Exiting Contrastate Lanes

A few people have asked where they can exit the interstate during contraflow. While most interstate lanes being used as normal lanes will allow exiting, the same cannot be said for lanes being used for contraflow lanes.

If you are on the I-55 Contrastate (headed northbound in the normally southbound lanes), you will only be allowed to exit at two locations:

• Exit 47 in Amite
• Exit 61 in Kentwood

Other than the two above, the LSP and DOTD have not published which contrastate exits will be opened. They simply state that "Interstate exists in the contraflow lanes will be limited and marked with variable message boards."

The contraflowmaps.com team would appreciate any updates from those of you who notice open or closed exits. Send emails to contraflowmaps@gmail.com.

Updates for 2009 (Mississippi DOT Assisting)

Will there be changes to Louisiana's contraflow maps this year? Yep!

Amber Hebert, Public Information Officer for the LA Department of Transportation and Development, says that they are "extending the maps further into Mississippi."

THIS IS GREAT NEWS! Working with Mississippi Department of Transportation should alleviate some of the evacuation bottlenecks we saw during Gustav's evacuation. We'll update contraflowmaps.com as soon as the maps are published.

Busy Few Days

I heard horror stories of the contraflow disaster at the I-59/I-10/I-12 interchange. Jindal has got to fix this, or people will not evacuate.

We also got a few emails from visitors who wanted help planning their route. The most common question was "Can I take I-10 East at the I-59/10/12 interchange?"

Thanks go out to The Wall Street Journal Storm Tracker blog for the link love, but WWLTV's link from their home page sent in the most traffic.

Third Anniversary

Today is the third anniversary of Katrina and traffic to contraflowmaps.com is heavy. Thanks for all the link love.

Special thanks to wwltv.com for the home page link. Check out their video exlplaining New Orleans Contraflow.

One Week Until Hurricane Season 2008

Are you ready for hurricane season 2008? It starts June 1st.

The Colorado State University Forecast team "upgraded its early season forecast today from the Bahamas Weather Conference, saying the U.S. Atlantic basin will likely experience a well above-average hurricane season."

• 15 named tropical storms gathering between June 1 and November 30
• 8 storms are expected to intensify into hurricanes (winds > 74 mph)
  

Also, here is some blog love for contraflowmaps.com

• Google Maps Mania
• MapCruzin
• Broadmoor Prepares

Blog suspended? What the #@$! ?

The folks at Blogger suspended the Contraflow Maps blog for a few hours Monday on suspicion of SPAM. Their detection bots look for

"irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site."

My English professors would have been seriously disappointed.

We pushed out another [very small] update today.

• About 10% of our visits are coming from small monitors at 800x600 resolution, so we decreased the size of those route labels for them.
• Prevented the possibility of browser memory leaks.
• Added some additional helpful links including Meghan Gordon's TP article on contraflow from May 2007 and a great repository of Google Map applications at Google Maps Mania.

LTC Newsletter and Weekend Updates

The Louisiana Technology Council featured contraflowmaps.com in its newsletter this week.

Here are this weekend's updates:

• Added a Bookmark Route Feature
• Fixed the issue with the browser back button
• General user interface and code cleanup