The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation announced updates to the 511PA traveler information service.
“511PA helps travelers plan ahead year-round, but can be especially useful in winter,” said PennDOT Secretary Yassmin Gramian. “511PA allows users to view color-coded winter conditions, see plow truck locations, and now receive alerts more tailored to their needs.”
511PA allows motorists to set up personalized travel alerts for specific roadways, days of the week and times of the day. New to this feature, users can now select the type of alerts they would like to receive, rather than receiving all alerts. Categories include incidents, roadwork, general travel information, travel restrictions and weather-related alerts.
Motorists can now use just an email or mobile phone number for speed and vehicle restrictions or full roadway closures without creating a personalized account.
Commercial vehicle drivers can view locations for all bridges under legal height (<13’6”) over state roads to enhance information they may be receiving from third-party navigation systems. This information can be viewed on the web map and is also available as an alert that can be heard in drive mode on the mobile app.
The 511PA mobile app now allows drivers to specify vehicle type, either commercial or passenger vehicle. If commercial is selected, vehicle restrictions and low-bridge data is turned on in drive mode by default.
511PA also now includes electric-vehicle charging station locations as an option on its traffic map. Using data from the U.S. Department of Energy, the map shows locations across the state by connector type, including CCS, J1772, CHAdeMO, Tesla and NEMA.
As always, motorists can check conditions on more than 40,000 roadway miles, including color-coded winter conditions on 2,900 miles. 511PA is free and available 24/7. It provides traffic delay warnings, weather forecasts, traffic speed information and access to more than 1,000 traffic cameras.
Visit 511pa.com, download the app, call 5-1-1 or follow on Twitter.
