By Garin Groff / ADOT Communications

The Renaissance is known for its advances in science, art and culture, among its many historic accomplishments.

So with an annual festival celebrating the Renaissance drawing heavy traffic along US 60 near Gold Canyon, ADOT has turned to the very modern science of traffic engineering to help reduce delays not only for attendees but for residents and visitors heading to and from areas east of the venue.

These improvements, introduced last year, are returning when the Arizona Renaissance Festival kicks off its 2019 run on Saturday.

The most noticeable improvement helps address eastbound traffic as people head to the festival in the morning. Traffic backups on eastbound US 60 have reached up to 11 miles in recent years. Thanks to some traffic-management changes made in partnership with festival organizers, the queue shrank to less than 3 miles last year.

This benefit results from two changes where US 60 reaches the festival gates, said Tony Abbo, an ADOT traffic engineer who oversaw the effort.

The festival added a small section of asphalt at the west gate so vehicles could turn into the facility more efficiently. Also, a crossover was added in the median at the eastern gate so westbound drivers had a direct turn into the event grounds. Previously, delays were exacerbated by those drivers making U-turns to merge with eastbound traffic.

The improvement won’t just benefit Renaissance Festival attendees. Based on last year's travel time studies, drivers who were just passing through the area toward places like Superior or Globe saw delays drop to about 8 minutes compared with other non-event weekends.

ADOT monitored and fine-tuned throughout last year’s event with help from a drone.

Our engineers will continue monitoring traffic until the event ends March 31 to determine if further improvements can be made this year or in the future.

By Peter Corbett / ADOT Communications

At a time of year when road crews are busy improving Arizona’s highways and roads, it’s hard to imagine a world without traffic safety cones.

There was such a time in the 1940s, as roads and automobile traffic spread across the nation. Engineers needed a device to keep traffic merging safely and to protect those building roads.

Enter one Charles D. Scanlon, a Los Angeles street department painter. In 1940, he designed a “safety marker” to keep cars away from painted lines on city roads, according to the Traffic Safety Store. Three years later, Scanlon was granted a patent for the Scanlon Safety Marker.

“It is … a major object of my invention to provide a marker which is readily visible, yet which causes no damage to an automobile if the latter strikes it,” Scanlon wrote in his patent filing. “It is another object of my invention to provide that such a marker which will return to its upright position after a glancing blow, and which may be dropped from a moving truck and assume an upright position.”

Scanlon and a partner, Rodney Taylor, initially used tire scraps but went on to use other materials for their emerging device.

Before Scanlon’s bright-orange idea, traffic markers were wooden barriers that could damage vehicles and were hard to move and store. Cones could be easily stacked and stored.

By 1947, Interstate Rubber Products Corp. began manufacturing traffic cones of molded rubber sheets. This year marks the 70th anniversary of traffic cones being mass produced.

Not surprisingly, it’s not a wildly celebrated anniversary. But the traffic cone is worth its weight in plastic, warning motorists of hazardous impediments. It stands tall and can take a hit.

Highway traffic cones are 18 to 28 inches tall, according to standards set by the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

ADOT and its contractors use thousands of cones for highway projects and at crashes to create tapered lane closures. All thanks to Charles D. Scanlon, father of traffic cone.