Jasmine Arollo was part of the ADOT family long before she was hired as a dispatcher.

For all 27 years of her life, Arollo heard her parents talk about how much they love working for ADOT. Her mother and father actually met at the agency, and one of her grandfathers and an uncle also retired from the department.

So it was only natural that in 2019, Arollo followed the family tradition and accepted a job with ADOT in the bustling Traffic Operations Center.

“My entire life I knew about ADOT,” said Arollo.  “I knew it was a good job.”

Still her life took a several twists and turns before she would follow in the family tradition.

We're in the army now

Arollo attended Horizon Elementary School and Apollo High School in Glendale, then Scottsdale Community College, Phoenix College and Dixie State University in Utah.

At age 3 she started playing soccer, and, before long, she was a formidable player who competed at various levels until she was 22.

“I played every position, midfield, defense to forward (striker),” she said.

She played semi-pro during the summer after college, but when she didn’t make the roster after trying out for a professional team, she turned her attention overseas. One of her brothers served in the U.S. Army, and his stories intrigued her.

“I talked to a recruiter with the U.S. Army about the military police,” she said.

She signed up, and six months later she was deployed to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, by way of Kuwait.

“It was an experience I really wanted to happen so I could see what it was like over there,” Arollo said.

The culture fascinated her. Like Saudi Arabian women, Arollo had to be covered from toes to hair when she went off base. The deployment reinforced her appreciation of her life in America.

While in Kuwait, she met her partner, Nicholas Whittington from Florida. After the couple returned stateside in 2019, Arollo gave birth to Malakai Whittington, purchased and set up a home with Nicholas, and followed the family’s footsteps by landing a job with ADOT.

It’s a family affair

Her mother, Marta Raiford, could not be any prouder of her daughter’s independence, work ethic and motherhood.

“I was proud of her serving our country and doing her time overseas in Saudi Arabia and earning awards while there,” Raiford said. “Now I am proud of the mother she has become and earning a position at ADOT … so that she can give the best possible life to her family.”

According to her mother, Arroyo likes to set goals and meet them.

“I know she will continue to tackle her goals and make a great career with ADOT.”

Raiford also harbors a love for ADOT. She liked it so much she rejoined the agency after retiring at age 49. She spent most of her 34 years in the Infrastructure Delivery and Operations (IDO) division under the Roadway Group, and now is a Transportation Construction Technician in the Contracts & Specifications Group.

Raiford also met her husband, Abe Arollo, at ADOT. He too is returnee. After working for the public and private sectors, he returned as a Roadway Designer in the IDO Roadway Engineering Group.

Arollo’s yen for adventure recently prompted her to apply for and get a new position with ADOT’s Incident Response Unit (IRU) sponsored by State Farm.

As a dispatcher in the Traffic Operations Center, Arollo worked to alert motorists of potential dangers, mobilize ADOT personnel and state troopers and inform the public through the overhead message boards and the Arizona Traveler Information website.

Looking at traffic camera feeds, Arollo watched IRU members in action controlling traffic, moving vehicles off highways, helping motorists and filling potholes.

“I wanted to be active and out and the road helping people," she said. “I enjoy being on the scene, and I don’t mind picking up debris.”

By Doug Nintzel / ADOT Communications

ADOT’s first-in-the-nation I-17 wrong-way vehicle alert system, featuring thermal camera technology, continues to provide opportunities to share ideas with agencies from other states.

The latest example: a recent peer-to-peer meeting with a team from the North Texas Tollway Authority at ADOT’s Traffic Operations Center in Phoenix. ADOT has hosted groups from other states, and engineers involved in the I-17 project have made presentations at several transportation industry conferences.

“We had heard about Arizona’s use of thermal cameras and wanted to learn more about the I-17 system’s components, including the computer-based decision support system,” said Eric Hemphill, director of system and incident management for the North Texas Tollway Authority. “We’ve had our own successes with wrong-way vehicle countermeasures, so this was a valuable discussion.”

Hemphill, along with colleagues Yang Ouyang and Matt Scharfenberger, met with ADOT engineers including David Riley, who in the photo above is at left pointing to monitors in the Traffic Operations Center control room.

ADOT’s pilot I-17 wrong-way vehicle detection and alert system, installed along 15 miles between the I-10 “Stack” interchange and the Loop 101 interchange in north Phoenix, features a total of 90 thermal cameras set to detect and track wrong-way vehicles entering an off-ramp or traveling on the freeway in the wrong direction.

