The Oregon Department of Transportation’s (ODOT) eastern Oregon team has made some significant safety improvements along Interstate 84 in the past 18 months, and those efforts have garnered a national award from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials AASHTO).
Announced earlier this month, the awards recognized the ODOT Region 5 Snow Zone Safety Improvement Project with top honors in the Operations Excellence, Small Project group.
Now, the project is in the running for the People’s Choice Award, where it will compete with 12 other top projects. Oregonians and fans of the eastern Oregon safety project are encouraged to vote online for it to win. (To learn more about the variety of improvements ODOT made along this wintry route, view a video or visit the completed project page.)
These Top 12 finalists – whittled down from 80 nominees from 35 state DOTs via four U.S. regional contests – are competing for both the Grand Prize and the People’s Choice Award. Both prizes come with a $10,000 cash award, for a charity or transportation-related scholarship of the winners’ choosing. If Oregon wins, Truckers Against Trafficking, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping members of the trucking, bus and energy industries combat human trafficking, will receive the prize money.
An independent panel of transportation industry experts will select the grand prize winner, while the general public will decide the People’s Choice Award winner through online voting. Online votes will be weighted to each state’s population, allowing for greater competition between states with larger and smaller populations. AASHTO will announce the winners during its annual meeting in San Diego, October 26-29.Online voting ends at 11:59 p.m. on Oct. 25.
