Interesting proposal (Kansas 10/Ridgeview Road, Johnson County)

[route56]

I was lurking around the KDOT scratchpad and found a interesting proposal.

There are preliminary plans floating about to refit the K-10/Ridgeview Road interchange as a DDI.

Interestingly enough, the proposal call for only *one* stoplight, as Ridgeview currently does *not* continue north of K-10. Thus, the only traffic that would be making the crossover move would be traffic coming from Westbound K-10 or heading for WB 10.

The plans were found on KDOT's public FTP Server. Details on how to access the FTP server is readily available from the KDOT site, under "Bureau of Local Projects"

The proposal is in the "incoming" directory, under the file name 10-46_KA-1002-05. The server is supposed to delete files after 7 days

(just a note to anyone that downloads anything off of this site: although the server is public, not all of the files are accessible. Some files, particularly the zipped ones, do have their own passwords on them)

[J N Winkler]

Richie, do you have the explicit blessing of anyone at KDOT to publicize the address of the departmental FTP server and to call attention to any files of interest that may be on it?

I ask because my experience of state DOT and engineering consultant FTP servers is that they are usually set up initially with loose security, on the assumption that no-one will look at them except for a reason that arises directly from a defined business relationship.  When the owners realize that their FTP servers are being monitored by roadgeeks or other third parties out of general interest, not because they have a specific need to know, they feel they have to make a decision about whether they want the information to be easily accessible to the public.  About three-quarters of the time the decision is against public access, and the FTP server is either moved behind a login wall (with passwords issued only to individuals who are required to keep them secret), or abandoned in favor of a secure file transfer service that requires individual user accounts.

You should not interpret the availability of login details on the KDOT website as a commitment on KDOT's part to maintain public access to this FTP server.  KDOT is a very secretive agency and maintains secrecy not just by encouraging the use of encrypted ZIP files for FTP uploads, which virtually no other state DOT does, but also by charging exorbitant fees for open record requests.  If you burn out this producing information asset, it could be a very long time before good substitutes come on-stream, such as an online as-builts database.

[route56]

Richie, do you have the explicit blessing of anyone at KDOT to publicize the address of the departmental FTP server and to call attention to any files of interest that may be on it?

Short Answer... no.

I understand your concerns... and personally, I don't want to screw up KDOT's bandwidth resources. I've been hesitant to mention this information before now for this reason.

However, it's been my experience that KDOT has been moving, albeit slowly, toward opening up access. If push comes to shove, I'll call up the K-10 advocacy group

[J N Winkler]

There is a definite bandwidth issue there.  From time to time I see filenames containing strings like "2nd Try," which I think are a result of uploads failing when too many users attempt to download at the same time.  (AIUI, there is a cleanup routine with some degree of automation, but ordinary users don't have the ability to delete files once they are uploaded, so there is no way to clean up after failed uploads.)  I usually deal with this problem by not attempting to download until after office hours; this also allows me to check the server just once a day without missing freshly uploaded material.

It is good to advocate for greater openness.  My concern is partly one of timescales.  They can pull the plug on the FTP server a lot faster than they can make a decision to put some classes of material that are routinely uploaded (such as as-builts) online in a systematic fashion, with ZIP encryption used rarely rather than routinely.

I have had mixed experience trying to persuade KDOT to put material online.  A year ago I asked them if they would allow me to come to Topeka and review their electronic as-builts for old signing plans.  It took about four months of correspondence (at very irregular intervals) to get a definite answer, which was that the as-builts were accessible only through one computer in the Plan Files room; that I would not be allowed to use it because it was in constant use; that it might be possible to copy the files over to a separate computer, which I could use, but only with a KDOT employee looking over my shoulder, and with no ability to copy out files.  There would be a charge for all of this but my contact could not give me even a ballpark estimate.  I judged it would be unacceptably high because the tarball, though of unknown size, was very unlikely to be small (I'd guess at least 1 TB, and probably closer to 10 TB), and state employee time costs about $25/hour.  This response is better than an outright denial, but it still represents bottom-of-the-fifty provision of access to as-builts.  The gold standards are MnDOT and GDOT, where you get direct access to the plans themselves over the Web.

