Free standing billboards have a significant negative visual impact on the landscape. In the majority of foreign countries construction of free standing billboards is regulated by various legal instruments, guidelines and control manuals. In Lithuania the construction of free standing billboards considering their visual impact is poorly regulated by juridical and spatial planning means. Taking this situation into account the paper aims to review main problems of regulating free standing billboards construction in Lithuania, to assess their impact on the landscape, to present foreign experience in solving these problems and to provide methodological guidelines for regulation of free standing billboards construction considering their visual impact. The proposed stages of the assessment of free standing billboards visual impact are the following: analysis of the landscape spatial structure designating visual spaces perceived from separate road sections, analysis of the possibilities of free standing billboards layout designating visual spaces protected from free standing billboards construction and visual spaces as free standing billboards construction areas, establishment of the possible visual contrast level of free standing billboards and establishment of free standing billboards location in a visual space and a visual contrast character according to the SID theory and results of the visual space evaluation according to the criteria of vitality, complexity, compositional harmony, expressivity, uniqueness, functionality and meaningfulness.

Free standing billboards (FSBs) have a significant negative visual impact on landscape. In majority of foreign countries the construction of FSBs is regulated by various legal instruments, guidelines, and control manuals. In Lithuania the construction of FSBs considering visual impact is poorly regulated by juridical and spatial planning means. Considering this situation methodological guidelines for regulation of FSB construction taking into account their visual impact were created. The guidelines are a part of the Landscape Guidelines for the Roads and Railways of National Significance [10] which is a manual set to fulfil the requirements of the European Landscape Convention [4] to broaden the knowledge on this subject and to integrate landscape issues into all matters that influence the state and the future of landscape. The aim of the article is to show the possibilities of application of the guidelines by performing visual impact assessment of FSBs in the road landscape near the town of Elektrėnai on one of the main highways of Lithuania: A1 Vilnius-Kaunas-Klaipėda. The proposed stages of FSB visual impact assessment are the following: analysis of landscape spatial structure designating visual spaces perceived from separate road sections; analysis of FSB layout possibilities designating visual spaces protected from FSB construction and visual spaces as FSB construction areas; establishment of possible visual contrast level of FSB, and establishment of FSB location in visual space and visual contrast character according to the Identity Index context (Similarity, Identity, Difference Index) theory and results of evaluation of aesthetic potential of the visual space. In the performed research we used the possibilities of spatial data management and analysis of geographic information systems (GIS) and basically implemented the first three stages of FSB visual impact assessment. The fourth stage was not implemented because it deals mainly with technical issues of FSBs. We tried to solve questions that are most important on the level of spatial planning when developing special plans for FSB construction.

In 2011 the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Lithuania ordered to prepare the "Landscape protection and management guidelines for roads and railways". Integration of the trends of the politics of Lithuanian Republic and the requirements of legislation, which is related to landscape protection and management, into the road development system is only a part of all the tasks of these guidelines. This part, including the analysis of Lithuanian legal acts, identification of their problems and proposal of amendments, is presented in this paper. As a result, the amendments were proposed for Lithuanian legal acts regarding the road landscape evaluation methodology, visual impact of roads on the environment, road signs, advertising regulation and planting near the roads.