Aesthetic markets and a new automated people mover

Research literature suggests that aesthetic response toward a transportation system may be colored by non-aesthetic values. Photographic depictions of downtown street scenes with and without automated people mover guideways were shown to various community groups. Measures of external utilities—stakes in the local community and in public transportation—bore no relationship to aesthetic assessments of either guideway scenes or street scenes without a guideway. In contrast, aesthetic background and interests depressed evaluations of both guideway and non-guideway scenes. Aesthetic background evidently influences aesthetic assessments of elevated guideways in urban streets far more than do non-aesthetic utilities. This suggests that planners of new transportation systems need to address aesthetic impacts apart from other impacts and that aesthetic criteria will be applied more stringently by some community groups than by others.