CHOOSING A SCENIC BYWAY USING SPATIAL CRITERIA Continued from page 41 After reading this description, what do you think would be the most challenging part of the job, and why? Let’s say you decide to apply for this job position, and based on your experience with GIS, CDOT decides to offer you the job. Your first task on the job is to learn all you can about the existing state scenic byways. You do this by examining a Colorado scenic map supplied by MilebyMile.com (www.milebymile. com/maps/Colorado_road_map.pdf). 1. Go to the location where you downloaded and unzipped the data and lesson from the sample dataset archive. 2. Start ArcMap and open the scenic_byways_ colorado.mxd map document. What do you notice about the pattern of scenic byways in Colorado? What types of federal lands seem to have the most scenic byways? Why? 3. Open up the attribute table of the scenic byways map layer and sort on Length. The values in the Length field are in meters. What is the total length of scenic byways in Colorado? Use the Statistics tool and give your answer in kilometers. 4. Describe the location of the five longest scenic byways in Colorado listing the towns along the route. Give the length of each byway in kilometers. „ How many of the five longest scenic byways in Colorado are on the Great Plains, Description 1 2 3 4 5 Table 1: Information on the five longest byways Type of Highway Interstate U.S. State Table 2: Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) for three selected segments Byway No. Byway 1 Byway 2 Byway 3 Byway 4 Table 3: Quality assessments for proposed byways 42 ArcUser Spring 2010 www.esri.com or in the mountains? „ How many are along interstate, U.S., or state highways? „ Why do you think these differences exist? „ How many scenic byways are in urban centers, and how many cross the Continental Divide? 5. Choose three scenic byway segments in the attribute table. Find these three segments, or ones nearby, in the highways attribute table. Examine the Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT), which is the average number of vehicles traveling on these roads each day. „ What is the AADT of your three chosen segments? Sort on AADT and choose the three most-traveled segments of highway in Colorado. „ What is the AADT of these segments? Zoom to each. „ Do the locations of these well-traveled roads make sense? „ What is the AADT on the least-trafficked road segment in Colorado, and where is it? 6. Symbolize the highway segments based on the AADT field values. Use thicker lines for more heavily traveled roads. Describe the pattern of highway use in Colorado. Interstate highways are the most major roadways, followed by U.S. highways, then state highways; these designations are in the field Towns Connected Length (km) ROUTESIGN. Which type of highway experiences the most traffic in Colorado, and why? 7. Summarize AADT by ROUTESIGN and indicate the average AADT on each type in Table 2. 8. On the Colorado Scenic Byways site (www. coloradobyways.org/Main.cfm), choose your two favorite byways. Describe where they are located, and explain why they are your favorites. Save your map document in an appropriate location. Proposing a New Scenic Byway This year, the state and citizens of Colorado want you to propose one additional road as a scenic byway. Four road segments have been submitted for your consideration. To help you make your decision, you first examine the National Scenic Byways Nominations Guide, which has been included in the sample dataset you downloaded from ArcUser Online. This guide lists six intrinsic qualities as essential components used in designating a highway as a byway: scenic, natural, historic, cultural, archaeological, and recreational. For the purposes of the National Scenic Byways Program, these qualities are defined as shown in the sidebar entitled “Scenic Byways Qualities.” Weighing Qualities Which of these six qualities seems most important to you? Least? Why? 1. Examine your scenic_byways_proposed map layer. The six qualities have been assessed and applied to four different road segments in Colorado that are contained in this layer: Proposed Byway 1 is in west central Colorado, along State Highway 139 between Loma and Rangely. Proposed Byway 2 is in north central Colorado, along State Highway 9, U.S. Highway 40, and State Highways 14 and 125 from Silverthorne to Kremmling, to Walden, and north to the Wyoming border. Proposed Byway 3 is in east central Colorado along U.S. Highway 36 from Byers east to the Kansas border. Proposed Byway 4 is in southeast Colorado along U.S. Highway 160 from Trinidad east to the Kansas border. Archaeological Recreational Location Average AADT Scenic Natural Historic Cultural