I don't know if this is common in most places, but it seems in Ohio, the quality and quantity of public information released about a project decreases over the duration of that project. There's always a good bit of public involvement with the planning, and usually quite a bit of detailed information about what's going on as the project begins. As the work continues, however, updated information can become difficult to find. New phases and traffic patterns may begin, but there is often much less detail of these new patterns or the next phase of the work compared to the first phase. Sometimes, the website for a project goes completely unchanged from about halfway through the project until it's done, at which point the website simply goes away.
As an example, here's the project page for the Nelsonville Bypass:
http://www.dot.state.oh.us/districts/D10/PublicInformationOffice/nelsonvillebypass/Pages/default.aspx (http://www.dot.state.oh.us/districts/D10/PublicInformationOffice/nelsonvillebypass/Pages/default.aspx)
There's a great big wall of text detailing the planning history of the project, as well as progress as of March of last year. Near the top is a link to another page which has an update as of late December. We're now closer in time to project completion than to the most recent update to the website. Is it too much to ask for a heads-up about how traffic will be transitioned to the new road, or a less-vague estimate of a completion date?
I think the District 10 Public Information Office has dropped the ball on this one. But this seems to be a chronic and widespread problem.
Agreed. Here's an example from Indiana: US 31 from Plymouth to South Bend (http://www.us31plysb.com/)
It was updated frequently before construction began, but we're lucky to get yearly updates since.
I wonder if the updates happen often early-on because the project is still being "sold" to the public. Once the sale is made, there is less motivation to communicate. Kind of like not hearing from car dealer anymore after you've made the purchase.