Maintenance crews across the state will conduct an annual test of the winter weather road conditions map on IDriveArkansas.com on Tuesday morning, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department said.
The crews will practice reporting route conditions in a winter weather event using the weather layer of the website and app from 8 a.m. until noon.
All other layers of iDriveArkansas.com will function as normal and users can simply turn off the winter weather layer by clicking on the blue snowflake icon, the department said. A banner announcement will display at the top of the site indicating testing is in progress.
This annual pre-season testing helps identify any issues crews may encounter when reporting road conditions, the department said. The testing also allows time for any problem solving before the agency's winter weather season begins on Nov. 1.
When winter weather is affecting Arkansas highways, the winter weather road conditions layer becomes the default map on IDriveArkansas.com, the department said. New this year is a text listing of reportable routes and alerts automatically generated through Twitter when significant events occur.
IDriveArkansas.com is the travel and construction information site developed by the department that reports live traffic conditions, work zone locations and winter weather road conditions, among other features. It is also available for mobile devices in the Apple iTunes store as well as the Google Play store, the department said.
Metro on 10/20/2016