Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Georgia/GeoTRAQS Tutorial

Introduction

The Georgia Department of Transportation's ArcGIS application can be used to find milepoints on state highways in Georgia. This tutorial explains the steps to follow to achieve this goal and several things to keep in mind as you try to access the relevant data.

Step by Step

1. Go to the ArcGIS webpage at https://itos.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html.
2. Open the Layers menu at the top right.
3. Make sure the following checkboxes are checked: Interstates, US Highways, and State Routes. It can also be helpful to select US Route Shields and State Shields. (Optional) The other options can be deselected if they are checked.
4. Find the highway on which you are trying to get milepoint data and zoom in enough so you can see all minor roads the highway intersects. You may need to zoom in to see the highway.
5. Click on a segment of your target highway. You may click on an intersection, on a portion of the highway near the intersection, or away from the intersection. A details box will appear.
6. Check your route ID for clarification and use the arrow(s) at the top of the box to change selection if necessary.
7. View From Measure and To Measure. To the right of those objects are milepoints of the endpoints of the particular route segment on which you clicked. In most cases, if you click on a highway segment "after" the intersection of interest (based on the inventory direction, i.e., north for north–south highways), the From Measure figure will be the number you are looking for. However, it may take clicking a few different route segments to figure out which one is correct for a particular intersection.

Notes

• Milepoints are inventoried by counties. If the highway of interest passes through more than one county, you will need to find the end milepoint at each county line and do some math.
• Occasionally milepoints are inventoried opposite the standard inventory direction. For instance, on a north–south highway, milepoints start at zero at the north end of the county and increase heading southward.
• Concurrencies: May or may not show the route ID of your choice. It may show only some or one route ID. If you are sure that the highway in concurrent, you will have to do some math with those numbers.
• Remember that all routes are inventoried by their Georgia state route numbers. Keep this in mind if you are searching for milepoints for U.S. Highways and Interstates.
• There are some areas with missing data. It may be a case of you need to play around with which highway segments you select or the data may just not be available in the program.
• If you want to find the total length of a highway, you may select the arrow at the bottom center of the screen or click on your route, click the three dots, and click view in attribute table. In this table, choose your appropriate tab (State Routes), make sure "Filter by map extent" is NOT selected. With your known Route ID copied from the info box. Choose options, filter, add expression, and change the first box to Route ID. The second box should be "is", and your third box will be your pasted route ID. Click OK, select the To Measure column and select sort descending. Most likely this will be your route length.

Below this line may be inaccurate as of 5/16/2020 and is here for historical purposes

Introduction

The Georgia Department of Transportation's GeoTRAQS application can be used to find milepoints on state highways in Georgia. This tutorial explains the steps to follow to achieve this goal and several things to keep in mind as you try to access the relevant data.

UPDATE 11/25/2012: GeoTRAQS has changed its interface from the one described here to a similar but unintuitive one. Please update this tutorial if you can figure out how to make the application do anything worthwhile.

Step by Step

1. Go to the GeoTRAQS webpage at http://www.dot.ga.gov/maps/geotraqs/Pages/default.aspx. The application should automatically come up if you have installed Microsoft Silverlight or its open-source implementation Moonlight.
2. Open the Layers menu on the left.
3. Make sure the following checkboxes are checked: Interstates, US Highways, State Routes, and Roads. It can also be helpful to select Milepost Markers, Places 2010, and Counties 2010 selected. The other options can be deselected if they are checked.
4. Find the highway on which you are trying to get milepoint data and zoom in enough so you can see all minor roads the highway intersects.
5. Select the Identify button on the tool panel at the top of the application. This button has a lowercase letter I (as in Indiana) with a circle around it.
6. Click on a segment of your target highway. You may click on an intersection, on a portion of the highway near the intersection, or away from the intersection. An Identify Features box appears.
7. Open the second menu from the top of the box. Select from the menu the line that has the name of the target highway. The name should be followed by Roads in parentheses. There may be multiple Roads options for you to choose from.
8. Scroll down to the objects From Mile and To Mile. To the right of those objects are milepoints of the endpoints of the particular route segment on which you clicked. In most cases, if you click on a highway segment "after" the intersection of interest (based on the inventory direction, i.e., north for north–south highways), the From Mile figure will be the number you are looking for. However, it may take clicking a few different route segments to figure out which one is correct for a particular intersection.

Notes

• Milepoints are inventoried by counties. If the highway of interest passes through more than one county, you will need to find the end milepoint at each county line and do some math.
• Occasionally milepoints are inventoried opposite the standard inventory direction. For instance, on a north–south highway, milepoints start at zero at the north end of the county and increase heading southward.
• Concurrencies: This section will be updated once I get a better idea of how concurrencies work. I know so far it involves lots of math.
• Remember that all routes are inventoried by their Georgia state route numbers. Keep this in mind if you are searching for milepoints for U.S. Highways and Interstates.
• There are some areas with missing data. It may be a case of you need to play around with which highway segments you select or the data may just not be available in the program.
• If you want to find the total length of a highway in a particular county, in the menu in the Identify Features box, select an option that is followed by (State Routes) in parentheses. There are also options to select (US Highways) and (Interstates) if relevant.

Author's Note

This tutorial is based on only a few hours of working with this application. As I get more experience with GeoTRAQS, I will probably revise this tutorial. Others are welcome to revise this tutorial as well. I do not profess to be an expert, so please do not ask me to answer more than basic questions or get the milepoints for you.  VC