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Alternatives Development: Portray Alternatives in an Understandable Format
Alternatives Development: Portray Alternatives in an Understandable Format
Preparation of understandable presentation formats to ensure a high quality of information exchange between the agency and stakeholders.
Alternatives Development:
Portray Alternatives in an Understandable Format
Experience across the country suggests that engineering plan view drawings of arterial, highway, and freeway improvements are not understandable to non-engineer stakeholder groups. For this reason, it is important to place emphasis on preparation of understandable presentation formats to ensure a high quality of information exchange during the development of alternatives between the agency and stakeholders.
Photo-simulation and three-dimensional animation or simulation of alternatives represent the most effective form of presentation. Note, however, that they are often too costly to undertake early in the development process when many alternatives are still being considered. Less costly approaches for presenting alternatives in an understandable way include:
* Overlaying plan drawings onto aerial photography at a large scale so that landmarks and major impacts can be identified
* Eliminating unnecessary engineering detail from plan drawings so that key features of the alternatives are recognizable
* Providing schematics showing the direction of traffic flow for projects with complex circulation patterns
* Developing clear naming/numbering conventions that help to group "families" of alternatives and facilitate tracking of alternatives through the entire project development process
Where a new (to an area or community) concept is proposed, such as traffic calming, or a roundabout, it can be useful to show photos or videos from existing applications elsewhere.
Types of drawings, use of color, appropriate scales and detail, and use of topographic mapping or aerial photography are all factors in creating good presentation graphics.
Presentation of Alternatives for Understanding and Effective Input from the Public and Non-technical Stakeholders
In addition to clarity of presentation, it is also important to present all the alternatives in a common format for easy and honest comparison. Alternatives prepared to differing levels of detail or sophistication may present an appearance of bias, whether intended or not. Common scales, quality of drawings, use of common coloring schemes, and presentation of supporting information should be consistent among alternatives that are developed and presented.
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