PHOENIX – The Arizona Department of Transportation is busy installing new street lights along US 160 just east of Tuba City improving the safety of the road by increasing visibility at night.

The $700,000 project is adding 43 light poles extending the existing roadway lighting nearly 2 miles.

Street lighting improves visibility and safety while driving at night. According to a 2014 case study by the Federal Highway Administration, street lighting at rural intersections can reduce overall nighttime crashes by up to 40% and nighttime injury crashes by up to 25%.

The project, which began in late January, is anticipated to be complete by the end of May. After the completion of the project, the area will be reseeded to encourage vegetation growth.

For more information, visit azdot.gov/projects. 

PHOENIX – A partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Arizona Water Science Center is helping Arizona Department of Transportation engineers anticipate the effects of extreme weather on bridges and highways and design ways to handle it. 

Since its start in 2014, this collaboration has evolved to improve ADOT's use data involving flooding, natural hazards and weather-related risks through the agency's Resilience Program. 

“With U.S. Geological Survey's expertise in water science and hydrology, ADOT can now use these data to construct and maintain bridges and roadways that better reflects how the natural environment and highway infrastructure interact,” said Steven Olmsted, program manager with ADOT Environmental Planning. “These data have already made a difference on numerous ADOT projects.”

An example of this partnership is 2017 improvements to US 160 bridge spanning Laguna Creek on the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona. The project, which won an award from Arizona State University’s Metis Center for Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering, used data on the volume and velocity of the creek's flow to anticipate how the channel will change. 

The resulting project protected the bridge's abutments by using gabion baskets, which are metal cages filled with rocks, to reduce meandering where the creek passes under US 160.

According to USGS Arizona Water Science Center hydrologist Brandon Forbes, “this partnership has also established a successful framework for collaboration between USGS and State DOTs, and is being adopted by many other USGS offices across the country.”

ADOT’s goal is to develop an end-to-end engineering-based process that will incorporate extreme weather and climate adaptation into the design of highway and bridge projects.

PHOENIX ‒ The Arizona Department of Transportation has won an award for using cutting-edge data collection and modeling for a US 160 bridge project that created a sustainable, resilient solution to erosion from a meandering creek on the Navajo Nation.

Arizona State University’s Metis Center for Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering selected ADOT’s Laguna Creek Bridge improvement as one the recipients of its 2019 Sustainable Infrastructure Awards. Faculty reviewed nominations from public, private, nonprofit and academic organizations on innovative approaches that advance sustainability in infrastructure.

ADOT’s 2017 project about 25 miles east of Kayenta addressed severe scouring of the Laguna Creek Bridge’s abutments, protected the creek banks and reduced the channel’s meandering at the bridge. To accomplish this, engineers installed gabion baskets, which are metal cages filled with rocks.

While engineers designing similar improvements needed in short time frames often have limited data on matters such as stream flows, ADOT, coordinating with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Arizona Water Science group, made the Laguna Creek Bridge a pilot site to test next-generation monitoring technologies. These include sensors and gauges providing real-time surface flow data during and after storms, drones, video cameras, laser-aided surveying and 3-D surface modeling.

Collecting this data for a year prior to construction provided a comprehensive view of the creek’s flow and velocity, allowing engineers to compare the current channel with a time-lapse view of how it has changed over time and anticipate what will happen in the future. The instruments continue to provide data that will help engineers assess the effectiveness of work to stabilize the banks where US 160 crosses Laguna Creek and determine whether additional improvements may be needed.

“Beyond the Laguna Creek Bridge project, integrating this approach with ADOT’s design and operation of highway infrastructure will help enhance sustainability and resilience by looking at historic, current and potential conditions, including the impacts of extreme weather,” said Steven Olmsted, National Environmental Policy Act assignment manager with ADOT Environmental Planning.

Meanwhile, the technology helped engineers design a project that avoided disturbing a culturally significant site near the Laguna Creek Bridge.

ASU’s Metis Center for Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, seeks through research, teaching, outreach and public service to provide a basis for understanding how engineered and built systems are integrated with natural and human systems. To learn more, please visit metis.asu.edu.

For more information on ADOT’s sustainable transportation initiatives, please visit azdot.gov/SustainableTransportation.

PHOENIX – A $6 million Arizona Department of Transportation project starting Monday, May 7, is creating a new US 160 bridge at Chinle Wash in far northeastern Arizona.

Those using US 160 through the area should expect delays up to 20 minutes with this work underway at milepost 429, just west of Mexican Water on the Navajo Nation. A temporary traffic signal will have traffic alternating through one lane on the existing bridge.

The new three-span bridge will be 280 feet long and nearly 9 feet wider than the current bridge. The project, which scheduled to finish by year’s end, also will realign the roadway and install new pavement markings, among other improvements.

For more information on this and other projects, visit azdot.gov/Projects (see Northeast District Projects).