According to the 96Fix twitter and facebook pages, the freeway is now open. I can't find an official MDOT press release yet, but here's the facebook post:

With that being said, how can we quickly get Waze updated with all the openings?

I spoke too soon, it looks like davielde went through and updated everything today. Does anyone know when the next map update is?

I checked this morning before I left to go to work and everything looked great. I was able to drive EB 96 in, and the only thing I noticed is there were some of the names that still said (Construction Zone). So, I think it's just checking all the naming conventions.

The other thing I noticed in some of the news stories is the ACTUAL names of Beech-Daly (with hyphen) and Middle Belt (with space). I haven't looked at Waze to see if it's consistent, but according to Wayne County, this is the correct spelling. Here's the explanation from @96fix:

Thanks again for getting everything updated so quickly!

I think the best way to do this is with a combination of disconnects and time restrictions. This is what I've done for other big long-term closures in the area, including Van Dyke at 94 recently. Nothing's gonna be perfect, but I wouldn't want to trust an event closure with this.

The process is as follows:

• A few days ahead of time, enter time-based segment restrictions for the first few days of the closure. Mess with some geometry in the area so the tiles are updated in the next update.
• Once the closure begins in reality, or a couple hours beforehand, manually disconnect the affected segments such that traffic will not be affected. Place the (Closed) flag on the freeway names as well.
• A couple days before the freeway reopens, enter time-based segment restrictions to cover the last few days of the closure, and reconnect the segments.

The full disconnect is the only way to ensure that routing will avoid the closure. Segment restrictions may not work perfectly every time, but keeping them to the beginning and end of the closure will minimize any ill effects.

Did they say when they're going to close the freeway itself? Just "sometime after the interchanges"?

Oh, I missed this bit: "the full closure of the freeway is scheduled for 7 a.m. April 5."

So you can't get on or off the night before, but thru traffic will be permitted until 7 am.

Wow, that's really something.

Okay, so I suppose we should plan for all the ramp segment closures at 7 pm April 4, and all the freeway segment closures at 7 am April 5. Perhaps we should start putting time-based restrictions in, or at least compiling lists of segments to be time-restricted. We should also determine which freeway segments will need to be disconnected to effect the change properly without affecting traffic that's actually allowed.

Good work. I added restrictions on these two segments per the flash animation since traffic will be prohibited from (1) moving from local W to express W and (2) entering express W from Southfield. These too, shown red on the flash animation.

I will do it now. I emailed Orit and Gal (my contacts for the Mardi Gras event) but I haven't gotten a response yet.

Good news, Noam replied to my email and says they're on it. Hopefully the spreadsheet link will come soon. I'll share it with you when it does.