For the Aesthetic Initiative Measurement System (AIMS) project, researchers developed and tested the instruments and protocols that the Minnesota Department of Transportation uses to understand and document how travelers perceive the attractiveness of Minnesota's transportation corridors. In summer 1999, researchers collected quantitative and qualitative data for three cities: Rochester, Twin Cities, and Duluth, Minnesota. Four key topics produced highly noticeable aesthetic effects to the travelers: maintenance, planting design, structural design, and vistas from the highway. The consistency of AIMS results with previous studies of other landscaped settings suggested that AIMS results are valid and could be replicated in other urban highway routes and with rural highways.
