This September, the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority will close a stretch of Interstate 405 completely over one weekend, for the second time. Last year, it preceded the closure with a massive "Carmageddon" campaign featuring Tweets by Lady Gaga and other public campaigns by celebrities and politicians. The 52-hour closure to demolish half of the Mulholland Bridge was successful and no catastrophic traffic jams occurred.

Now, Utah Dept. of Transportation  is running a movie trailer ad touting the impending completion of its I-15 CORE highway expansion project through August 23 at area movie theaters to reassure drivers that the end of the project is in sight. The DOT also has animations of how its projects are executed on YouTube.


Youtube video posted by Utah Dept. of Transportation

State DOTs and other transportation agencies are doing good jobs of using social media and the Internet to promote, explain and clarify what they're doing to the public. The movie trailer is an especially nice touch. But we need to keep using these social tools to promote awareness of the importance of infrastructure investment to the general public.