Project Abstract

The goal of the project was to integrate consideration of highway landscape corridor public perceptions into DOT planning and decision-making by developing a method to engage DOT staff in a variety of design, engineering, and maintenance disciplines in measuring and monitoring the aesthetic quality of highway corridor landscapes, and consequently, giving DOT staff ownership of the continued use and adaptation of the method.

The most attractive wall type, according to the AIMS study.

Excerpt from Aesthetic Initiative Measurement Systems (AIMS) - Phase I & Phase II Submission Form --

Overview

The Aesthetic Initiative Measurement System (AIMS I and II) was developed to provide a method for the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) to understand and monitor how travelers perceive the attractiveness of Minnesota's highway corridor landscapes (HCL). AIMS is a two-part tool.

• AIMS I is a focus-group field tool that engages DOT staff in seeing highway landscapes from the perspective of the public, measure the relative aesthetic value of HCL characteristics as valued by travelers.
• AIMS II is an image-based web tool that provides DOT staff with quick feedback on their selected design and maintenance as perceived by a representative sample of the public. Mn/DOT can use this quick web tool to anticipate public perceptions of different design and management choices, and to monitor and compare perception of HCL across space and time.

Results of the first application of AIMS I, which involved more than 25 Mn/DOT staff driving more than 60 focus group participants along selected highway segments, pointed to the following key issues affecting the aesthetic experience of HCLs for urban landscapes: good fit with context, design within the right-of-way, perceived maintenance, and perceived naturalness.

Consequently, these issues guided Mn/DOT stakeholders’ selection of topics for the AIMS II image-based web survey of more than 1100 MN dirvers. Results show that highway corridor context and vegetation design affect driver perception of HCLs much more than other variables. In addition, flowery prairie vegetation is perceived as very attractive and natural, as well as adequately safe and well-maintained in both urban and rural settings, while naturalized mixed species woodlands are perceived as very attractive in rural settings. Results also show that a single straight swath of mown turf adjacent to the roadway is seen as more attractive than any other mowing pattern, much more attractive than a right-of-way that is completely mown turf. Compared with other landscape variables, wall design has less effect on perceptions. However, some walls consistently are perceived as more attractive than others. In general, walls that are lightly colored and have a regular rhythm of columns are perceived as more attractive than others. Finally, considering the view from highway bridges to the landscape below, rail designs that allow a broader panorama of the landscape below are perceived as far more attractive than those that obscure more of the view. Taken together, the results suggest that some of Mn/DOT’s leading past design and management innovations, like using native plants, selective mowing, and the T-rail for bridges,have been good investments in enhanced public perception. They also suggest several ways in which increasing the attractiveness of highway corridor landscapes also can reduce costs for construction and maintenance and enhance environmental benefits.

CSS Qualities: Process

The greatest significance of the results is their organizational context – as a successful first application of the AIMS method by the Mn/DOT. AIMS is intended to be a tool that informs future DOT initiatives with a deeper sense of the public aesthetic benefits to be gained by design, planning, and maintenance investments. For example, a reference manual for each study route (Rochester, Twin Cities Metro, and Duluth) was included in the AIMS report. Each manual maps specific landscape characteristics (e.g., routes, mileage location, and corresponding attractiveness data) and strategies that produce aesthetic benefits to be reviewed in the field.

While the immediate results of the first AIMS application suggest how the current initiatives of the Minnesota Department of Transportation can be used to gain greater aesthetic benefits and enhanced quality of life of the traveling public, the longer term result should be an enriched DOT design and engineering culture that values and anticipates the landscape aesthetic benefits of transportation planning and design (figure 4). AIMS involves DOT staff from all disciplines in understanding and owning the public benefits that can accrue to landscape design. AIMS is intended to institutionalize some of the best of what rigorous landscape architecture aesthetic research can offer public practice decisionmaking: a credible and measurable sense of the public benefits of good design and planning.

CSS Qualities: Outcome

Results from the first and second methods suggest the following key conclusions:

1. Context powerfully affects travelers’ perceptions of highway corridor landscapes. Landscape treatments that are attractive in urban areas might be less attractive in rural MN. Some landscape treatments that are very attractive in rural northern MN might be less attractive in rural southern MN, and vice versa.
   
2. However, regardless of context, vegetation composition and design are far more important to highway landscape perceptions than are structures or mowing patterns (as long as there is some mowing along the roadside). This suggests that in projects where structural design treatments OR vegetation treatments are being considered for their aesthetic effects, vegetation design treatments are likely to produce greater benefits.
   
3. While an entirely mown turf right-of way without any other planting is seen as unattractive and unnatural everywhere, and brome grass without any other planting is seen as unattractive and unnatural in urban settings, virtually all other planting designs have a positive effect on public perception. This suggests that mowing of the entire right-of-way for aesthetic reasons is unnecessary.
   
4. Overall, the mowing treatment that was most preferred in both rural and urban contexts was a single mown swath along the roadway. While a curved mowing pattern was preferred over an entirely mown right-of-way, it was less preferred than a single, straight mown swath in nearly every setting. This suggests that the least cost mowing alternative has the greatest aesthetic benefit.
   
5. Prairie flower vegetation is the only vegetation treatment that has a powerful positive effect on attractiveness, naturalness, maintenance, and safety in all contexts. This suggests that prairie flower roadside plantings could be widely used for predictably positive aesthetic effects.
   
6. In rural settings, a woodland planting design that allows woody species to naturalize within a matrix of coniferous and early successional deciduous species is perceived as the most attractive and natural planting treatment. In urban settings, it is perceived as attractive, but less so than the prairie flower planting design. It is not perceived as being as well maintained or safe as the prairie flower design in either setting. While weedy vegetation is typically unattractive in any setting, weedy herbaceous vegetation that includes some colorful flowers sometimes may be perceived as attractive in boreal settings where coniferous trees characterize the landscape beyond the right-of-way.
   
7. In urban settings, wall design has relatively little effect on overall perceptions of attractiveness, naturalness, maintenance, or safety. However, walls that were consistently perceived as more attractive had the following characteristics: light color and a strong pattern of verticals (like columns) at regular intervals. Where vegetation is very simple (all mown turf or all brome grass right-of-way), the presence of strong verticals, as in Wall 3 in AIMS II, may be especially important to attractiveness. Where vegetation is more varied, a more subtle but regular pattern of verticals may be preferred.
   
8. On bridges, the extent of view over the bridge rail is very important and dramatically affects perceived attractiveness. This suggests that bridge rail configurations and heights that allow travelers to see over the rail greatly enhance driver aesthetic experience.
   

   Aesthetic Initiative Measurement Systems (AIMS) - Phase I & Phase II Submission Form

   Perceptions of the View from the Road