The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation recently received $75 million in additional funds from the state budget – approved in July – for new equipment to support its roadway construction, maintenance, and winter season operations statewide.
[Above photo by PennDOT]
New units will also feature new green lights, which are incorporated with existing flashing or revolving yellow or amber lights; part of a strategy aimed to increase safety by making construction and maintenance operations more visible – an effort successfully used by other state departments of transportation, such as in Michigan and Iowa.
Additionally, PennDOT – along with the Pennsylvania Turnpike, municipalities, and their respective contractors – may now also install flashing or revolving green lights in addition those yellow or amber lights on existing equipment after Governor Josh Shapiro (D) signed Act 78 of 2024 on July 17.
“Keeping Pennsylvanians’ travel as safe as possible is at the core of PennDOT’s mission, and the new lighting option signed into law by the governor is another way we can enhance safety,” noted PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll in a statement.
“PennDOT and our partners are prepared for the season ahead and we urge the public to prepare themselves and their vehicles as well,” he added. “We also encourage people to apply to join our full-time or temporary teams to help make this winter a safe one.”
[Editor’s note: The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials recently appointed PennDOT’s Carroll to a two-year term as chair of its Committee on Transportation Communications, known as TransComm.]
The agency noted that state residents can not only access travel information on nearly 40,000 state-maintained roadway miles year-round at www.511PA.com, during the winter they can determine plow-truck locations and details of when state-maintained roadways were last plowed via the site – courtesy of PennDOT’s Automated Vehicle Location technology, which uses units in the over 2,600 department-owned and rented plow trucks to send a cellular signal showing a truck’s location.
With more than $186 million budgeted for this winter’s statewide operations, PennDOT said it has more than 728,000 tons of salt on hand and plans to deploy about 4,700 on-the-road workers for snow and ice removal work.
Separately, the agency also recently launched its eighth annual PennDOT Innovations Challenge, which encourages high school students to use their problem-solving, creative and strategic-thinking abilities to solve real-world transportation challenges in a competition among their peers.
The contest is open to all students in grades 9-12 statewide, regardless of their school’s learning model, and the deadline for submissions is January 31, 2025.
PennDOT noted that for this year’s competition students are asked to develop a cost-effective, innovative solution that can help PennDOT more effectively increase awareness of seat belt safety and change behavior to improve roadway safety.
Regional Innovations Challenge winners will be selected and invited to present their solutions to PennDOT Secretary Carroll and a panel of judges, who will determine the statewide winner.
For this year’s challenge, four different organizations are providing a combined total award of $6,000 to the statewide winning team.
“Safety is the focus of everything we do at PennDOT, and seat belt safety is vital to reducing fatalities and moving toward zero deaths on our roadways,” said PennDOT’s Carroll in a separate statement. “Hearing fresh perspectives from our youngest drivers on how to encourage seat belt usage and change behavior is a welcome prospect. I am excited to see what concepts the students develop”
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