Please allow us to toot our own horn for a moment.

ADOT is proud to announce that we have won two TransComm awards from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials!

Our Twitter account, @ArizonaDOT (give us a follow, won’t you?), scored the top prize in the Best Use of Single Social Media Platform. With nearly 260,000 followers, ADOT’s Twitter account not only provides up-to-the minute tweets on roadway conditions around the clock, but also delivers important information about upcoming highway projects and safe driving campaigns.

Twitter is staffed by a team embedded in ADOT’s Traffic Operations Center. By coordinating with dispatchers and law enforcement, the team brings the motoring public accurate details about lane blockages and unplanned road closures in real-time, so drivers and their passengers can make the best decisions for their travel plans.

Throw in a quiz or two, some humor (when appropriate of course), and answering all the burning highway questions that come our way, and you’ve got a winning combination!

The second award bestowed unto us this year is for something you’re reading right now. Yes, the ADOT Blog won Best Blog at the 2021 TransComm awards. And we couldn’t be more delighted!

Since 2011, the ADOT Blog has delivered digestible bites of insight on a wide variety of topics. We started out as a place for stories about how highways were built and the people who were building them. In the last decade, the ADOT Blog has blossomed into so much more.

Over the past year alone, we’ve brought you pertinent updates on long-term highway projects, road trip recipes, tales about transportation history and personal stories about individual ADOT workers. Not to mention, of course, several important messages from our director, John Halikowski.

You can sift through the archive of the ADOT Blog’s first ten years whenever you’d like right here.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without you, our Twitter followers and blog readers. Thanks for riding on this journey with us. We promise to continue being an informative and entertaining travel companion for years to come.

Could we ask for a favor?

We promise it's easier than giving a ride to the airport or housesitting a cat.

You see, we were pretty enthused last month when we learned that three ADOT projects had won first-place honors in the regional awards for the 2020 America’s Transportation Awards competition. What department of transportation wouldn't be honored that the road work it had labored on was making a splash among its peers?

But while telling people about the kudos, we also mentioned there was a possibility for those projects to be considered for the "Top 12," a nationwide competition of – you guessed it – 12 projects vying to win either the Grand Prize or People's Choice Award.

Imagine then how we felt this week to announce the Loop 202 South Mountain Freeway, the $2 billion construction project that opened to traffic last December and was literally the biggest thing we've ever managed, had been chosen by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (or AASHTO) to go head-to-head with 11 other projects from across the country. These projects were chosen because they make travel in the U.S. safer, better and more accessible to motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians.

And here's where that favor comes in.

The Grand Prize winner will be determined by a independent panel of transportation experts looking closely at each submission, but the People's Choice Award is just what it sounds like – a vote by the general public on their favorite project. So we need your help ensuring that the Loop 202 South Mountain Freeway gets the recognition it deserves. 

If you are one of the thousands of people who uses the new freeway regularly or have just used it a few times to get from the east to west Valley (or vice versa!), now's your chance to show your support. You can cast votes for the South Mountain Freeeway through Oct. 25 by going to AmericasTransportationAwards.org. And here's the kicker: It's not a one-and-done thing. You can cast a vote every single day of the competition to help make sure the South Mountain Freeway rises to the top.

To sweeten the deal, we'll also mention the project that takes home the Grand Prize or the People's Choice Award also gets $10,000 to donate toward a charity or a transportation-related scholarship.

So please take few minutes each day to throw a vote toward making the South Mountain Freeway the clear favorite when the winners are announced in November. Even if you can't do it that often, every vote counts!

And after that ... maybe we could talk about getting a ride to the airport?

Recently, we shared exciting news that ADOT had won three regional awards in the America’s Transportation Awards competition. This competition is sponsored by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AAA. We are awaiting word if one of our award-winning projects has been selected as making the “Top 12” list, to compete for the highly coveted national recognition as the top transportation project in the country.

AASHTO has a similar competition among communication offices in departments of transportation across the country; it’s called the TransComm Skills competition. Communication offices submit entries that meet the criteria set in 30 categories, including print and electronic marketing, public awareness events, video production, best news release and more. What makes earning the recognition from TransComm so special is that it comes from our peers.

This year’s competition was fierce as 192 entries were submitted across the 30 categories, with winners declared last week. We are proud to announce that ADOT was recognized as having the “Best Internal Publication” for our employee newsletter, The Inside Lane.  Our newsletter focused on ADOT’s 45-year anniversary and showcased employee memories and the evolution of ADOT from 1974 to the present. That's the cover from the July 2019 edition celebrating the anniversary you can see in the image above.

