HARRISBURG – The Wolf Administration is encouraging the public to visit the “Historic Holiday Traffic” page at www.511PA.com so they can plan optimal travel times on major roadways across the state for the Labor Day holiday.
“This is another great opportunity to put our traffic information tools into action for the public,” Gov. Tom Wolf said. “Providing this real-time information allows travelers to choose the route that best works for them as they explore Pennsylvania’s many tourism attractions this holiday weekend.”
The site, which is compatible with mobile devices, allows users to see how traffic speeds on the Friday before and day of Labor Day in 2015 and 2016 compare to traffic conditions during a typical, non-holiday week.
Users can choose their region and view an hour-by-hour, color-coded visual of traffic speeds to help them decide the best times to travel during the holiday. 511PA also offers real-time, traffic speed information for thousands of roadway miles throughout Pennsylvania.
“We aim to help motorists plan ahead by providing them with as much travel information as possible,” PennDOT Secretary Leslie S. Richards said. “We encourage drivers to check 511PA before they leave so they can be aware of traffic conditions and adjust plans if necessary.”
PennDOT will also remove lane restrictions and suspend construction projects wherever possible through the holiday period. Motorists can see remaining construction projects at www.511PA.com before they travel.
Traveler information is also available through Waze (www.waze.com), a real-time crowd-sourced navigation app through which drivers share road conditions, and with which PennDOT has a free, two-way data-sharing partnership.
The partnership promotes more efficient traffic monitoring by sharing free, anonymous, crowd-sourced incident reports and slow-down data from Waze users (called Wazers).
Waze receives PennDOT’s road condition reporting data to share with its users, while the department uses data reported by Wazers to supplement internal traffic-condition monitoring.
The public can use 511PA to check conditions on nearly 40,000 roadway miles in Pennsylvania. The service is free and available 24 hours a day, and provides traffic delay warnings, weather forecasts, traffic speed information and access to more than 825 traffic cameras.
511PA is also available through a smartphone application for iPhone and Android devices. Information can also be accessed by calling 5-1-1 or by following regional Twitter alerts accessible on the 511PA Web site.
