CROOKSTON, MN (trfnews.i234.me) The Minnesota Department of Transportation now has over 200 cameras mounted on their snowplows. We’ll show you how to take an almost real time look at road conditions, before you drive.
for many folks that morning commute to work can be a White Knuckle experience especially if you live out in the country but now the Minnesota Department of Transportation has added a new tool you may find Handy they’re called snowplow cans this is a new addition to our 511 Roden information system a road information system and what we’ve done is we’ve outfitted 200 plows and we have about 800 and some in the fleet so it’s only uh about 25% of the fleet with dash cams and the dash cams are operating with the plows are out on the road and the reason that we’re doing it is that it gives motorists yet another view of the roadway as they’re getting ready to make their travel plans uh we hope to expand it in coming years um our friends in Iowa have been doing this for a while and I’ve had uh some pretty good success with it as well what gutnik has been talking about is this cool new feature on the Minnesota of Department of Transportation travel page on your PC go to 511mn.org then click on the full featured on the right side of the page you’ll see a maze of highways in different colors that represent current road conditions but there’s a new feature on the left side of the screen click on snowplow cameras and you’re taken to a page that shows you where snow plows that are outfitted with cameras are all over Minnesota click on a snow plow for the location you want and it shows you an almost realtime photo of road conditions all over the state of Minnesota so how often do these uh cameras take a picture I think it’s every five minutes or so there’s a a picture that recycles so it’s pretty much real time now one thing that we would caution folks who look at the website about is that like I said there’s only two 200 of the more than 800 plows that we have in the state so you might not always see plow cams uh portrayed on the 511 site but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plows out there there are plows out they just don’t happen to not be equipped with the camera so it’s it’s more of a feature that we we’re developing and as we we get better at it we will expand it so now Minnesota drivers have another option to check out road conditions before making that DEC decision on whether to hit the road any time of day I’m Neil Berg reporting for in trfnews.i234.me
Snowplow Cameras Offer Minnesotans a New Way to Check Road Conditions
