Although I don't spend a lot of time in the Phoenix area listening to ADOT in the valley has saved me huge delays 3-4 times. My wife's family lives there and I have stayed for a month at a time on a couple of occasions. I programmed the YRCS prior to our last trip in April and never heard anything. I'm going to check my programming to see if I made some type of mistake or replace it using the import function.
The most memorable event where listening to ADOT saved us time and aggravation occurred on a Friday night around Christmas time in the 90's. The 101 was being constructed on the east side of Scottsdale and the western portion was still on the drawing boards. Something had happened in the tunnel. ALERT was on the air and we started picking them up west of the 85 and we heard every detail. As we got closer and still west of the enormous traffic jam a unit traveling westbound on 10 that needed to get to the scene located somewhere near us, was advised what lane on the 10 to stay in, when to merge right to get on southbound 17 and, of course, to turn westbound (northerly in that stretch) on the 10 to get back to the tunnel. The 202 had been constructed as far as the 101 and the 101 as far as 90th and the status of those routes was broadcast. I had already figured on what route to take, but given the big mess I debated getting off and taking local streets all the way across the valley. Using what we heard we sailed through with a minimum of stop and go traffic in that lane the other ADOT was advised to take. When we arrived in Scottsdale the family figured they wouldn't see us for 2 more hours or more.
In California I had a more significant incident where listening to Caltrans as the DOT is called here. We were driving through the Palmdale/Lancaster area and began to pick up traffic relating to a major accident on California 14 south of Palmdale involving a gasoline tanker overturned on on fire fully involved. It was in a stretch where even the two detours were jammed. Again I heard the locations of the stopped traffic on each side, quickly planned a route in my head as to how to get around the mess and continue to our destination in the west L.A. area. This time the savings in time was closer to 3-4 hours as the fire occurred on a bridge and due to safety concerns about the structure was closed until the following morning. The detours did not clear up until 2200-2400 and we encountered the incident at 1800.
There is a considerable delay and some loss in detail when traffic information is broadcast by radio and TV stations. DOT traffic, no matter what state is involved, is live. People who work for DOT's are more chatty on the air and that is why their reports are much more detailed than what you get listening to DPS or highway patrol agencies.
I don't think the average scanner listener, more likely most listeners, understand the value of understanding and monitoring DOT agencies. I have a hard time getting people to discuss these agencies much. My threads don't garner much discussion when I bring up the subject. I'm not much for listening to law enforcement on a regular basis except at home and with state highway patrols when traveling. I'm not very interested in threads concerning county and local law enforcement agencies. When I see at thread like this one or those involving fire, natural resource agencies and DOT's I'm there front and center.
