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.

We were minding our own business just the other day here at ADOT Ranch when lo and behold a cow parachuted right into our backyard!

Not true. Not true at all. 

But it is true that we did field a question about flying cows not so long ago. Specifically, cows parachuting onto our beloved State 48. 

The question in question came from the good people at Snopes.com, the fact-checking website. 

They had seen a Tweet from none other than Jason Alexander. You know him as “George” from Seinfeld. 

George, er, Jason, had seen a photo of a road sign somewhere in Arizona clearly indicating that drivers should beware of parachuting cattle. But even more vexing was that a local media outlet had, jokingly, we presume, shared a similar photo not too long ago. 

To be clear, ADOT has no road signs of this kind. But if someone else has posted them on their own right-of-way, well, they can keep those signs up till the cows come home.

But we did provide an answer to Snopes when they posed the reasonable question. “Are parachuting cows a problem in Arizona?” Just so you know…

Personally, I have lived here all of my life and have yet to see a parachuting cow or other livestock for that matter.

I’m not a pilot, but I would imagine that the logistical challenges of herding cattle into an aircraft, strapping a parachute on them and releasing them to plummet to the earth at tremendous speed would be daunting, at the very least.

Then there’s the vexing problem of the ethos that “you pack your own chute.” That’s a sensible protocol for, say, the 101st Airborne. But as cattle have no opposable thumbs, this too becomes an insurmountable challenge and also raises the question of how a heifer, bull or steer would pull the ripcord while racing headlong (horn long)? into terra firma.

Of course, the stereotypical cartoon image of the desert often involves the presence of a cattle skull resting near a bush or a cactus. That tableau is conceivable, but we seriously doubt any of those cattle deaths were the result of rapid deceleration blunt force trauma to an erstwhile airborne bovine.

If you know Jason Alexander, please message him and put his mind at ease.

We've been doing this Twitter thing for more than a decade now, and we think we are getting the hang of it.

But don't just take our word for it. Our Twitter account, @ArizonaDOT, with more than 241,000 followers, has received multiple honors, including last year from the American Assocation of State Highway and Transportation Officials. 

And we can add one more feather to our cap because the Phoenix New Times recently named us the Best Government Agency Twitter for 2019. 

"Its messages are pithy, clever, and sometimes even saucy – nearly as good as the traffic messages and warnings they display along the highway," New Times said.

We don't know about all of that, but we do like letting people know what's happening out there on the highways, whether it be crashes, backups, saxophone sessions, lost canoes, javelinas or sometimes nothing at all.

New Times did point out, and we heartily agree, that our account is about more than alerting folks that a Howitzer or the Oscar-Mayer Wienermobile is rolling through town. We are on social media primarily to let people know when a bad crash is blocking their way into the work, warn about hazards in the road or provide drivers with real-time information about adverse weather conditions. Our Twitter feed is also a place to find information about public meetings, upcoming construction and the latest agency news.

If you are not already one of our followers, please join to find the latest information about state highways. And if you are lucky, we might even be pithy and clever from time to time.

By Peter Corbett / ADOT Communications

Winning awards is nice, but the real rewards at ADOT Communications come from delivering information that helps keep you safe, informed and getting where you need to be as efficiently as possible. We also value our role in keeping ADOT employees informed about a large and diverse agency with a shared goal of public service.

Still, we were honored to accept two national first-place awards recently at a conference of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, or AASHTO.

The organization's TransComm Awards honored ADOT's Twitter account (@ArizonaDOT, in case you aren't among our 227,000 followers) for Best Use of a Single Social Media Platform.

The Inside Lane, a newsletter produced for ADOT employees around the state, was named top Internal Publication.

AASHTO’s contest received more than 165 entries from 31 states.

ADOT’s Twitter account, now 10 years old, provides timely messages to travelers about road conditions, closures and congestion. We also share pictures of Arizona’s highways, sunsets and dramatic storms, along with stabs at humor, when appropriate, and highway-related quizzes.

We know that motorists aren't always happy with traffic and road conditions, and we welcome their feedback.

We’re encouraged by the many positive comments we get from our Twitter followers, and we're also encouraged by the many positive comments ADOT employees offer about The Inside Lane. Awards are nice, but that kind of feedback matters most around here.

By Peter Corbett / ADOT Communications

@ArizonaDOT is celebrating its Twitterversary this month with 10 candles, 224,000 followers and a toot of our own snowplow horn.

Aw, shucks! #ThankYou, fellow Arizona tweeters.

A decade ago, a little bird told us we should start tweeting to and with the motoring public. Tim Tait, now ADOT's communications director, was listening and waded into the growing social media maelstrom. Here's the modest first tweet from ADOT's Twitter account, sent at 1:14 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008.

One-Year Federal Funding Fix Rescues Arizona Projects. Details: www.azdot.gov

— Arizona DOT (@ArizonaDOT) September 16, 2008

Twitter turned out to be an ideal forum for two-way communications between ADOT and travelers. The immediacy of the medium is ideal for responding to road conditions that turn on a dime. It also allows us to share news about ADOT and images of things happening on and near highways, including the recent 9/11 remembrance in Tempe.