KDOT waited far too long to start putting construction plans online--they didn't start doing it until March 2008, and so lagged MoDOT by at least a year, NDOR by almost six years, SDDOT by three years, NDDOT by a year, and TxDOT by at least seven years.  It frustrates me that they are so slow and reluctant about providing access to as-builts because that attitude makes it much more difficult for me to catch up even with "born digital" plan sets from the decade prior to 2008.

[Alps]

It's okay to tell a few friends about access, but not okay to post on a public forum that is archived by search engines.

[NE2]

What's the benefit of moving the crossover from one side of the bridge to the other?

[route56]

It's okay to tell a few friends about access, but not okay to post on a public forum that is archived by search engines.

Johnathan's concerns notwithstanding, I do believe that posting information intended to be publicly available is appropriate on a public forum. I've re-written it to indicate that the access information is (for now) publicly available. However, I strongly disagree with the moderator's judgment call.

[route56]

What's the benefit of moving the crossover from one side of the bridge to the other?

I'm not sure what you're asking. The proposal is pretty much a regular DDI, only Ridgeview Road does not continue north of K-10. All traffic crossing this bridge is either coming from westbound K-10 or going to westbound K-10.

The proposal is set up for the possible extension of Ridgeview to the north. Much of the area in the immediate vicinity of the interchange is potential greenfield, with residential zoning south of College Blvd, light industrial along Renner Blvd to the east, and some commercial/office near the interchange itself. Mill Creek (and a linear park) separates the Greenfield from more residential development to the west.

Apparently, the Ridgeview DDI was pushed by Olathe: http://www.jocogateway.com/adjoining-projects.php

[NE2]

What's the benefit of moving the crossover from one side of the bridge to the other?

I'm not sure what you're asking. The proposal is pretty much a regular DDI, only Ridgeview Road does not continue north of K-10. All traffic crossing this bridge is either coming from westbound K-10 or going to westbound K-10.

The only difference between a DDI and a standard diamond in the situation where the side road ends is which side of the overpass the left turns cross on. I suppose the proposed extension explains it, but why not change to a DDI then?

[J N Winkler]

Jonathan's concerns notwithstanding, I do believe that posting information intended to be publicly available is appropriate on a public forum. I've re-written it to indicate that the access information is (for now) publicly available. However, I strongly disagree with the moderator's judgment call.

No-one disagrees that access data (including the username and password) are currently available on the Web, where they can be retrieved at the deep link through a Google search, or by browsing down from the KDOT welcome page.  Steve has intervened as moderator--not, I should point out, at my request--because if someone at KDOT Googles the FTP server address, hits are returned from this forum as well as KDOT's own website, and the AARoads hits tell KDOT that people outside the department and its contractors and consultants are aware of the FTP server and are tapping it for information.  As I said upthread, that realization has a tendency to confront agencies with a fork-in-the-road moment that most of the time (not always) prompts them to shut down open access.

I have been monitoring consultant and state DOT FTP servers for years and have seen quite a few go dead.  Probably the most widely publicized example of this was the CH2M HILL FTP server.  CH2M is a major engineering consultancy which does a lot of work not just in transportation, but also in the water, power, and defense sectors.  Shortly after the Iraq invasion a community activist and "defense watcher" in North Carolina stumbled across the FTP server (it has an easily guessable address), navigated the folders, and realized that there were floor plans for a military "black site" in Iraq available for free public download.  He made a big stink about it with the media organizations, and as a result CH2M HILL turned on folder-by-folder password protection for the whole server, which made it all but impossible to follow transportation projects for which files were routinely being uploaded to the FTP server.  (For a while it was possible to scavenge folder login credentials by Googling for them, but that particular workaround has hit a brick wall.)

CH2M HILL is far from being the exception.  I have a long list of consultant FTP servers which have gone dark in the time I have been watching them.  I have an even longer list of state DOT FTP servers which have either gone dark or are still accessible but have tumbleweeds blowing through them (so to speak) because the main action is on file transfer services which function essentially like Internet dropboxes.

[route56]

The only difference between a DDI and a standard diamond in the situation where the side road ends is which side of the overpass the left turns cross on. I suppose the proposed extension explains it, but why not change to a DDI then?

I suppose I should clarify. This is a true DDI, albeit an incomplete one, as the northbound lanes of Ridgeview cross to the west side, but do not return to the east side because  the road ends at the interchange.

[NE2]

Exactly. So the only purpose of those "northbound lanes" is for turning left, and the only functional difference between this and a standard diamond is where the crossover occurs.