Low Distortion Projections in Solution of Grid-Ground distance issues - the "new state plane projection"

The issue of projection type coordinates not being a simple relation to a ground distance has been an issue in many survey, engineering, and mapping jobs. The first historic simple resolve was to bring projection coordinates "up to ground," but this is simply an approximation approach. 

Twenty+ years ago the concept of county projections was implemented in some midwest states with some drawbacks. An innovation in the last 10 years is Low Distortion Projections (LDP) implemented for highway work in several states. 

Finally, the National Geodetic Service, in conjunction with state input, is implementing the LDP concept in the proposed "new" state plane coordinate systems. How this affects our coordinate-based world will be discussed in detail.