Experience in working with citizens advisory committee has shown that better communication between the citizen and professional planner is needed. To accomplish this new planning tools are needed to assess and combine more accurately intangible or difficult to define factors with tangible or easily measurable factors in preparing specific proposals. This is a pilot study and description of such a tool for determining the relative importance of four tangible and five intangible factors and a means of applying these measures are of importance in selecting the most acceptable one of three hypothetical roadway solutions. The method requires the assumption that frequency of citizen preference for one factor over another is directly related to importance of that factor. It further assumes that the average measure of a set of tangible factors is equal to the average measure of a set of intangible factors. Using this equality of averages assumption, tangible and intangible factors can be assigned a value within a common scaling system. By combining these common system values with measures of the relative importance of the factors involved, an evaluation table can be prepared which provides a total weighted score for each alternative solution. Included is a resume of further smats research on value measurement.
Abstract