ADOT’s Riley, who is involved in the ongoing testing of the I-17 system’s components, says the visitors from Texas provided helpful insights about their agency's efforts to reduce risks associated with often-impaired wrong-way drivers.

“It was interesting to learn more about their experience with countermeasures on the tollway system in the Dallas area and beyond, including adjustments to pavement markings that might affect the actions of impaired or confused drivers,” Riley said.

ADOT has been recognized for its use of technology to reduce the risk of wrong-way crashes. The I-17 wrong-way vehicle alert system earned the “Best in Class” award in a Government Innovation Awards competition sponsored by GCN, an information technology industry magazine.

By Caroline Carpenter / ADOT Communications

Since 1992, ADOT's Traffic Operations Center has served as a critical communication hub, allowing operators to quickly dispatch crews to help at crash scenes, coordinate with the Arizona Department of Public Safety, address problems with traffic signals, fix potholes and more.

But this month we're marking an important fifth anniversary for the Traffic Operations Center. It was September 2012 when we completed a $2.1 makeover that created the state-of-the-art facility you see today, complete with its signature wall where we can display up to 40 images from traffic cameras.

These screens have provided traffic operators and others with views of an overturned watermelon truck, a dog stranded on the median wall of a freeway and Archie Bunker's chair. Most of all, they've helped those staffing the Traffic Operations Center 24 hours a day, seven days a week communicate critical information about conditions.

The renovation, funded by the Federal Highway Administration, upgraded work stations along with the monitoring technology. The photo at right shows what the center looked like before the upgrade.

When the new TOC debuted, ADOT placed public information officers there to communicate with the public about conditions, restrictions and more via social media. These public information officers conduct interviews out of the Traffic Operations Center and answer your questions on Twitter and Facebook.

In addition, Arizona Department of Public Safety troopers are stationed inside the Traffic Operations Center in partnership with ADOT, the Maricopa Association of Governments and the Federal Highway Administration. These troopers assist in clearing freeway crashes faster to protect lives and property while reducing delays.

A little dog that made her way onto SR 51 during Monday evening’s rush hour and miraculously avoided being hit by traffic now has a good home in her future.

Of course dogs don’t belong on the freeway, but this pup didn’t know that…

She was spotted on camera at about 6:15 p.m. by ADOT operators at the Traffic Operations Center.

“We watched her run across the northbound lanes of SR 51,” said ADOT Public Information Officer Caroline Carpenter. “Next, she started running southbound in the northbound lanes next to the median wall for a while. Then we watched her try to jump onto the median wall. After many tries, she finally made it.”

The dog was spotted on camera by TOC operators.

Gil Estrada, a traffic reporter who works out of the TOC, was able to pick the dog up and bring her back. From there, Jayson Winter, one of ADOT’s TOC operators, took the dog to an emergency veterinarian who gave her an exam and confirmed she wasn’t microchipped.

With no microchip and no collar, there was no way to tell who this dog might belong to, so Winter took her home for the night and ADOT’s Twitter Team put the word out through social media. A number of news media outlets became interested and helped to spread the story.

“The whole idea was to try and find the owners,” says Tom Herrmann, a member of ADOT’s public information team who is based at the TOC.

As of this moment, no one has claimed the dog, but many other people have come forward. From well-wishers on Twitter to offers of adoption on Facebook, the response has been amazing.

ADOT Traffic operator Jayson Winter took care of the dog overnight after she was rescued from SR 51.

The Arizona Equine Rescue Organization heard about the story and offered to provide a safe, quiet home for the dog while her owners are being located. If the owner cannot be found, AERO will facilitate finding the right home for the pup, which they’ve decided to call Dottie (you know, as a shoutout to ADOT)!

As happy as this ending is, we can’t forget that many animals who gain access to the freeway system aren’t as lucky as Dottie.

Drivers who see a dog (or any other type of animal) on the highway should call 911. Motorists should NOT get out of their vehicles and attempt to capture the animal, as that could pose a danger to themselves and other drivers.

Revisit our previous post for more information on how to keep your pets safe and out of the roadway. If you’re in the mood for another animal rescue story, you can read about the time two ADOT employees rescued a dog from SR 260.

ADOT’s Traffic Operations Center – or TOC for short – is the place to be when it comes to keeping an eye on highway travel around the state. So it’s no wonder a program that stations DPS troopers at the 24-hour-a-day, state-of-the-art electronic data hub has helped to drastically reduce the time taken to clear crashes.

