How many regions or districts does your state's DOT or highway agencies have?

[Kacie Jane]

WSDOT has eight regions, arranged on county lines:

Not sure where you got that map from; there's nothing at the link labeled the "Baker" region.  From what I can tell, they divide the Northwest Region on the website to make it easier to find what you're looking for in the most populous area, but King, Snohomish, and "Baker" are still all one region.  (Also, the regions aren't strictly along county lines.  Pierce County is half Olympic and half Northwest -- the part of "King" that hangs down on your map.)

[J N Winkler]

PennDOT has eleven, numbered beginning in the northwest corner and continuing roughly clockwise around the state to the southwest. There's no District 7 (which logically would be in the Berks-Lancaster area), and I've never found an explanation as to why. (This old Post-Gazette article basically says "Don't ask–there's no logical reason. It's PennDOT."

PennDOT, or, rather, its predecessor agency, did used to have a District 7--Harrisburg was in it.  There is a map in an early 1940's edition of the Pennsylvania traffic manual that shows the full complement of 12 districts, but I don't know exactly when or why District 7 was abolished.  I suspect it fell by the wayside for efficiency reasons some time after World War II.

Some observations about district structure in some other jurisdictions:

*  Québec (initially Ministère de la Voirie, later Ministère des Transports) used to have a small number of districts.  Sometime in the 1970's they were abolished and replaced with the current system of 19 directions territoriales.

*  From 1920 to (approximately) the creation of the Highways Agency in 1991, Great Britain and its constituent nations were divided into geographical divisions by the Ministry of Transport for highway administration purposes.  (Northern Ireland was not included, though it is part of the UK, because it has its own traffic laws and system of highway administration.)  If memory serves, he original divisions were South West, South East, Eastern, Midlands, and Northern, and Wales and Scotland were their own divisions.  After a few years the Northern Division was split into two, North West and North East.  Later, greater London was broken out as its own Division (sometimes called the Metropolitan Division).  Then Scotland and Wales assumed responsibility for their own roads in 1956 and 1964 respectively.  When the Highways Agency was created as an executive agency and entrusted with responsibility for trunk roads in England (in a move widely seen at the time as a prelude to privatization, which so far has not occurred), the Division structure was ripped out and replaced with numbered Areas, which are auctioned off periodically to term maintenance contractors.

*  Kansas DOT currently has six districts, which comprise more or less equal chunks of the state.  However, most planning and design functions are handled out of Topeka, with the Northeast Kansas district being a sort of "tail wagging the dog" district because of the large projects it handles in the Kansas City metro area.

*  In California, where the district structure is very old (essentially in its present form sans District 12 by the 1920's), there are "superdistricts" in which planning and design functions for multiple districts are handled out of the offices for a neighboring more populous district.  For example, District 1 and 2 business is handled by the District 3 offices.

*  In France, there are two overlapping structures.  The country (or, at least, the metropolitan portion of it) is partitioned into Directions interdépartementales des routes (DIRs), which--as I understand it--generally handle fairly major projects.  It is also partitioned into a rather larger number of Directions regionales des équipements (DREs) which tend to focus on general upkeep.  (In French the term équipement has shades of meaning that the English cognate equipment does not.  For example, in a railway context, the French word would refer to the totality of the rolling stock--materiél roulant--and the permanent way--infrastructure.)

*  In Spain, the regional subdivisions of the Ministerio de Fomento that handle highway business are demarcaciones.  They are structured so that no demarcacion straddles a boundary between two autonomous communities, but two of the latter have two demarcaciones each (Andalucía, Castilla y León).

[english si]

The UK has four bodies that deal with trunk roads (Transport Scotland, Transport Wales, Highways Agency and Roads Service of Northern Ireland)

RSNI also deals with non-trunk roads in the province.

Transport Wales is split into two 'Trunk Road Agents' that deals with everything: South Wales and North & Mid Wales. Non-trunk roads are looked after by the 'Principle Areas'.

