by Jeremy Bertrand

You asked, and we listened. Using your feedback, we’ve made some upgrades to our text messaging service. Instead of getting a text message from a different number every time you receive one of our alerts, each text will come from one number: 468311. No more getting texts from a different number every time, which will allow you to add that number to your address book and keep those texts more organized on your device. But wait, there’s more.

We’ve also added the ability for you to subscribe and unsubscribe to our two most popular text topics, Hood Canal and 520 bridge openings, by sending a simple text to start and stop the service.

Remember, because the east navigation channel of the 520 bridge is temporarily blocked by construction equipment, we have to open the bridge for marine traffic more often. To make sure you know about those openings, we send two text messages to 520 bridge alert subscribers, the first two hours before the opening and the second thirty minutes before the opening, so that you know when it’s ok to travel across the bridge.

We’ve also made it much easier to manage your 520 bridge alert subscription. To subscribe to texts about 520 bridge openings, send a text with the words “WSDOT 520” to 468311 and you’ll start receiving those updates. To stop, send a text with the words “WSDOT stop” and you will no longer receive them.

The Hood Canal bridge also opens for marine traffic. To be notified about those openings, just send a text with the words “WSDOT hood” to 468311 and you’ll start receiving text updates. To stop getting those updates, send a text to 468311 with the words “WSDOT stop” and you’ll immediately be unsubscribed.

Thanks for letting us know what you wanted from the service, hope you like these improvements!

By guest blogger Claudia Bingham Baker

We are pleased to expand its service for receiving real-time and pre-planned information on highways in Olympic and Southwest Regions. We invite you to visit our GovDelivery self-subscription service and sign up for information by following the directions below. Once you’ve subscribed, you may modify or cancel your subscription at any time by signing in and clicking on ‘subscriber preferences.’ 

1. Follow this link to our self-subscription page.
2. Choose a subscription type (either email or text) using the pull-down menu.  Please note that depending on your data plan, you may incur costs associated with receiving text messages.
3. Enter your email address in the e-mail address box.
4. Click on the GO button.
5. You will come to a “Quick Subscribe” page.  On that page you will see an extensive list.  Scroll through the list to see the myriad options you have available. You may choose to receive information on as many or as few topics as you wish. 

Options include:

Traffic and Traveler Updates (focuses on Puget Sound and urban highways)

• Mountain Pass Conditions
• Eastern Region Traffic
• Olympic Traffic (new under GovDelivery pilot project).  This list will send you information about unplanned, real-time highway alerts about collisions or other highway incidents.  
• If you click the “Olympic Region – All Traffic Alerts” box, you will get notifications of real-time events within Pierce, Thurston, Kitsap, Mason, Clallam, Jefferson and Grays Harbor counties.
• If you wish to limit the geographic area of interest, choose box(es) listed under Kitsap Peninsula, South Puget Sound, or Olympic Peninsula.

Southwest Traffic (new under GovDelivery pilot project).   

• If you click on “Southwest Region – All Traffic Alerts,” you will receive information about unplanned, real-time alerts about collisions and other highway incidents in Lewis, Pacific, Wahkiakum, Cowlitz, Clark, Skamania and Klickitat counties. 
• If you have interest in a more limited geographic area, click on the appropriate geographic list under that.

Similar information is available on planned, scheduled events. Should you wish to receive information about scheduled construction and maintenance work, please go through the same exercise in the next section under “Construction Reports.”

Once you choose your area(s) of interest, click on the Submit button at the bottom of the lists. Your subscription has now been recorded and you will start receiving information immediately.

FOR MEDIA ONLY:  Please note that contact numbers will no longer be included with each roadway notification.  To contact communications specialists, please refer to the Communications contact page.

Benefits to the new system:

• Information will be more timely.
• Information will be brief and succinct, easily read on mobile devices.
• Information will be more comprehensive.  You will now receive notifications of scheduled roadway work as well as unscheduled roadway incidents.
• Information will be more relevant.  You can subscribe to as many or as few lists as you wish.

The pilot project will last through December 2013, after which we will evaluate the program’s effectiveness and the level of public satisfaction. We welcome your feedback any time during this six-month project.  Please send comments or suggestions to webfeedback@wsdot.wa.gov.

Everybody ready for a wild weekend? It looks like it's going to be a fun one, if you like storms that is. Personally, I happen to love them, but then again I don't have any Christmas shopping to do this weekend.

It's dumping in the passes today, with up to 2 feet of snow expected in some areas. If you have to travel over the passes this weekend I highly recommend you take the time to get prepared before you go. The road conditions are changing very quickly.

One of the most vital pieces of information you can have before you travel over the passes is the reports that tell you the current conditions and let you know if you need to put your chains on or not.

We have several different ways to get this information and I wanted to let you know about all of them, especially before this weekend.

Email
You can sign up to get the reports directly to your inbox as conditions change. A word of warning though: on days like today that can mean a lot of messages in your inbox. But, it can be very beneficial to know what the current conditions are and how quickly and often conditions change up there.

RSS
Put the RSS feed of your favorite pass in your RSS reader to stay up to date. There is a link on each mountain pass page to it's RSS feed.

511
Don't forget you can always dial "511" and get the latest conditions.

Twitter
We have a new tool in the arsenal by using Twitter. You can get current pass conditions by direct messaging the WSDOT twitter account. Set yourself up with a free twitter account, and by using the specific keywords and instruction provided on this page, you can send a text to the WSDOT account and it will reply back to you with the current conditions. That means if you are about to drive over the passes and you send a text message (of course not while driving) to Twitter (40404) with the words "d wsdot pass sno" Twitter will text back to you the current conditions of Snoqualmie Pass by using Twitter's direct messaging feature.

Text messaging
Twitter is the only way we offer pass reports via text message as of right now. We are working on a way that would allow a system to send you a message whenever the pass report updates, but we are still working the bugs out of it. Limiting these messages to 140 characters is proving to be a challenge.

Stay warm this weekend, take the time to get prepared, and drive safely out there.

On a side note, for all you 520 bridge drivers. We are watching the Lake Washington Bridges and the wind speed closely. If we get gusts of 50 mph or more we will have to close the 520 bridge.

On another side note... We had a little glitch with our server that serves up mountain pass images this morning. For some reason it decided to ask for a username and password to view the images. We gave it a good kick and it's back to normal now, sorry about that.