify the
matching between the alignment approved by the USDOT and the SEPP outputs, the analyses were
performed within the 2‐mile buffer around the final I‐269 (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3: 15‐mile segment of Final I‐269 under construction between the I‐55 and US‐78 and the 2‐mile buffer used for the analysis. Background source: Google Earth
Regarding the diversity of scenarios achievable, three of them were selected to be evaluated in
this paper. The first scenario emphazised the reutilization of existing roads (Fig. 4a), which reflects one
of the desired options for non‐urban transportation planning in terms of cost saving. The second
scenario (Fig. 4b) prioritized the avoidance of developed and wetland areas, as a tentative to minimize
environmental impacts. The third scenario was a balanced solution that compromizes the avoidance
areas used for the scenario 2 and context sensitive issues gathered from the enhanced local data such as
long term plan, future developments and slope (Fig. 4c).
The evaluation of the corridos was performed using ESRI ArcGIS as well as using the Linear
Comparative Analiys Toolkit (Seo and O’Hara, 2004).
Fig. 4: Alternative I‐269 corridors resultant from three different scenarios through streamlining process using Spatial MCDM. Scenarios: a) emphasizing the reuse of existing roads, b) avoidance of developed and wetlands and c) balance between natural and developed areas enriched with context‐sensitive issues.
4. Methodology
The methodology proposed to evaluate the design of the novel fashion corridors considers
different criteria, such as the length of the alignment and the area occupied by the typical 1000‐foot
right‐of‐way and the 300‐foot construction corridors. The methods described to qualify, quantify and
compare test case corridors to the reference corridor were implemented entirely through GIS analyses.
At first, the lengths of the alternative corridors were used to qualify them to the next level of analysis.
Then the quantification was performed by analysing the area matching between the 1000‐foot buffer of
the alternative alignment and the 1000‐foot right‐of‐way corridor existing for the I‐269. It is important
to highlight that we hypothetically considered the final I‐269 as an error‐free designed corridor due to
the well‐established methods practiced regarding the NEPA’s guidelines and aiming to have a solid
baseline to compare our results as well.
In addition, the final evaluation step consisted in blending highway design characteristics to the
alignment that best approximate with the reference one. Then metrics derived from the Linear
Correspondence Analysis performed between the I‐269 and the smoothed alignments were used to
support the final decision and attest the quality of the selected corridor.
Prior to the GIS analyses, the least‐cost paths of the output corridors were also converted from
a raster to a vector format. This was accomplished by using a basic conversion step that translates the
raster into a “skeleton” line, which geometry followed the central path through the connected raster
cells along the least‐cost pathway. The resultant vector lines were precisely analyzed for length and
compared to other path scenarios and reference highway alignment design as well. Each of these lines
was also used to create 1000‐foot buffer zones so as to enable analysis of corridor matching and linear
correspondence.
4.1 Analysis of Corridor Lengths:
The analysis of the distance of each alternative corridor in comparison to the reference
alignment of the I‐269 was a decisive factor, which was used to classify the alternative corridors to the
next round of analysis. Ideally, even when considering natural and man‐made barriers, the best corridor
should be short as possible. Alignments shorter than the reference one are wanted but not always
practicable. Alternative corridors longer than the I‐269 have additional area, which increases the cost of
the implementation (additional right‐of‐way corridor and longer alignments for the construction phase.
Conversely, it should be understood at this stage of the analysis that relative comparison of
lengths among the scenarios is more appropriate than absolute comparison to the length of final design.
This is true because at this stage the length path follows the irregular edges of the analysis layer pixels
(raster format). This inevitably adds length to a segment due to the small unit scale of the measurement
increment. This condition allowed us to consider certain degree of flexibility for the qualification step.
For practical reasons, a matching criterion was applied as a qualifying criterion that allows for the
selection of alternative scenarios that do not exceed the length of the reference by more than 10% (or
similar criteria for applying this methodology to other studies).
As a secondary method for analysis of length, pathway smoothing was applied (Polynomial
Approximation with Exponential Kernel , session 4.3) in such a manner so as to more closely correspond
to geometric requirements of highway design while preserving the cost‐path analysis criteria such as
avoidance of environmentally sensitive areas of proximity to existing roads or other aspects. This
secondary process was only applied to the alignments that meet the initial selection criteria.
