By Guest Blogger Broch Bender

Combine the patience of ice fishing, a passion for puzzles, and a love for I-405 drivers that would make the @WSDOT_Traffic Twitter Fairy giggle, and you’ve got WSDOT Transportation Engineer Emma Lance.

OK, so there is no Twitter Fairy, however, magic wands and Twitter dust aside, Emma Lance is the mastermind behind the #Take5 detours you use when northbound Interstate 405 through Bellevue is closed for repairs.

“It’s easy to put pen to paper and design something,” said Emma. “It’s another thing to be accountable for keeping drivers out of lengthy backups.”

Emma and her team are traffic-busting heroes. During weekend-long pavement repair shutdowns of northbound I-405, they go where the traffic cameras can’t; patiently combing through backups so that you won’t get stuck in one.

You might be wondering, “Why does WSDOT need people on the ground when you have Twitter?” Good question. Our tweets are generated by information we see on our webcams, traffic sensors embedded in the highway, and occasionally from drivers like you.

Emma Lance

But, what happens when we close our highways completely and all the average person can see are orange barrels and crews working? And what if the detour is on local streets without cameras and sensors (hint: NE 8th St. or 116th Ave. SE in Bellevue)?  Emma says, “It’s kind of a black hole for drivers. It’s like we are telling them, go here because the highway is closed – see you on the other side!”

Last month was her first call to duty, and she’s back again this weekend, August 9 through 12 for the final roundof concrete panel replacement through downtown Bellevue.

Emma and her team are winning the traffic game by shining a light into the detour abyss. When she sees a slow spot in the road, she’s on the phone with the City of Bellevue so they can adjust traffic signal timing before you can say “red light, green light 1-2-3!,” An extra few seconds of “green” time on a traffic light can make a huge difference. And, if the signals suddenly stop working, Ms. Lance is on the horn to the Washington State Patrol so they can direct traffic.

When drivers enter the “detour black hole,” there is no real way to tell what the detour travel time is.
In the past we’ve literally watched cars exit the ramp to the detour and watched the on-ramp hoping to find the same car and timing how long it took them. That’s ok, but not too reliable. Emma’s got wheels on the ground and stopwatch on the dash, rolling through the detours all day long, timing how long it takes from start to finish. Every 30 minutes she contacts the WSDOT traffic tweeters with her findings.  Bottom line: Ms. Lance is a big reason drivers get the latest, most accurate detour travel times possible all weekend long.

Just like any superstar, Emma is motivated to use her congestion-busting powers for good. Since the beginning of her WSDOT career in 2007, she’s specialized in planning out highways that coexist with fish habitat and Bellevue’s growing metropolis. “It’s a challenge trying to balance tight budgets with high environmental standards,” she said. “But it’s totally worth all of the effort to have state of the art highways side by side with nature, instead of having to choose between them.”

During the first round of I-405 pavement repair closures back in July, she noticed drivers were getting stuck at the NE 8th Street area trying to get onto I-405. This time around her advice is to avoid NE 8th Street and instead use other arterials to go north. “You’ll save yourself a nice chunk of time.”
When our best “traffic-un-jammer” is not designing construction projects, detailing detours or out saving drivers from traffic fatigue, you can find her honing her patience and fortitude over jigsaw puzzles, fishing for walleye and being a favorite aunt to her niece.

Everybody ready for a wild weekend? It looks like it's going to be a fun one, if you like storms that is. Personally, I happen to love them, but then again I don't have any Christmas shopping to do this weekend.

It's dumping in the passes today, with up to 2 feet of snow expected in some areas. If you have to travel over the passes this weekend I highly recommend you take the time to get prepared before you go. The road conditions are changing very quickly.

One of the most vital pieces of information you can have before you travel over the passes is the reports that tell you the current conditions and let you know if you need to put your chains on or not.

We have several different ways to get this information and I wanted to let you know about all of them, especially before this weekend.

Email
You can sign up to get the reports directly to your inbox as conditions change. A word of warning though: on days like today that can mean a lot of messages in your inbox. But, it can be very beneficial to know what the current conditions are and how quickly and often conditions change up there.

RSS
Put the RSS feed of your favorite pass in your RSS reader to stay up to date. There is a link on each mountain pass page to it's RSS feed.

511
Don't forget you can always dial "511" and get the latest conditions.

Twitter
We have a new tool in the arsenal by using Twitter. You can get current pass conditions by direct messaging the WSDOT twitter account. Set yourself up with a free twitter account, and by using the specific keywords and instruction provided on this page, you can send a text to the WSDOT account and it will reply back to you with the current conditions. That means if you are about to drive over the passes and you send a text message (of course not while driving) to Twitter (40404) with the words "d wsdot pass sno" Twitter will text back to you the current conditions of Snoqualmie Pass by using Twitter's direct messaging feature.

Text messaging
Twitter is the only way we offer pass reports via text message as of right now. We are working on a way that would allow a system to send you a message whenever the pass report updates, but we are still working the bugs out of it. Limiting these messages to 140 characters is proving to be a challenge.

Stay warm this weekend, take the time to get prepared, and drive safely out there.

On a side note, for all you 520 bridge drivers. We are watching the Lake Washington Bridges and the wind speed closely. If we get gusts of 50 mph or more we will have to close the 520 bridge.

On another side note... We had a little glitch with our server that serves up mountain pass images this morning. For some reason it decided to ask for a username and password to view the images. We gave it a good kick and it's back to normal now, sorry about that.