[Talk-us] DOT construction updates

[Paul Johnson]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 2:51 PM, Nathan Mills <nathan at nwacg.net> wrote:

> OKDOT provides updates on Twitter as well as posts weekly (and
> occasionally more often when warranted) "Traffax" PDF updates on their
> website that has a list of all scheduled roadwork and closures on state
> highways.


Traffax is published daily for metro OKC and Tulsa (which OklaDOT divisions
1, 3, 4 and 8 seem to treat as their own special critters since both cities
are right on the division lines for some odd reason; you can tell where
this happens in Tulsa because Division 1 highways demand a Subaru or better
to handle and Division 8 won't shake apart a rustbucket, with the
transitions being rather abrupt; similar issues happen between 3 and 4,
with 4 being the better funded).


> Back in the olden days Traffax was blasted via fax to all the news outlets
> in the state, hence the name.
>

Now they all just get their road information from a news truck in the field
finding something by accident or paying Total Traffic Network, which
basically just makes shit up as they go along and is oblivious to current
traffic conditions in the city, much less something OklaDOT published.
Irony these stations could just go to OklaDOT's website and see the traffic
for themselves, Zootopia Jr. Detective style, and do a better job.


> When I was still in Oklahoma, Traffax was the primary source I used to
> update OSM with road closures, construction zones, and reopenings. (When I
> didn't have direct personal knowledge of such from my travels)
>

 It's mine, too, though I wish there was someplace I could find the
temporary traffic control documents, since I know they have to exist
somewhere.  It's not like they set up long term temporary visions by ear on
the ground.  I bring this up because Traffax is often too vague.  I've been
trying to work with Division 8 headquarters to give a bit more detail so
OSM-based routers can help warn people dealing with long-term temporary
revisions (like the complete detour of US 169 onto temporary pavement for
most of the distance between Tulsa and Owasso) and the complete teardown
and rebuild of the MLK Expressway betweeen 75 and 169.

Not to say I couldn't use some better info out of the City of Tulsa...holy
crap, at any given moment, there's between 6 and 24 long term construction
projects with long-term temporary revisions.  I've given up mapping those
(mostly, save for the most major routes nearest me that I come across
regularly) because they're just as badly documented, and they tend to snarl
traffic bad enough with so many of them that regular resurveys of these are
somewhere between impractical and impossible.
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