Recognizing the importance of consistency in the states corridor planning activities, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation uses a statewide, systematic process for identifying priority management corridors. As part of this prioritization process, an index is needed to reflect the likelihood of future residential and commercial development. This paper describes a methodology for creating such an index, referred to as the Development Pressure Index (DPI). A high DPI value suggests a higher likelihood of future growth around the highway segment and indicates the need for increased level of service or capacity on the highway segment. A wide range of data from population and economic projections to land development plans and forest protection programs are incorporated into the computation of the proposed DPI. A geographic information system is used to perform various spatial join and aggregation methods to derive a set of growth indicators. A scoring and weighing process is then applied to collapse the multiple indicators into one index. The paper concludes by discussing the validity of the proposed methodology and possible directions for further enhancement.
Abstract