ICYMI: The Healing Field at Tempe Beach Park remembering those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

#NeverForget pic.twitter.com/6fXmQmRPEv — Arizona DOT (@ArizonaDOT) September 11, 2018

By 2012, ADOT had public information officers covering Twitter, among other communication channels, 20 out of 24 hours per day, 365 days a year. We recently expanded coverage to 24/7.

We also share information on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and ADOT Alerts, a free travel app we launched last November.

Our tweets on road conditions, crashes and detours have saved motorists statewide from countless delays. We also warn drivers of safety hazards from dust storms to debris on the highway, and we answer their questions.

I-17 SB near Jomax: A semi rollover off the highway has spilled a load of kegs. HOV lane also blocked. #phxtraffic pic.twitter.com/BN5JTJ4mea

— Arizona DOT (@ArizonaDOT) September 10, 2018

We sometimes use Twitter to call attention to the weird and wonderful, such as this image that turned out to be a rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

We'll rely on the news to tell us what this is in the western sky. Whatever it is, it's mysterious and very pretty. pic.twitter.com/tEPCEOXouX

— Arizona DOT (@ArizonaDOT) December 23, 2017

In turn, motorists have shared their on-scene observations with fellow travelers and often their frustrations with road closures or other drivers.

Occasionally we just have a little fun, such as the other day, when we showed someone playing saxophone along Loop 101 in Scottsdale – all while slipping in a relevant safety message.

So ... this just happened on L-101 Pima and Indian School.

While everyone at ADOT loves an impromptu Baker Street performance, we remind our fellow art lovers that freeway shoulders are not the safest place to shred on the sax. pic.twitter.com/NwbHoj7S6v

— Arizona DOT (@ArizonaDOT) September 12, 2018

Then there was the time we set off sasquatch fever around Arizona with a tongue-in-cheek tweet sent on snowy day. 

It's blurry, but I think we found a family of Bigfoots on SR 260 near Heber. pic.twitter.com/JWfs14oqGi

— Arizona DOT (@ArizonaDOT) January 1, 2015

The recent success of @ArizonaDOT is reflected in the numbers: It took eight years to get to 100,000 Twitter followers and just over 18 months to top 200,000, as of October 2017. Now it’s up to 224,000.

We’ve sent more than 177,000 tweets with 37,000 or so photos, maps and graphics. We like to share. Thanks for sharing with us.

Since numbers are a such big part of our Twitter story, we'll end with some more:

• 20,000 tweets as of January 2013
• 100,000 followers in March 2016
• 177,000 tweets sent to date
• 224,000 followers at last count

Thanks again, Twittersphere.

By Steve Elliott / ADOT Communications

As you can probably tell by this week's ADOT Blog blitz about our Twitter account, we're all quite excited about @ArizonaDOT surpassing 200,000 followers, far more than any other state agency in Arizona.

While we tweet and tweet and tweet in celebration, we also hope you like – and "like" – ADOT's Facebook page, facebook.com/AZDOT. Our Facebook likes have grown by leaps and bounds over the past year-plus to more than 50,000, and there's a reason for that: We're sharing more content, more images, more video, more posts to inform you not just about traffic conditions but all things ADOT.

If it's snowing in the high country and you'd do well to let our plows do their work before venturing north, we'll often share media from the scene, such as the picture above as well as the video below by Mark Trennepohl, ADOT's winter operations manager, who narrates as he documents conditions and the efforts of our plow drivers.

If State Route 88 is closed due to a boulder on the road, our Facebook page may show you that boulder with a dash of ADOT humor.

And you'll find Facebook-only features, such as Where in AZ on Sundays.

Our Facebook page is a perfect complement to ADOT's Twitter presence, allowing you to spend a little more time with posts and interact with others. If you don't already "like" us, please do. ADOT Facebook is well worth your time.

By Caroline Carpenter / ADOT Communications

You've probably been told it's better to be a leader than a follower. In most cases we'd agree, but not when it comes to Twitter. This week we're celebrating our 200,000th follower by taking a closer look at our Twitter following.

We've long known that the secret to our success isn't the tweets we send out; it's the interaction with our followers. When a Department of Public Safety trooper or ADOT crew member can't be there, you're our eyes and ears on the road. You tell us what it's really like to be stuck in a backup or what the roads are like driving through a snowstorm.

Twitter Analytics has provided a synopsis of you, our followers. It's no surprise that the majority of you are from Arizona or that the breakdown of men and women is almost equal. More of you are married than not, and most of you are between the ages of 25-34. Seventy-six percent of you are interested in comedy. Could that mean you actually like the "dad jokes" and puns we tweet?

No matter your reasons for following, we appreciate it.

We'll catch up with you next time on Twitter! If you happen to not be a follower, you can find us @ArizonaDOT.

To celebrate reaching 200,000 followers on Twitter, we wanted to hear from our followers! We've compiled some tweets that have gone out since we celebrated 100,000 followers in March 2016. Tell us which tweets you like. Swipe right for those like and left for those you don't like (as much).