Today, August 26, is National Dog Day. We know the importance that pets play in our lives and we certainly do not want to darken the mood on a day such as today, when many are celebrating and pampering their doggos. 

Because we want to see those very good boys and and very good girls for dog years to come, we do want to remind people about the importance of keeping pets safe when near or on roadways. After all, protection is one way to show love and appreciaiton to the ones that love unconditionally. 

Recently, a dog was wandering northbound Interstate 17 near Glendale when a few kind motorists stopped to rescue it. Fortunately, this resulted in a successful rescue with no crashes or injuries -- to people or the dog. But it could’ve ended tragically.

“We advise motorists to call 911 when safe to do so with an accurate description of the animal along with a location,” said DPS spokesman Bart Graves. “Motorists should never stop along the highway and try to retrieve the animal.” 

In an effort to minimize these calls, we reached out to Kimberly Vermillion, director of marketing and communications for the Arizona Animal Welfare League for tips for keeping pets safe and secure.

• Keep your pet leashed when it isn't in a secure area. This will keep them from running off if they get distracted or spooked.
• Always check that your fence gates are closed and secured before letting your dog outside.
• Make sure doors and windows are shut if you are leaving them unattended (pets can easily plow through screens, if they're motivated).
• Make sure your pets are microchipped and that your contact information is up to date. This way if they are found as a stray, someone can scan their chip and be able to contact you quickly to reunite you with your pet.
• Keep your pet's collar and their i.d. tags on, especially when they are outside and keep the information on the tags up to date.

If your dog travels with you, make sure it's secure in your car. Pets can jump or fall through open windows or truck beds onto roadways. And pets who roam freely inside a vehicle can can be injuried or killed in a crash or even if you have to stop quickly.

Here at the ol’ ADOT Ranch, a bucolic slice of heaven somewhere near Sunflower, we were gazing at a map of Arizona the other day and it hit us that a whole lot of Arizonans come from someplace else. 

Duh. This is not news. 

For most, but not all, of us our birth certificate may be housed in a dusty file somewhere in Ohio, Illinois or some other state similarly blessed with too darn much snow. 

Because of this unassailable demographic reality, Arizona is a melting pot of terms; in other words, the words we use to identify common things. 

In Michigan, for example, a carbonated beverage is often called “pop." Whereas in Georgia, you get a Coke even if it’s really a root beer. And other states, people drink "soda."

What does this have to do with ADOT? Glad you asked. These idiosyncrasies extend to transportation and they have some newsworthiness as well. 

For example, State Route 24 in the East Valley of the metro Phoenix area is also known as the Gateway Freeway connected to the Loop 202 Santan Freeway. Or, at least it will be when planned regional funding is available to add more lanes. But for now the new extension of SR 24 past Ellsworth Road will operate as an expressway. Now, some people call every freeway an “expressway” -- our friends in Michigan come to mind -- but in Arizona, there actually is a significant distinction. 

While freeways such as I-10 or Loop 101 are roadways with multiple lanes, limited access and travel either above or under surface streets, expressways have controlled intersections with some streets. And as noted above, typically this is done as a stopgap measure until the road can be upgraded to a full freeway. In fact, the SR 51 freeway began its existence as an expressway way back in the mid-1980s. 

(We’ll try not to muddy the waters any further by mentioning SR 51 was actually called a parkway for a while, but it was basically the same thing. We also define the difference between a freeway and a highway here. Does your brain hurt yet? Ours does…)

As you travel SR 24 you may win a few trivia bets by telling your friends you drove on both a freeway and expressway with the same name. If that’s not excitement, we don’t know what is. 

Yes, we need a life. 

Most of us can only dream of getting 10 million of anything.

10 million! In numeric terms, that's 10,000 thousands, 100 million dimes or 40 million quarters. 

It’s positively mind boggling!  

But ADOT’s Flickr page recently attained the milestone of 10 million page views. That means that there were 10 million times that people clicked on our page, which has dozens of photos albums and nearly 15,000. 

There’s something magical about Arizona’s highways and that magic translates magnificently into our Flickr account. Many beautiful miles, stunning vistas and every manner of fauna and flora is represented. As well as before-and-after photos of highway construction projects large and small with intricate details many of us might miss.  

The account went live in 2011, but it wasn’t until 2013 that ADOT’s Emmy Award-winning Video Services Team began populating it in earnest. 

Now, 10 million views later, the site’s popularity is a delightful mystery to John Dougherty, Video Services supervisor and a main contributor to the account.

Perhaps it’s because of the key words inserted into photo descriptions of images, Dougherty said, terms like ADOT, AZDOT, Arizona Department of Transportation, freeways and safety, in addition to specific descriptors, like I-17 and flex lanes. 

“Or maybe there’s 10 million transportation geeks out there,” he joked. “I cannot explain ADOT’s Flickr popularity, but I like it.” 

In a state where each new bend in the road reveals a new feast for the senses, Dougherty’s team shoots multiple photos of every project, resulting in many different views that are equally eye catching, followed by an intricate, several step editing process.

“Photos on Flickr are the best-of-the-best photos,” Dougherty said.

The photographs aren’t just aesthetically pleasing works of art, they are also historically significant. The photos are grouped into albums representing highway and bridge project from across Arizona, litter pick-up efforts and other important events. 

Are you a history buff? You can check out one of the ADOT Archives albums with photos spanning decades, including a Highways 1970 to 2000 album.

