About a million years ago I worked for the State of North Carolina in the brand new NCDOT Visualization Group. Our job was to create 3D pictures of proposed roadway and bridge designs to be used for planning and public hearings. Given the incredibly long delay between planning a project and the project actually being completed, I was never able to see a completed project before I left the group five years later.
On a recent trip to Winston Salem, I had some spare time and remembered I had worked on a project in the city and, since it was 19 years later, there was actually a chance it was complete. Time for a scavenger hunt. I mean, "How hard can it be?"
Answer: OMG hard.
The Pictures
Here is the original Picture
And here is the 3-D Proposal
When all of the Information is Misleading
The first problem is that finding the project details online are about impossible. A Google search will get you the 2 best results, but best in this case is an extremely relative statement. You will find a "Road Changes" and a GIS document but no plans whatsoever.
You will get a clue that your search is going to be fruitless when you see a link to "Archived Projects" but surely a project complete in 2006 would be digital right? Nope. The ever "current in technology" DOT put all of these projects on microfiche. There are specific sites for the public to search for records at the state, NCDOT, and GIS levels, but they will just return the same information with a handful of useless letters. Not a plan sheet to be found.
So, what do we get with "Road System Changes"? We get a location inset. Great! A quick check of the map, and we can see that that the project is south of Interstate 40 and on SR4315. Great. Except that this is actually so far from great.
You see the project is not south of I-40, it's north of "I-40" and south of "I-40 BUS" and there is no way you are ever going to find SR4315 outside of a NCDOT database search and even then, good luck. But hey, if it's labeled SR4315 it must be some small side road that doesn't have a local name. I mean, there is no way it could be something like "South Main Street" or such, that would be crazy. Who in their right mind would call it SR4315 without any mention of the local name? The NCDOT, that's who. But for arguments sake let's say you are smarter than the average bear so you search for some kind of NC State Road lookup. If you find one, you will get this as your result. Useful huh?
After lots of searching I stumbled upon an entirely different project and one that actually had a cover sheet that listed in really small print that SR4315 was South Main Street. After tracing the road on Google Maps I saw where it crossed Salem Creek. Thankfully I somehow remembered that the bridge crossed Salem Creek, so finally we have a location!
Finding the exact spot
Just a couple more problems. There are now 2 bridges, and a roundabout. The second bridge has been decommissioned as a traffic bridge and is now part of the Winston Greenway system. So could that be the original bridge and they decided to build the new bridge in a slightly different location, or were both bridges there when I took the original picture and I just barely missed getting it in the frame?
It would be so much easier if we had made any indication on the image as to the direction the picture was taken, but nope, that would be too easy.
For a while I was really thinking this could be the location and direction. This faces northish and the open green space would have made an easy place to park the bucket truck to take the picture, but it's just not right.
The Other Side
The correct answer was, the other side. The confusion was the stemming from the reworking of secondary road tying in and the entire removal of the other road which was closed after they converted the other bridge for use as a greenway connector. The other bridge did exist at the time the first photo was taken, and yes, it was barely not in the original photo.
What it looks like today
The Visualization from 20 years ago
I was right
It was an interesting little exercise and I would say the visualization was pretty close. But more importantly I get to say that.....
I was right.
Specifically way back in 2000 when these images were created I had a running disagreement with a couple other people on the visualization team. I had what I called my "30 second" rule. The idea was that no one was going to look at any of these images for more than 30 seconds, so simply getting the image "close enough" was what we should shoot for. Worrying about every detail and blade of grass was a waste of time that could be better spent elsewhere. They disagreed. So as the final proof, I give you the finished product below.
Where we chose to take the picture from is now a small apartment complex meaning the only people that ever see this view and angle are the dozen or so people that live there. For the hundreds of people a day driving on the bridge it is barely visible as you cross it. And for all the time worrying about how the bridge piers and footings would look? Who cares, the entire area is totally overgrown with kudzu.
Yes, an image like this is really helpful at a public hearing because the general public is simply not going to get anything meaningful from looking at a plan sheet or engineers drawing. A simple image will give them the majority of the information they need at a glance. But a general impression is all this is good for. Heck, by the time this was built they changed how the side roads connected and decommissioned an entire bridge.