4.2 Analysis of Corridor Areas:
Next, the qualified alternative corridors were quantified according to the proximity to the
reference corridor. A series of Euclidian Distance zones were computed from the central line of the
designed I‐269, as shown in Fig. 5. In evaluating the quality of the alignments relative to the reference,
the farther the cumulative distance from the I‐269 central line, the lower the quality of the matching. An
ideal scenario would have very low cumulative distance away from the reference, demonstrating close
proximity to the reference design. For practical reasons we adopted 150 feet increment‐distance that
made the information compatible with the corridor‐widths used in transportation studies.
Fig. 5: Euclidian Distances from I‐269 used to quantify the accuracy of the computed corridor per
scenario. Path 1 (blue), path 2 (red) and path 3 (green). The final design is depicted by the yellow areas
along the center of the corridor with increasing distances shown in increasing shades of red and blues
along the outer edge of the 2‐mile corridor.
The overlay of the alternative corridors and the Euclidian Distances provided way to perform a
meticulous investigation of the deviations along the computed alignments. It enables to quantify the
amount of additional area per corridor regarding the increment zones.
In terms of GIS, the analyses were conducted using raster calculations. Once computed the
buffers 300‐foot and 1000‐foot for each alignment, they were converted into raster and then filled out
with information from the background image Euclidian Distance. The Fig. 6 illustrates the method
proposed to quantify area based on distance analysis. By ranging from yellow (shortest distance) to blue
(highest distance) it exemplifies the overlay analysis used to quantify accuracy of the 1000‐foot corridor
of the Path 2 (scenario 2). The lower the distance from I‐269, the higher the accuracy.
The pixel size adopted for the raster analysis presented in this study was 10 meters. Finer
resolutions such as 1meter, 2 meters and 5 meters were also tested but with no significant increase in
accuracy. Moreover, finer resolutions demanded considerable computational efforts in comparison to
the 10 meters.
Fig. 6: Detail of the 1000‐foot corridor of Path 2 and the far‐off analysis regarding the final I‐269.
4.3 Linear Correspondence Analysis:
Subsequently to the evaluation of the corridors in terms of lengths and areas, the third and last
step consisted in blend highway design character to the alignment that best approximate with the
reference. The highway design is basically a post processing step to smooth the original crisp path
under certain transportation practitioner criteria as curve tolerance. In this study we used the
Polynomial Approximation with Exponential Kernel (PAEK) algorithm with 1 mile curve tolerance. The
PAEK method forces the smoothed polygon to avoid the vertices and simultaneously be tangent to the
straight parts as maximum as possible regarding the tolerance. The results showed an outstanding post‐
processed alignment with minor modification along the original path alignment within 300‐foot. As
shown on Fig. 7, the method provided a good approximation to the final engineer highway design by
straighten excessive small broke down parts in a balanced way without compromise the avoidance areas
originally considered for the scenario.
Fig. 7: Path 3 (green), the smoothed Path 3 produced using PAEK method with 1‐mile curve tolerance
(white) and the designed final I‐269 (black). On background the Euclidian Distances.
Once computed, the smoothed alignment was analysed based on global linear comparative
metrics. The linear comparative analysis has been used to assess completeness, correctness, gaps,
redundancy and others global metrics in road network quality analysis. Mostly, these metrics are
required to evaluate a new assessed transportation network (obtained from satellite or aerial images,
from GPS‐driven survey or from maps digitalization) to the reference one. Details of the quantification
of linear features in transportation are available in Wieldermann (2003) and Seo and O’Hara (2004).
As a final step of the evaluation, the highway design and the global linear comparative metrics
were applied the corridor that matches with the reference one. A comparison of metrics calculated
from the raw alignment and the smoothed alignment showed in a quantitative manner a new round of
GIS improvements over the best alignments computed.
5. Results and Analysis
As proposed for the first round for the evaluation, the lenghts of the computed alighments were
measured based on the vector data . The three scenarios produced alignments longer than the final I‐
269. Similarly, the areas occupied by the computed corridors (300‐foot and 1000‐foot) were measured
and compared with the the area occupied by 300‐foot construction corridor and 1000‐foot right‐of‐way
corridor of I‐269. Table 1 summarizes the results of lenghts for the raw computed alignments and the
smotthed ones as well as the acres of the corridors.