We first told you about this collaboration a year ago, when we explained how ADOT, the Department of Public Safety, the Federal Highway Administration and the Maricopa Association of Governments worked together to launch the three-year pilot project to locate troopers at the TOC.

Now, several months later, those agencies are able to look at the findings so far and have some promising stats to share...

Comparing the first nine months of 2014 – before DPS troopers were at the TOC – to the first nine months of 2015, the average time taken to clear all freeway lanes at crash sites on Maricopa County freeways has been reduced by nearly one hour (54 minutes), despite a 23 percent increase in the number of freeway crashes.

During a news conference earlier this week, representatives from each of the involved agencies spoke on the benefits of the program.

ADOT State Engineer Dallas Hammit touted the increased efficiency that the partnership allows, while Youngtown Mayor Michael LeVault, MAG Economic Development Committee chair and past MAG chair, noted fewer backups onto city streets and a substantial decline in lost productivity caused by delays.

Find more on the partnership on revisit our previous blog post.

ADOT’s Traffic Operations Center is admittedly a cool place to be…

It’s a 24-hour-a-day, state-of-the-art electronic data hub where ADOT staff keeps an eye on traffic conditions around the state. This high-tech space (complete with 40 reconfigurable 55-inch flat panel displays that can show video from up to 160 cameras at once!) allows ADOT to provide fast and accurate information to the public about crashes, closures and other restrictions.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, there’s a new partnership involving the TOC that we want to tell you about. The goal of which, is to clear freeway crashes more quickly to reduce congestion and save lives.

Through a collaborative effort among ADOT, the Department of Public Safety, the Federal Highway Administration and the Maricopa Association of Governments, a new program was recently launched that stations DPS officers at the TOC.

How the partnership works

The costs of the three-year pilot project will be equally shared by MAG and ADOT, including $450,000 for the first year and $425,000 for each subsequent year. The program will pay for three DPS officers and a DPS supervisor.

Initially, an officer will be on duty during high-peak traffic periods, joining the ADOT operators who provide 24/7 coverage in the TOC.

As you can see in the video above, having a DPS officer on site will be extremely beneficial.

“They’ll be able to utilize our technology, our 200-plus cameras across the state, to see what’s going on, on the roads. The DPS officer will be able to see crashes as they happen,” says ADOT Public Information Officer Caroline Carpenter in the video above.

DPS Sgt. John Paul Cartier explains why it’s so important to implement a quick response…

“Secondary collisions can be of greater severity that the primary incident,” he says in the video. “To improve the safety of all groups, we want to clear the roadway as quickly and safely as possible, after a thorough investigation, and restore the traffic flow pattern.”

Find more details on the new partnership in this ADOT news release. You can also check out some of our previous blog posts to learn more about the TOC.

A commute that takes 45 minutes one day, might only last a half-hour the next. Whether it’s because of a traffic incident, weather, project construction or just a more-than-average number of cars on the road, travel times are rarely consistent…

So, wouldn’t it be convenient to know what to expect, before you’re stuck in traffic and it’s too late to take an alternate route?

Of course it would, which is why ADOT displays commute times on many of its freeway message boards in the Phoenix and Tucson areas.

If you’re a fan of those commute times, we’ve got some good news: the number of electronic message boards displaying commute times is due to increase to 76 by late this year (12 of those 76 will display the travel times during both the morning and afternoon rush hours).

Since the expansion of the travel-times program began in September, ADOT has added commute times to 34 freeway message boards, bringing the total to 65 signs that currently display the information for morning or afternoon freeway commuters.

The electronic signs give drivers an estimate of how long it will take to travel to locations, including major cross streets and well-known points along the freeways, such as the I-10 Deck Park Tunnel near downtown Phoenix.

More about the signs

ADOT operates a total of 193 overhead message boards along Arizona highways, including 108 in the Phoenix area and 15 in the Tucson area (five of those in the Tucson area display rush-hour commute times along I-10). Besides commute times, the boards display information on weather-related hazards, crashes, road closures and restrictions, and alerts from law enforcement (AMBER alerts, along with the new Blue and Silver alerts).

Many of you might be wondering how the signs know the amount of time it’s going to take you to get from point A to point B. Well, the times are not the result of just an educated guess; they’re actually continually being calculated by an automated system that uses traffic data and an algorithm – get a more in-depth look at how the times are calculated in this 2013 blog post.

You’ll also find more information about the Traffic Operations Center, freeway cameras and sign installation in our blog archives and over on our YouTube channel.