Introduction
The city of Medford, Oregon experiences a large amount of traffic from external origins everyday. This is largely due to the city being the largest provider of jobs and services in the region and being a major stop for travelers along interstate-5. In order to efficiently direct traffic to their destinations a strong wayfinding system is needed. This project looks to examine the current system and suggest improvements for navigation from external sources to the downtown zone of Medford, where the majority of services are located.
Methods
The freeway and highway transportation system that exists around Medford does not provide a direct link to the downtown zone. Travelers have to make several turns between exiting and arriving at the downtown zone. The path between these points is always clear in Medford.
The first step in this project was to complete an innovatory of the exiting way finding signs in Medford. On May 9th 2014, a group a University of Oregon students and Medford city employees went around the city collecting information on the current signage and need of signage, using crowdsourcing techniques. The results from that exercise showed that there were holes in the current wayfinding system.
The next step was to identify the points of origin of foreign traffic in Medford. The city collected traffic volume data in 2012 that shows how much traffic each street receives every day. By classifying the streets by the volume of daily, it is clear where traffic enters the Medford transportation network traffic, because only a few streets in Medford handle the majority of the traffic. This information hints at how cars may route themselves through the city, but in some cases routes seem to drop traffic volume sporadically. To understand the system of routes with more certainty the traffic volume data was cross referenced with Google Maps. Doing this made the points of origin standout. The main points are:
- I-5 North Traffic
- I-5 South Traffic
- Central point and 99 North Traffic
- City of Jacksonville
- 99 South Traffic
- White City, 62 North Traffic, 140 North Traffic, City of Eagle Point and Creater Lake
- Eastern Medford
The traffic volume data did not always show a clear route between these points and the downtown zone. Google Map’s “direction” tool was use to calculate the best route. Google defines the best route as the one that is the fastest.
With the ideal routes defined, it was time to look at how wayfinging signs aided navigation along the routes. The sign data collected on the 9th is prone to being inaccurate and incomplete because of the method of data collection used. The Google Map’s “street view” tool was then used to search for signage along the routes. The points collected earlier were confirmed with street view. Using street view, we navigated along the routes looking for existing signs and points where signs were needed.
Recommendations
The full map can be found at: Arc Online
Biography
Neal Horner is a junior at the University of Oregon, majoring in Geography and minoring in Environmental Studies and Computer Information Technology. His academic interest include: python data processing, building interactive web based content and using research software to make video games.