Table 1. Computed lengths and areas of the corridors
Final I‐269 Path‐1 Path‐2 Path‐3
Alignment Lengths 15.26 miles 16.00 miles 15.08 miles*
16.22 miles 15.23 miles*
16.01 miles 15.20 miles*
Area 300‐foot corridor 554.9 acres 578.3 acres 658.7 acres 579.6 acres
Area 1000‐foot corridor 1849.5 acres 1910.8 acres 1946.4 acres 1919.6 acres
* Distance computed for smoothed alignments (after highway design)
The preliminary results showed a significant matching between the computed alignments and
the I‐269. Even considering the excessive curves of the raw alignments, the SEPP produced alternatives
that fit in 95.4%, 94.1% and 95.3% respectively for the scenarios 1, 2 and 3. Statistically, these results
are close to 2‐sigma and they are in accordance with the proposed similarity criterion of 10%. However,
considering the smoothed alignments, all three scenarios produced corridors shorter than the I‐269.
Next in the methodology, the distances between the SEPP corridors and the I‐269 corridor were
quantified to compute the matching. By using Euclidian Distances from the reference alignment
distributed in classes created using 150‐foot increment, the method helped on understanding and
measure the behaviour of the corridor per scenario. Table 2 contains the areas calculated per class.
Table 2. Distance intervals and the respective areas used to evaluate the behavior of each SEPP
corridors within the 2‐mile buffer from I‐269.
< 150 1405 6.07% 3994 5.22% 7658 28.84% 18244 23.39% 8736 37.65% 21577 28.07%
150 < 300 1259 5.44% 3174 4.15% 7644 28.79% 14745 18.91% 5753 24.79% 17159 22.32%
301 < 450 724 3.13% 2806 3.67% 3397 12.79% 12675 16.25% 4112 17.72% 14283 18.58%
451 < 600 323 1.40% 2023 2.64% 1117 4.21% 7468 9.58% 1065 4.59% 8226 10.70%
601 < 750 296 1.28% 1383 1.81% 759 2.86% 5705 7.32% 416 1.79% 5199 6.76%
751 < 900 329 1.42% 1402 1.83% 846 3.19% 4409 5.65% 459 1.98% 2747 3.57%
901 < 1050 441 1.90% 1617 2.11% 1526 5.75% 3883 4.98% 829 3.57% 2044 2.66%
1051 < 1200 656 2.83% 2029 2.65% 1984 7.47% 3428 4.40% 1025 4.42% 1798 2.34%
1201 < 1350 752 3.25% 2653 3.47% 1329 5.00% 3278 4.20% 653 2.81% 1715 2.23%
1351 < 1500 903 3.90% 2797 3.65% 291 1.10% 2537 3.25% 153 0.66% 1273 1.66%
1501 < 1650 1190 5.14% 2802 3.66% 4 0.02% 1333 1.71% 4 0.02% 669 0.87%
1651 < 1800 880 3.80% 2779 3.63% 278 0.36% 168 0.22%
1801 < 1950 706 3.05% 2627 3.43% 6 0.01% 6 0.01%
1951 < 2100 633 2.73% 2361 3.08%
2101 < 2250 513 2.22% 2545 3.33%
2251 < 2400 601 2.60% 3918 5.12%
2401 < 2550 1025 4.43% 5138 6.71%
2551 < 2700 2345 10.13% 5117 6.69%
2701 < 2850 2870 12.40% 5371 7.02%
2851 < 3000 1636 7.07% 5632 7.36%
3001 < 3150 1028 4.44% 4491 5.87%
3151 < 3300 802 3.46% 2908 3.80%
3301 < 3450 495 2.14% 2247 2.94%
3451 < 3600 366 1.58% 1668 2.18%
3601 < 3805 517 2.23% 1206 1.58%
3805 < 3950 378 1.63% 830 1.08%
3951 < 4100 79 0.34% 616 0.80%
4101 < 4250 343 0.45%
4251 < 4400 59 0.08%
Distance intervals (ft) "from the final I‐269"
Path 1 "reusing existing roads"
Path 2 "avoidance of developed and wetlands"
Path 3 "balance of natural, developed and long term"
300ft
(pixels and %)
1000ft
(pixels and %)
300ft
(pixels and %)
1000ft
(pixels and %)
300ft
(pixels and %)
1000ft
(pixels and %)
Given the results as presented on Table 2, the cumulative areas were calculated for 300‐foot and 1000‐
foot corridors. As expected due to the reuse of existing roads, scenario 1 produced a corridor that
mostly did not follow the I‐269 within the right‐of way. Contrary, the others scenarios produced
significant match to the reference alignment. The cumulative results are shown in Table 3 and Fig. 8. The
results show that the corridor computed from the third scenario (path3) best fitted with the I‐269.
Table3. Fitting between I‐269 and computed corridors
Corridor Path‐1 Path‐2 Path‐3
300‐foot 11.51 % 57.62 % 62.44 %
1050‐foot* 20.63 % 86.07 % 92.68 %
* Distance differs from 1000‐foot due to the regular interval increment used for the quantification
through raster analysis as presented in Table 1
Fig. 8: Cumulative area of the corridors considered to the matching analysis.