Do you miss the old Pinto Creek Bridge? There are three albums, including the most recent showing construction of the new bridge.  We have plenty of photos of both the old and the new structures. 

We have albums filled with relocating the chuckwalla, saving saguaros, highway art, landslide and sinkhole repairs, wrong way signs, public officials, boulder removal, Adopt a Highway volunteers, snowmobiles during blizzards, and so on.  

Interstingly, the most popular photo, with nearly 8,000 views, isn't so much beautiful as it is newsorthy: It's a photo showing a blocked off road from the US 89 landslide repair from March 2015.

You'll have to give our page a visit soon. Once you do, you’ll probably keep coming back and ADOT’s Flickr page will be faster on its way to 20 million page views!

The town of Winkelman, on the border of Pinal and Gila counties, has a distinctive bridge claim to fame.

The Winkelman Bridge began life back in 1915, when the Pinal County Board of Supervisors appropriated $52,000 from a $500,000 bond issue to build it. Because Winkelman is located on the border of Pinal and Gila counties, Gila County agreed to pay half of the construction cost. At the advice of Assistant State Engineer T.M. Nichols, the structure would be built using multiple-span concrete arches.

In August 1915, R.V. Leeson, assistant engineer for the National Bridge Company, completed the drawings. As delineated by Leeson, the  structural type that would be use had been patented by Daniel Luten, with its distinctive horseshoe-arch profile.

In the fall of 1915, the construction bid was awarded to a Kansas company, Topeka Bridge & Iron Company, which finished the structure in November 1916. It's carried only local traffic since the construction of SR 177. In 1999 the Winkelman Bridge was restored with replicas of the original guardrails and is now a pedestrian-only structure.

The Superior-Mammoth Road was, for decades, an important route in Pinal County. The Winkelman Bridge is an important remnant of that route. In addition, the bridge is a great early example of the multiple-span Luten high arch and one of only 13 identified in Arizona that use these arches.

ADOT is interested in hiring more veterans and has expanded its outreach to attract them.

ADOT currently has nearly 300 veterans working in a wide range of jobs throughout Arizona, including the Enforcement Compliance Division, technology, engineering and construction. Interested veterans can see resources and videos of veterans sharing about their ADOT jobs on ADOT's website. They can also learn about job opportunities for veterans at ADOT and other state agencies on azstatejobs.gov.

“We see veterans leveraging the skills they learned in the military and converting them to our workforce,” said Human Resources Operations Manager Nina Makarenko.

ADOT is an Arizona Veteran Supportive Employer through the Arizona Coalition of Military Families, the agency's profile is posted on BeConnectedAZ.org. ADOT has also partnered with Army PaYS for several years; job-opportunity information is provided for its monthly newsletter and online portal.

 

At the Arizona Department of Transportation, we are all about improving our processes whereby safety and quality are enhanced, and eliminating wastes. The effort is called “kaizen.” In our Continuous Improvement culture, kaizen can be a noun (change for the better) or verb (make change for the better).

I’ve been amazed by how our employees have embraced our kaizen philosophy since 2016. A kaizen can be large or small. It can be a new way of removing rusted nails from damaged guardrails with an impact gun and 6-inch socket to a new invention called a guardrail crab, which moves and lifts guardrail into position along a roadway. The result has been a reduction in the number of employees needed to replace guardrail and potential injury, not to mention enhancing safety for everyone.

We have videos that depict kaizens in action and the effects in the work being performed, from a barrel funnel to load sand into crash barrels, to using a reverse diamond stencil when repaving our roadways.

One of the most notable kaizens has been reducing wait times at our Motor Vehicle Division offices. A team identified all the process steps to issue a driver’s license. Using a problem-solving mindset, they located and eliminated wastes in the process. What used to take a day, now only takes minutes. Our MVD employees truly have embraced their mantra of “out of line and safely on the road” with many kaizens that enhance the customer experience.

Using humble inquiry, our employees ask, “Why do we have this process step and what value does it bring?” By asking why, our employees are empowered to find a better way, to become problem solvers and make changes for the better. The essence of kaizen is “everyone, everywhere, solving problems every day!”

Here are just a few more examples of note-worthy kaizens implemented at ADOT: anti-graffiti shields on freeway signs, tablets for windshield wiper fluid mixtures, repurposed generator trailer for guardrail repair, refurbished herbicide truck to spray weeds in our right of way and use of a winch in a truck to help remove large animal remains on our roadways.

I’m proud to say that we’ve implemented more than 39,000 kaizens at ADOT over the past six years. We’ve made changes for the better - eliminating wastes, improving processes, enhancing safety and quality, and providing better customer experiences.

Kaizen! 

Do you know what a guardrail crab is?

No, it's not a delicious restaurant entree. It's an invention from ADOT's Nogales Maintenance Unit that makes repairing guardrails easier and safer.

Guardrails are a vital component of highway safety and replacing or repairing them is a top priority when damage occurs. However, each one is 25 feet long and weighs 185 pounds. Previously, at least four crew members were required to hold the guardrail in place 20-30 inches from the ground for two to seven minutes. Multiply that by miles of highway and that situation's full of potential for arm, leg and back injuries. Plus, there is the safety component of repairing guardrails along roadways.

The Nogales Maintenance Unit felt there must be a better way, and the guardrail crab was what they came up with. Using two guardrail crabs, crew members can line up the guardrail at the site and move it into place. Not only has this reduced the number of crew members needed for guardrail repairs, it has increased safety for employees and reduced time working on busy roads.