Transport Scotland is split into four 'Trunk Road Units' that deal with operating, but not building the system: NW, NE, SE and SW. Non-trunk roads are looked after by the local Councils.

The Highways Agency is split into thirteen 'Areas' (numbered 1-14, missing 11). Design, Build, Finance and Operate and Public-Private Partnership schemes get their own area number above 25. Non-trunk roads are looked after by the counties (administrative), except where there's no county council and the various district/city/borough councils look after it. Except London, where Transport for London looks after a layer of major roads* and the boroughs look after the rest (except traffic lights, which TfL deal with on all roads).

*basically almost every non-motorway trunk road that existed at its creation and several other major roads. Motorways in London are maintained by the Highways Agency (though TfL can maintain motorways).

[vdeane]

On the "superdistrict" note, NYSDOT has them as well for the purpose of processing traffic counts (and possibly other functions).  Zone 1 is regions 1, 8, and 9; zone 2 is regions 2, 3, and 7; zone 3 is regions 4, 5, and 6; zone 4 is region 10; and zone 5 is region 11.  I believe there was even a short-lived proposal to make the zones official and disband the regions (it died when Utica complained).

[kurumi]

PennDOT has eleven, numbered beginning in the northwest corner and continuing roughly clockwise around the state to the southwest. There's no District 7 (which logically would be in the Berks-Lancaster area), and I've never found an explanation as to why. (This old Post-Gazette article basically says "Don't ask–there's no logical reason. It's PennDOT."

PA District 7 attempted a rebellion about 75 years ago and the Capitol wiped them off the map. It's forbidden to speak of it.

Connecticut has 4 districts: http://www.ct.gov/dot/cwp/view.asp?a=1410&Q=538856. Before the 1961 reclassification, there were 11 (I haven't found a map for that yet).

For any district N, its unsigned route numbers are in the range 400 + 100N to 499 + 100N -- except for the 400 series (to state parks and institutions) and the 900 series (miscellaneous tiny segments).

[Brandon]

PennDOT has eleven, numbered beginning in the northwest corner and continuing roughly clockwise around the state to the southwest. There's no District 7 (which logically would be in the Berks-Lancaster area), and I've never found an explanation as to why. (This old Post-Gazette article basically says "Don't ask–there's no logical reason. It's PennDOT."

PA District 7 attempted a rebellion about 75 years ago and the Capitol wiped them off the map. It's forbidden to speak of it.

Happy Schuster Games!

[SP Cook]

In my office, the Administrative Manager who had been there for years prior to me taking my job was notorious for playing politics with hiring. He was known to tell people that they would not be hired unless they were "the right religion," meaning a registered Democrat. I know people who actually changed their voter registration from Republican to Democrat so they would be considered for hiring. It was illegal as hell but they got away with it.

In WV, the only job outside of HQ that is "will and pleasure" is the District Engineer (or Manager).  The County Superintendent used to be, but the last time the GOP got in (RINO Cecil Underwood in 96) they all sued and it went to the 5 to 0 democrat Supreme Court, which made a political decision.  The lone dissent gave an excellent discussion of why the job is a classic political job, as it mainly allocated limited resource to virtually unlimited wants.

In WV, blue collar hiring is 100% political.  You have to be a good democrat to get hired, period.  White collar and so-called pink collar jobs not so much, mainly because there  are generally few qualified applicants, especially outside the Huntington-Charleston metro area.  Many college degree required jobs, and many many many specific college degree required jobs outside the metro go unfilled for a long time.  Same can be said not just about Highways, but the whole state system.

Oddly, in WV, Highways is like a parallel state administration.  All other agencies, including the other parts of Transportation, get services from a unified system.  Things like legal, personnel, payroll, training, purchasing, property management,  all that "back office" stuff.  All done by a separate state agency, the Dept of Administration.  Except Highways, which does virtually everything for itself. 