6. Applying Transportation Design to the Best Corridor
Because SEPP project uses GIS raster environment to accommodate the MCDM layers of
information , the corridors computed normally present excessive minor deviations along the pathway.
This additional lengths are mostly caused by small obstacles or by the “pixelized” alignment. However, it
is desired that the corridor must be blend in design character to be compatible with corridors designed
by transportation planners. This means that the output of the MCDM least‐cost path must be
manipulated so that it conforms to the geometric constraints typical of highway design. The irregular
“pixilated” pathway must be smoothed so that it more aptly resembles an actual highway design rather
than the following the irregular edges of the raster analysis layers.
The overall linear matching and area matching criteria applied in steps 1 and 2 of the
methodology clearly showed scenario 3 as the best alternative that closely approximated the selected
corridor and provided an even closer match to the final highway design path. The rectification of the
path 3 enhanced the visual aspect of the corridor by straighten the crisp parts. The smoothed corridor
presents close similarity with the design of the I‐269. Therefore, in addition to the quantification and
selection of the best corridor, the evaluation proposed in this study also considers the quantification in
terms of the 300‐foot construction corridor. The high confidence required on construction phase should
be supported by metrics that enable a wide range of geometric comparisons between the proposed
alignment and the ideal one. Thus, we computed metrics as completeness, correctness, redundancy,
average distance and gaps based on L‐CAT (Seo and O’Hara, 2004). The results presented in table 4
show improvements in all the criteria when comparing the original alignment as computed from SEPP
and its smoothed version. Fig. 9 illustrates the behavior of the smoothed 1000‐foot right‐of way
corridor and the 300‐foot construction corridor regarding the designed I‐269.
Table4. Metrics resultant from Linear Correspondence Analysis
Corridor 3
300‐foot original
Corridor 3
300‐foot smoothed
completeness 55.5% 65.8 %
correctness 59.9% 66.2%
redundancy 14.2% 0.6%
average distance 100.1 feet 94.8 feet
gaps per Mile 2.8% 2.8%
Fig. 9: Overlay of the final SEPP 1000‐foot (white) corridor and 300‐foot (green) corridor and the
proposed I‐269 (black). Background source: Google Earth.
7. Conclusions
The SEPP project uses a flexible method that delivered diverse alternatives according to
different input factors and attributes in its decision making process. The corridors produced from SEPP
project present close similarity with the EIA approved corridor of the I‐269, however the accuracy in
terms of horizontal deviation remained unknown. This study was developed to attest the hypothesis of
close similarity between the design of the transportation corridors computed from SEPP and
transportation corridors projected using traditional approaches.
The development counted with three different corridors generated from SEPP and compared
their design to the design of the final I‐269. We considered the similarity between the length of the
alignments and the length of the I‐269 as the initial criterion. The three raw corridors passed to the
proposed length similarity criterion with results close to 2‐sigma. In fact the SEPP corridors present
length around 0.5% longer than the I‐269, which we assumed excellent. On the next step in the
evaluation process, a series of Euclidian Distances was considered to quantify horizontal deviations of
the corridor regarding the alignment of the I‐269. Standard intervals were used to provide basis to
quantify the matching. In the best case scenario the right‐of‐way corridor matches in approximately 92%
with the right‐of‐way corridor of the I‐269, which was a very good mark. The analyses were conducted
using the raw SEPP outputs, without consider the smoothing of transportation design character. Based
on these results, we conclude the initial hypothesis was accepted.
In addition, the best SEPP alignment was smoothed and a series of metrics of linear comparative
analysis was computed to quantify possible enhancements along the 300‐foot construction corridor. The
metrics showed significant improvements after apply the highway design character. In a general sense,
the proposed methodology and reached results helped to understand that deliverables from SEPP are
engineered solutions beyond the simple sketch.
Acknowledge
The authors wish to thank the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) for partnering and contributing to the research project. Special thank to the Department of GIS of the Desoto County in Mississippi, for providing the impressive collection of geodata for our local analysis.
This project was made possible by funding and support from the U.S. Department of Transportation ‐ Research and Innovative Technology Administration (USDOT‐RITA) ‐ Cooperative Agreement DTOS59‐07‐H‐0004. The views, opinions, and statements contained in this article are solely those of the authors and do not represent the official policy or position of the Department of Transportation or the Research and Innovative Technology Administration.
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