Date:  Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Contact: Alice Fiman, WSDOT Communications, (360) 705-7080 (Olympia)

OLYMPIA – The Internet and telephone travel information provided by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) will not be available from 9:15 p.m. until 9:45 p.m. on Wednesday, June 18.

WSDOT will be upgrading network equipment during this brief outage.

During the outage, visitors to the WSDOT website will see an error message from their Internet Service Provider (ISP) while callers to the 5-1-1 traveler information hotline will hear a message indicating the system is unavailable. The 5-1-1 system receives its information through the WSDOT network.

Washington State Ferry information will not be available during this brief outage.

WSDOT continues on help drivers plan their trips by placing accurate, detailed, and timely information on its website. The WSDOT site raverages 2 million page views per day, with 500 of those page views occurring between 9:15 and 9:45 p.m. on weeknights.

The site experienced unusually high volumes during winter season 2007-2008. The website topped 4.8 million views on January 28, a Monday when rain and snow pummeled most of the state.

WSDOT’s 5-1-1 hotline provides real time traffic and weather information to close to 5 million callers each year. Callers also use 5-1-1 to get statewide construction, mountain pass condition, and state ferry system information, as well as toll free numbers for passenger rail and airlines. From June through December 2007 the 5-1-1 system handled 832,590 calls. Close to 60 percent of those calls came in December, the heaviest month ever recorded for the 5-1-1 system.

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