Illinois Tollway adds bad weather driving alerts to Twitter Feed

The Illinois Tollway has added inclement weather driving condition alerts to their real-time Twitter feed to help drivers keep up with changing weather conditions. Tollway tweets now offer pavement conditions along with accident, lane closure and incident reports

The Illinois Tollway now is using Twitter to provide customers with real-time updates describing pavement conditions on all five of its roadways during winter storms and other weather events to enhance safety for drivers using its 294-mile system.

For the first time, drivers can check pavement conditions during snowstorms, flooding or other weather events by viewing the tweets for each Tollway, which will include the latest updates, along with information about roadway incidents and delays.

The tweets describe conditions for each roadway based on milepost markers and use information provided by Tollway crews operating from 12 maintenance sites across the Tollway system. This allows the Tollway to customize its tweets for specific portions of its roadways to provide the most accurate information to drivers.

Illinois Tollway roadway courtesy of the Illinois Tollway Authority

The roadway reports will be updated frequently during storms and severe weather as pavement conditions change.

“The Tollway is continually looking to deliver new ways to serve our customers and keep them safe,”said Illinois Tollway Executive Director Liz Gorman. “Using Twitter allows us to send informationdirectly to our customers describing the current conditions on the specific road and alerting them to anychanges caused by severe weather.”

The Tollway previously offered real-time roadway incident information on Twitter, including the type of incident, location and impact on traffic. Providing updates of pavement conditions in tweets will assist customers in planning their trips during severe weather.

Drivers can receive year-round, real-time information on pavement conditions and roadway incidents by signing up for Tollway Trip Tweets at twitter.com from the Tollway’s website at illinoistollway.com. Tweeters can follow all five Tollway Trips or just the roadways that interest them.

The five are: @94_294_Tollway, @I_90_Tollway, @I_88_Tollway, @I_355_Tollway and @IL_390_Tollway.

The roadway and incident information offered in the tweets is provided by Tollway maintenance crewsand the agency’s Traffic Operations Center, which is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

About the Illinois Tollway

The Illinois Tollway is a user-fee system that receives no state or federal funds for maintenance and operations. The agency maintains and operates 294 miles of roadways in 12 counties in Northern Illinois, including the Reagan Memorial Tollway (I-88), the Veterans Memorial Tollway (I-355), the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway (I-90), the Tri-State Tollway (I-94/I-294/I-80) and the Illinois Route 390 Tollway.