Things that irk you about "road geeking"

[Pete from Boston]

There's still tons of information I haven't yet read that's not online, and available only in a library open 9-5 weekdays, by appointment, in the basement of a DOT building 3,000 miles away.

I expect this situation to improve as digital storage costs continue to drop, though the process is still frustratingly slow.

The labor cost of the people needed to do the digitizing isn't dropping, though. 

[SSOWorld]

When nobody in the group understands the difference between route shields.

It's all in the shape

[J N Winkler]

I expect this situation to improve as digital storage costs continue to drop, though the process is still frustratingly slow.

The labor cost of the people needed to do the digitizing isn't dropping, though.

Some of it is amenable to office automation, and this proportion will increase in time.  In any case, I was thinking of a different aspect of the problem.  There are some classes of documents (such as highway construction plans) that are already digitized, partly because they are consulted on a regular basis, so electronic availability produces labor savings that offset the cost of digitization.  What usually happens, however, is that they sit on disk in state DOT offices, rather than being made available over the public Web.

In the case of plans for past projects, a very small number of state DOTs (MnDOT and GDOT among them) now have Web access.  I expect implementation of this among state DOTs in general to follow a logistic curve--a brief period of no expansion (I think this is where we are now), followed by a radical ramping-up, and then a leveling-off once the only state DOTs who don't do it are those who have deliberately decided to hold out.

[Pete from Boston]

I expect this situation to improve as digital storage costs continue to drop, though the process is still frustratingly slow.

The labor cost of the people needed to do the digitizing isn't dropping, though.

Some of it is amenable to office automation, and this proportion will increase in time.  In any case, I was thinking of a different aspect of the problem.  There are some classes of documents (such as highway construction plans) that are already digitized, partly because they are consulted on a regular basis, so electronic availability produces labor savings that offset the cost of digitization.  What usually happens, however, is that they sit on disk in state DOT offices, rather than being made available over the public Web.

In the case of plans for past projects, a very small number of state DOTs (MnDOT and GDOT among them) now have Web access.  I expect implementation of this among state DOTs in general to follow a logistic curve--a brief period of no expansion (I think this is where we are now), followed by a radical ramping-up, and then a leveling-off once the only state DOTs who don't do it are those who have deliberately decided to hold out.

I'm interested in this concept, and yet still have to ask, what motivation will spur that ramping up?

[dmr37]

I expect this situation to improve as digital storage costs continue to drop, though the process is still frustratingly slow.

The labor cost of the people needed to do the digitizing isn't dropping, though.

Some of it is amenable to office automation, and this proportion will increase in time.  In any case, I was thinking of a different aspect of the problem.  There are some classes of documents (such as highway construction plans) that are already digitized, partly because they are consulted on a regular basis, so electronic availability produces labor savings that offset the cost of digitization.  What usually happens, however, is that they sit on disk in state DOT offices, rather than being made available over the public Web.

In the case of plans for past projects, a very small number of state DOTs (MnDOT and GDOT among them) now have Web access.  I expect implementation of this among state DOTs in general to follow a logistic curve--a brief period of no expansion (I think this is where we are now), followed by a radical ramping-up, and then a leveling-off once the only state DOTs who don't do it are those who have deliberately decided to hold out.

I'm interested in this concept, and yet still have to ask, what motivation will spur that ramping up?

Like anything government related, heavy lobbying by the Plan Scanners Manufacturers Association and several fact finding trips to Las Vegas for key state decision makers will greatly speed this up.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I would like to add: being prevented from tracking old roads because they have now become private property. I've tracked El Camino Real de los Tejas (Old San Antonio Road), the Bankhead Highway, old US highway alignments up to private property, not to mention old bridges.   

Make no mistake, I respect private property and do not trespass, but it does "irk" me.

This is also my irk! I love micro micro road geeking and hate how some old historic roads in the area have turned into private access. They aren't really "important" roads per se, but I would love to explore them for the fact that they've been used as trails for centuries.

Yeah. There's an old section of Highway 61 along Lake Superior that I'd really like to drive just once but because of how aggressively the no-trespass signs are posted at both entrances to the segment I know there's no way I could say "I didn't see them, sorry" if I got caught.

[realjd]

Just so everyone knows, saying "I got lost" or "I made a wrong turn" at a military base gate is no big deal. It happens regularly and they're set up to turn people back safely and efficiently. You won't be interrogated, quizzed, or detained.

[NE2]

Just so everyone knows, saying "I got lost" or "I made a wrong turn" at a military base gate is no big deal. It happens regularly and they're set up to turn people back safely and efficiently. You won't be interrogated, quizzed, or detained.

There are no Middle Eastern roadgeeks.

[J N Winkler]

In the case of plans for past projects, a very small number of state DOTs (MnDOT and GDOT among them) now have Web access.  I expect implementation of this among state DOTs in general to follow a logistic curve--a brief period of no expansion (I think this is where we are now), followed by a radical ramping-up, and then a leveling-off once the only state DOTs who don't do it are those who have deliberately decided to hold out.

I'm interested in this concept, and yet still have to ask, what motivation will spur that ramping up?

Like anything government related, heavy lobbying by the Plan Scanners Manufacturers Association and several fact finding trips to Las Vegas for key state decision makers will greatly speed this up.

There are already several well-established vendors of electronic document management solutions.  Falcon is the EDMS that has probably the largest market share among state DOTs.  VDOT and SCDOT have Web-based, public-facing Falcon databases (VDOT for distribution of letting plans and proposals, and SCDOT for a subscription-only as-builts service for which they charge $60 annually), though some state DOTs have Falcon for access to as-builts on their intranets.  If you file a request with Caltrans District 3 for as-builts by specifying beginning and ending postmiles for a length of state route that is under their jurisdiction, the first step in the process of getting those plans to you is to send you a PDF printout of a Falcon listing and ask you to choose the items you want.

Dmr was being tongue-in-cheek, I am sure, but state DOTs have mechanisms by which they discuss this and related technological innovations among themselves.  One of these is the Highway Engineering Exchange Program (HEEP).  Information exchange has a dual purpose:  it spreads knowledge of ways and means, and it breeds FOMO in laggard DOTs.

As for why state DOTs like to have database access to their as-builts, there are several reasons.  One of the first steps in designing a project in-house, or having a consultant design it in their offices, is to find and study all the as-builts for the affected section of road to develop a full understanding of the existing conditions.  These documents have to be handled by multiple pairs of hands--clerical staff in the plan file room, engineers and technicians reviewing them, and the designers--so it is convenient and saves paid office time to have them in a compact form that can be copied endlessly at next to no cost, which implies a digital format of some kind.  Having them externally accessible (over the public Web, not just the intranet) is an additional layer of convenience, since it gives external users self-service capability, which ensures that clerical backlogs in the plan file room do not translate to costly delays in the design process and also reduces the transaction costs associated with handling requests from the general public.  (Some types of requests are basically intractable without database access.  For example, if you want all the signing contracts a state DOT and its predecessor agencies have done from 1950 to the present, it is a lot easier to write a spidering hack to interact with a database front end and extract the desired plans than to tax an overworked state DOT employee to do manual retrieval.  MnDOT alone has done over 800 signing contracts on Interstates, other freeways, and rural expressways since the first signing contract on I-35W in Minneapolis in 1959.)