The transportation infrastructure is one of the most important geographic features of an area.

Within GIS,transportation features are one of the most challenging elements to work with. Due to the inherent degree of difficulty, many GIS software producers have created specialized tools to deal with transportation issuses, and these applications in GIS are now routinely given the acronym GIS-T.

An interesting feature of transportation GIS projects is that many diverse data sets related to the areas served by the transportation infrastructure are important. The different features found in these areas, such as homes, schools, hospitals,shopping areas, etc. can also shape the transportation infrastructure.It is not solely dependent on the roads, rails, air travel patterns or waterways within the project area. The potential changes in the demographics and land use elements must also be taken into account.

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The Crestwood School District, mostly serving the area of northern Dearborn Heights in Wayne County, Michigan, has asked for a revised bus route and schedule to run a newly developed Summer Program. The primary focus of the Case Study, is to define the best route for the buses in the school district according to predefined conditions such as demographic data, administrative considerations, and optimal bus usage.

This case study requires a basic understanding of geographic information systems and ArcView 3.x.If you are unfamiliar with either of these,we recommend you read our Training Manual and complete the accompanying exercises before proceeding with this case study.

• Document (GIS_Trans.PDF - 2.74Mb) of this case study in Adobe Acrobat Reader format.

• Data used in  this case study (Transportation.zip - 2.38 Mb)

• Network Analyst (Licensed Software),  an extension for ArcView that contains useful spatial operation tools. It is developed, collected, or modified by Mike DeLaune, Oregon Department of Forestry.

Please read the Frequently Asked Questions for the Case Studies.

This case study developed by W/SA with contributions by the following;

• Dr.Yichun Xie, Director, IGRE at Eastern Michigan University.
• Beverly Hunter, Consultant to W/SA
• Tina Roberts,Consultant.
• IGRE Staff.