Province Adds Winter Website Tools

Two new online winter tools will help make it easier for Nova Scotians to safely get on with their day.

Nova Scotians can check to see when their road will be cleared by visiting the new plow tracker and plowing priorities websites.

"People always want to know when their road will be plowed or salted," said Geoff MacLellan, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal. "We had a good opportunity to test out the sites internally during last week's storm, and now we're ready to test them with the public. The goal is to provide another road condition tool to help Nova Scotians anticipate when it's safe to travel."

The plow tracker site is a live snowplow activity map that uses moving plow symbols to show where trucks are working on Nova Scotia roads in real time.

The plowing priorities site uses colour to depict plowing standards for each provincially maintained road. For example, a red-coloured road is cleared within eight hours after a storm.

"We expect these sites to answer many of those frequently asked questions we get each winter," said Barb Baillie, executive director of maintenance and operations for the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal. "I'm proud to say we're one of the few Canadian provinces to make this information available. I hope everyone checks it out."

To visit the sites, go to novascotia.ca/tran/winter/plowtracker.asp and novascotia.ca/tran/winter/losmap.asp .