[briantroutman]

PennDOT has eleven, numbered beginning in the northwest corner and continuing roughly clockwise around the state to the southwest. There's no District 7 (which logically would be in the Berks-Lancaster area), and I've never found an explanation as to why. (This old Post-Gazette article basically says "Don't ask–there's no logical reason. It's PennDOT."

PA District 7 attempted a rebellion about 75 years ago and the Capitol wiped them off the map. It's forbidden to speak of it.

I get the allusion (I'm ashamed to admit), although ironically, District 7 was Harrisburg...site of the Capitol.

[mjb2002]

SCDOT is broken into seven districts.

Correct. And two-thirds of the CSRA counties (6 out of 9) are in the seventh district, including my home county of Barnwell.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

*  In Spain, the regional subdivisions of the Ministerio de Fomento that handle highway business are demarcaciones.  They are structured so that no demarcacion straddles a boundary between two autonomous communities, but two of the latter have two demarcaciones each (Andalucía, Castilla y León).

Notice how Basque Country and Navarre are absent from that list because all roads but AP-68 are maintained by those two communities. Also the two archipelagos are absent, but there are no 'A' motorways or 'N' roads there.

As for my region, Aragon, it is broken into seven zones. They are responsible of maintenance of all A-xxx and A-xxxx roads.

[roadfro]

Despite the state being bigger in land area than many other states previously discussed, Nevada DOT only has 3 Districts, each headed by a District Engineer:


District 1 - Southern Nevada (district offices in Las Vegas, major maintenance station in Tonopah)
District 2 - Northwestern Nevada (district offices in Sparks)
District 3 - Northeastern Nevada (district offices in Elko, major maintenance stations in Ely and Winnemucca)

Some department maps show Districts 1 & 3 as subdivided into smaller maintenance districts. (It is my understanding, although unconfirmed, that there were formerly 6 districts, with each of the major maintenance stations previously serving as district offices.)


NDOT is divided into 4 divisions: Administration, Engineering (includes design and project management), Operations (includes construction, maintenance and traffic operations), and Planning (includes most of the multi-modal transport functions).

It is my understanding that most of the major planning and engineering functions are centralized out of NDOT Headquarters in Carson City (although there are some staff at the district level), with administration and operations being the bulk of district staff. Due to the sheer volume and magnitude of projects in District 1 in the Las Vegas area, there is more planning and engineering staff in the district office–District 1 also has a Deputy Director to oversee coordination between that district office and NDOT Headquarters.

[roadman]

In the MassDPW days, the top person in each District was known as the District Highway Engineer, and each DHE was required to have a PE license.  One of the changes Jim Kerasiotes made as part of his MassHighway reorganization in the early 1990s was to change the title to District Highway Director, and to remove the PE requirement.

[brownpelican]

MDOT has six districts. I believe they mirror the current Congressional setup, which may explain why District 4 doesn't exist anymore.



District 1 - Tupelo
District 2 - Batesville
District 3 - Yazoo City
District 5 - Newton
District 6 - Hattiesburg
District 7 - McComb

[Duke87]

ConnDOT has four. Map

The borders follow municipal boundaries but do not follow county boundaries. Because CT doesn't officially have counties.

[Billy F 1988]

These are the five regions for the Montana Department of Transportation's coverage area. Where I live is in Region V going as far north as Lincoln and Flathead County to Ravalli County in the south in Western Montana.

[vtk]

Is Yellowstone NP really not part of either Gallatin or Park Counties?  Is there a "paper county" occupying that territory?

[J N Winkler]

Is Yellowstone NP really not part of either Gallatin or Park Counties?  Is there a "paper county" occupying that territory?

Wikipedia says not:  "A small part of Yellowstone National Park is located in the extreme southern part of the county."

[cpzilliacus]

Maryland has 7.  Baltimore City is not in any of them because the SHA does not maintain any roads in the city.

Then there's the Maryland Transportation Authority (toll roads and toll crossings), which is independent of SHA but does have a lot of infrastructure in the city and is organized into three regions.

MDTA Toll Facilites