The Arizona Department of Transportation is deploying a couple of new online efforts focused on two distinct groups affected by the COVID-19 pandemic: home-bound school kids and Mexican truck drivers.
The agency has developed an array of transportation-related online activities and information for school kids, including: videos about snowplows; zoom virtual backgrounds featuring heavy equipment, big bridges, and more; plus, a highway art challenge to encouraged kids to create and share messages about the value of clean highways.
“Whether it’s building a bridge, keeping highways free of snow and ice, or doing something else that helps everyone get safely home, we hope that learning about transportation helps develop a child’s interest in the math, science and creativity behind what we do,” said John Halikowski, the Arizona DOT’s director, in a statement.
Separately, the agency is now providing virtual training as part of program that helps truck drivers in Mexico better understand and prepare for safety inspections at the U.S. border.
The goal of this virtual training effort – offered by the Arizona DOT’s Border Liaison Unit – is reducing commercial vehicle wait times at the international border by cutting down on safety problems and other issues that truck drivers must address before leaving commercial ports of entry.
That unit recently offered its first training by webinar recently for 30 trucking companies from the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California. More sessions are planned.
“The webinar was a huge success,” said Officer Frank Cordova of the Border Liaison Unit, in a statement. “We’re looking to make webinar-based workshops a staple of the training we provide, as it allows us to reach even further into Mexico and the U.S. to continue educating the commercial industry.”