News

PHOENIX – Towering haboobs, dense dust storms, flash flooding and blinding dust channels. These are some of the dangers Arizona drivers face during monsoon season.

The Arizona Department of Transportation, Arizona Department of Public Safety, National Weather Service and other agencies are reminding drivers during Monsoon Awareness Week how to stay safe on roadways when dust storms arrive.

PHOENIX – The West Phoenix Motor Vehicle Division office is often a noisy scene when a customer lines up to check in and then takes a seat to wait for an automated system to call his or her number.

On this day, however, it’s unusually quiet and no numbers are being called. After checking in, customers line up along a path through the lobby marked by yellow tape. While one MVD employee walks down the line to make sure customers have what they need to complete their transactions, another directs people to the next available customer service window.

Arizona is proud to welcome this production to our state. The state, our citizens and our economy benefit significantly from appearing on the big screen, both in terms of dollars spent during filming and the exposure that films give the state. The film now in production along Loop 303 in the north Valley has already had 300 people at locations in Arizona for two weeks, boosting the economy through meals, lodging, fuel purchases and more. It has hired local companies for a variety of services.

PHOENIX ‒ A girder being installed for an overpass under construction at Grand Avenue (US 60) and Bell Road in Surprise fell Thursday just after 10 a.m. while being placed above the railroad line running parallel to Grand Avenue. Two employees of the contractor working on this project were injured.

The Arizona Department of Transportation’s first concern is for the injured and for ensuring the safety of those at this work site. We are grateful to Surprise police and fire personnel for their rapid response and care for the injured.

PHOENIX – Arizona Department of Transportation detectives have arrested a man for submitting falsified paperwork when applying for veteran status on his driver license and for obtaining license plates reserved for veterans.

ADOT’s Office of the Inspector General continues investigating whether Eric Wolfe, 45, a resident of Tempe, used fraudulently obtained credentials to defraud businesses and other organizations for a business, Project 22 LLC, and a nonprofit, Freedom K-9 Rehab. ADOT detectives booked him into the custody of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday.

PHOENIX – A section of Loop 303 west of Interstate 17 will be closed Friday through Wednesday (June 15), according to the Arizona Department of Transportation.

Loop 303 is scheduled to be closed between I-17 and Lake Pleasant Parkway from 2 a.m. Friday to 11:30 p.m. Wednesday for permit activity. Traffic will instead be detoured east- and westbound on State Route 74, two miles north of the Loop 303 alignment.

While Loop 303 is closed between I-17 and Lake Pleasant Parkway:

PHOENIX – In a move to make travel on Interstate 10 safer and more efficient, the transportation leaders in four states have created a coalition supporting innovation along the corridor.

An agreement establishing the voluntary I-10 Corridor Coalition, proposed by Arizona Department of Transportation Director John Halikowski, was signed June 2 by Halikowski and:

SURPRISE – Work on the future interchange to improve connections between Grand Avenue (US 60) and Bell Road in Surprise stayed on course following the Memorial Day weekend. Crews on the Arizona Department of Transportation’s $41.9 million project worked on the support piers to hold the future Bell Road overpass traveling over Grand Avenue and the parallel BNSF Railway tracks.

PHOENIX – Drivers traveling along Interstate 8 in Yuma should expect delays next week as Arizona Department of Transportation crews make improvements to the pavement between the California state line and Fortuna Road.

Drivers should expect one-lane restrictions on sections of the freeway between midnight and 3 p.m. each day. On Monday, June 6, the right lane will be closed in both directions from the state line to Avenue 3E (exit 3). On Tuesday, the left lanes will be closed.

PHOENIX – Motor vehicle crashes on local roads and highways across the state claimed the lives of 895 people in 2015, 121 more than the year before, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation’s annual Motor Vehicle Crash Facts report. 

PHOENIX – With a large Navajo Nation farming operation facing an emergency due to a broken water pipeline, the Arizona Department of Transportation has arranged for two oversize loads carrying 17-foot-wide pipes to travel through the state from southwest to northeast early Saturday.

SURPRISE ‒ From adding curb to what will be the northwest-bound lanes of Grand Avenue (US 60) to capping columns that will carry Bell Road across the railroad tracks, work on a $41.9 million overpass and interchange is moving along steadily.

These aerial videos from April and the past week show how far the Arizona Department of Transportation has come toward reopening Bell Road by November. Closing Bell between 134th Drive and West Point Parkway is allowing faster completion.

PHOENIX – Preparing for construction of the Loop 202 South Mountain Freeway, Arizona Department of Transportation crews with drills and backhoes will begin assessing the condition of soil and rock as well as the depth of groundwater along the freeway alignment.

The work, which is scheduled to begin Tuesday and continue for several months, will help engineers plan the freeway’s pavement, bridges, walls and drainage structures.

PHOENIX – Just in time for the Memorial Day weekend, the San Simon rest areas near the New Mexico state line on eastbound and westbound Interstate 10 have reopened.

The rest areas, which serve more than 430,000 drivers each year, had been closed since March 2015 for much-needed repairs, including the drilling of a new well.

PHOENIX – As Arizonans venture out for Memorial Day weekend, state transportation officials remind drivers to avoid all distractions while on the road – getting out and about and home safely – and make use of Arizona’s “Safe Phone Zones.”

Through a 2014 sponsorship with GEICO Insurance, Arizona has designated 14 rest area locations as “Safe Phone Zones,” where drivers can safely and conveniently use their phones and other mobile devices for calling, texting, navigating and accessing mobile apps.

PHOENIX – With six public meetings scheduled in June and an opportunity for the public to contribute in other ways, Arizonans can help shape the next step in planning for the proposed Interstate 11 as the Arizona Department of Transportation moves ahead on a three-year environmental study for a corridor stretching from Nogales to Wickenburg.

Planned as much more than a highway, I-11 is envisioned as a multimodal corridor connecting Arizona with regional and international markets while opening up new opportunities for mobility, trade, job growth and economic competitiveness.

PHOENIX – Those using US 60 to make an early start to, or a late return from, the eastern Arizona mountains over the holiday weekend can make travel plans without worrying about scheduled road closures.

Arizona Department of Transportation crews won’t close the roadway east of Superior for blasting on Thursday, May 26, or Tuesday, May 31.

Blasting to make room for a westbound passing lane from Devil’s Canyon to Oak Flat and other improvements will resume on Thursday, June 2, and continue on Tuesdays and Thursdays through June.

PHOENIX – Along the 22-mile corridor where the South Mountain Freeway will be built over the next few years, archaeologists are working to gather and recover items and information from the past that may have cultural or historic significance.

At one point along the freeway footprint, archaeologists are systematically digging 5-foot-deep trenches looking for signs that ancient people lived or farmed there. At other sites, archaeologists have found pottery pieces and 19th-century shotgun shells, among other items, and also documented historic petroglyphs.

PHOENIX ‒ When a section of freeway settles a bit, taking a high-tech approach to the repair work allows the Arizona Department of Transportation to give the roadway a lift without digging up the pavement.

PHOENIX – Nearly 8,000 more trucks, 400,000 more passenger vehicles and 900,000 more people entering the U.S. in 2015 through Arizona’s international ports of entry speak to numbers critical to this state’s economy: