A method for assessing highway qualities to integrate values in highway planning

Highway infrastructure planning is most often oriented toward assessing and maintaining physical inventories but it is often the lack of social knowledge about how people perceive, value and use a transportation system that generates the greatest user conflict and mistrust of public agency behavior. Using results from a 2001 statewide survey of Alaska residents, this paper presents a methodology for examining highway systems as a collection of intrinsic highway qualities and special places that provide a spectrum of highway experience opportunities. The concept of a highway experience opportunity spectrum is described and a number of potential dimensions for creating experience opportunity classes are suggested. With knowledge of spatial locations of intrinsic highway qualities, transportation planners can make informed choices to maintain or alter the set of highway experience opportunities associated with a highway system.