We also are excited to announce that ADOT’s Communications Director Tim Tait is this year’s “PR Professional of the Year;” a well-deserved award for a respected leader who has been with the agency since 2006. This recognition is given to an individual who demonstrates superior professional character, exhibits exemplary professional achievements, creates a positive impact on the communications profession and agency, and has earned the respect of peers and co-workers - all qualities Tim exhibits each and every day at ADOT.  In his acceptance speech during TransComm festivities, Tim said “I simply try to make tomorrow better than yesterday as my guide as a leader and team member.”

Well said, Tim Tait, well said!

The entertainment industry has its annual awards that showcase “the best of” in movies and TV shows. The transportation industry is no different as we have annual awards programs that recognize transportation projects that are making a difference in communities across the country. I am pleased to announce the Arizona Department of Transportation recently received three regional awards in the 2020 America’s Transportation Awards competition.

Sponsored by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AAA, America’s Transportation Awards showcases transportation projects delivered by state departments of transportation and tells the story of the importance of transportation to our communities. With 79 projects nominated nationwide in three categories, the competition was fierce.

Under the category “Best Use of Technology and Innovation – Large Project,” ADOT won for the Loop 202 South Mountain Freeway project. As our first public-private freeway project in ADOT’s history and the state’s largest single highway project at $2 billion total, the Loop 202 South Mountain Freeway project is the final leg of the loop transportation system in the metropolitan Phoenix area that connects the West Valley to the East Valley. Using the P3 method, we built the freeway as a single project and saved nearly $100 million. We are already witnessing the economic development opportunities in the area and reduction in commute times for drivers.

Under the category “Quality of Life/Community Development – Small Project,” ADOT tied for first place with the State Route 347 at Union Pacific Railroad project. We built a six-lane divided overpass with raised medians and sidewalks to carry traffic, bicyclists and pedestrians over the railroad track in the City of Maricopa. Now, the community doesn’t have to wait for trains to pass by on its main north-south corridor. The City of Maricopa is reaping the benefits of the project with shortened emergency response times and construction has begun on several commercial projects. Most importantly, drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists can safely travel on this major corridor without delay due to train traffic.

Under the category “Operations Excellence – Medium Project,” ADOT tied for first place again with the I-10/SR 87 Improvement Project with Dust Detection System. This project added a travel lane in each direction on a four-mile stretch of Interstate 10. We also built a modern interchange at SR 87 with two lanes in each direction plus turn lanes and traffic signals over the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. But, the cornerstone of the project is the installation of a first-in-its-kind dust detection and warning system. Blinding dust storms in the area between Tucson and Phoenix have been a safety concern to us for years. The dust detection system is helping us improve safety for the traveling public.

As a regional winner, our projects will be considered for the next phase of the nationwide competition, making it into the “Top 12” list. These 12 projects compete for the two top prizes – the Grand Prize, chosen by an independent panel of judges, and the People’s Choice Award which is determined by the public through online voting this fall.

I applaud the men and women at ADOT who design, build and maintain a transportation system that ensures we meet our True North, Safely Home. And thank you as well to the many stakeholders involved in these award-winning projects. Receiving the recognition by our peers in transportation makes me very proud and validates the outstanding work we do for the people of Arizona.

You might say each ADOT road construction project is a sum of its parts …

After all, you can’t build a road or a bridge without materials like aggregate, cement, and other structural materials.

But did you know each of those components must adhere to certain specifications? Some of the requirements are spelled out at a state level, while others are determined by the Federal Highway Administration and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Because project engineers and contractors don’t have the time to evaluate all the materials and traffic control products on the market, the ADOT Research Center’s Product Evaluation Program is designed to assist them.

ADOT’s Research Center maintains the “approved product list” (APL), which contains products found suitable for use in highway construction in Arizona. The list is updated every month and contains products that have been evaluated and found acceptable by ADOT.

The approved products list is NOT comprehensive. It’s not an endorsement list, either.

Contractors can and do use products not on the list … those products just may require proof of third-party testing before it’s OK’d for use on a project.

How it works …

Vendors submit an application to the Product Evaluation Program manager. (Until recently, applications were mailed to ADOT. Now vendors email their applications and work is being completed to automate the process even more.)

Once an application is received, the product is assigned a product identification number, and then it may be assigned to an evaluator if a category exists for the product.

It is evaluated and the results are presented to one of two committees …

There’s the Traffic Control Product Evaluation Committee and the Materials Product Evaluation Committee. Each committee meets every three months and is responsible for approving or disapproving products on the APL.

If approved, a product will typically remain on the APL for about five years before it must be recertified. If product changes have occurred, then ADOT may reevaluate the product or request a new application if the product has changed significantly.

Product Evaluation Program Manager Stephanie Huang says it can take at least three to six months for a product to be evaluated and submitted to committee. According to Huang, 145 products have been assigned product identification numbers so far this year, which is up from 117 in 2010.