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CPR training recommended for Oakwood Terrace employees

Swoyersville Borough Council chooses committee heads

<p>Much of the state recently experienced historic snowfall that brought, in some cases, a winter&#8217;s worth of snow over a couple of days. Thankfully, many Pennsylvanians heeded our warnings to not travel during hazardous weather; but without being on the road, it can be hard to tell what conditions might be, especially for those who don&#8217;t have the option to stay home.</p><p>This winter, we made available on <a href="http://www.511pa.com/" target="_blank">www.511PA.com</a> the location of more than 700 PennDOT and contracted plow trucks across the state. These trucks cover mostly interstates and expressways, and are part of our Automated Vehicle Location system pilot program. While these 700 trucks don&#8217;t represent all of PennDOT&#8217;s more than 2,200 trucks statewide, making this information available is a great resource for the public.</p><p>We were very pleased to see news media, customers and officials alike sharing this resource online (just search &#8220;PennDOT track&#8221; on Twitter). And the numbers show that 511PA &#8211; which also offers travel alerts, traffic cameras, alerts on speed and vehicle restrictions and more &#8211; was used by hundreds of thousands of customers. The website saw 379,000 visits from Friday through Sunday; about 173,000 of those came on Saturday, making it the highest number of visits since the site launched in 2009. From Friday through Monday, more than 121,000 of the visits used the &#8220;Plow Truck&#8221; option.</p><p>And, as they say, there&#8217;s an app for that! While the 511PA app primarily gives hands-free, eyes-free travel updates while you&#8217;re traveling, you can also use it before you go to check our traffic map where you can see the plow truck information. Nearly 10,000 people downloaded the iPhone or Android app on Friday when the storm started, bringing the total number of app users to more than 112,000!</p><p>On the business side, we continue to see positive results from the Automated Vehicle Location system. During this storm, we used the system to determine where trucks were on their routes, especially when our traffic cameras showed traffic queues, so we could see whether we already treated that area or if help was on the way.</p><p>Moving ahead, if we continue seeing positive results, we will review incrementally expanding the AVL system to our other trucks over a period of time. Not only will it continue enhancing our situational awareness, but we also expect to save $1.4 million over the next four to six years based on a combination of reduced salt usage and better use of department equipment.</p><p>Through a weekend that relied so heavily on our services, we were glad to have another example of PennDOT&#8217;s efforts to support a &#8220;government that works&#8221; for every Pennsylvanian.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Leslie S. Richards</p><p>Contributing columnist</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Leslie S. Richards is secretary of Pennsylvania&#8217;s Department of Transportation. For information, visit <a href="http://www.penndot.gov/Pages/default.aspx#.VrD7eOZLPYo" target="_blank">www.penndot.gov</a>.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Leslie S. Richards: Technology takes some guesswork out of winter travel in Pennsylvania