The state of the roads, throughout the US and Canada
February 18, 2019 11:56 AM   Subscribe

If you're traveling around the US and you'd like to know if there's construction, or a crash, congestion or bad weather, each state Department of Transportation (DOT) has the map for you! You can call 5-1-1 for transportation and traffic information in many states (Wikipedia), and all state DOTs maintain online traveler information maps, if you want to find individual maps. But what if you want to travel between states? Highway Conditions (dot com) provides links to Canadian provinces and territories, and the United States plus D.C. and Puerto Rico, but there's a bit of link-chasing, and only some state maps link to their neighbors, but not all, so here's a list of all 50 states, from Alabama to Wyoming, Maine to California, sea to shining sea.

Canada, east to west: The States, alphabetically (because trying to connect states in other ways just gets messy):
posted by filthy light thief (11 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oops, I intended to link Wyoming, Maine and California above the fold, but they're all there below.

Also, Puerto Rico's traffic condition map, from DTOP IT. En español, por supuesto.

And a final link: US Road Conditions.com, a Web 1.5 website (not quite 1.0 basic, but definitely not with the "modern" internet sheen), where you can browse states from funky drop-downs, and see snapshots of weather in different major cities in each state, plus more handy links.

Inspired by roadtrippers and long-distance trekkers. Travel safely!
posted by filthy light thief at 11:58 AM on February 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


For California you can also use the Caltrans QuickMap instead of the version that leads to text descriptions of road conditions.
posted by RichardP at 12:04 PM on February 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


Handy, thanks. I found DriveBC super-useful in conjunction with Wildfire BC and Washington DNR fire maps when we were driving through BC and WA during forest fire season last summer, since the route we were taking had a lot of fire activity that resulted in road closures in the days leading up to our trip.

More apropos of winter, though, I'm also a fan of Environment Canada's various doppler radar stations - only for a number of urban centres, but they're handy for checking forming/incoming precipitation in real time. Useful in thunderstorm season, too.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:11 PM on February 18, 2019 [3 favorites]


Similar to Environment Canada's doppler stations, Weather.gov has a national radar map, with a 90 minute animation loop (jumping forward 10 minutes per frame, so 9 different frames), and also specific maps for Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:21 PM on February 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


Eh. They'll tell you if the road is snow covered or has construction or stuff like that, but not about the crumbling pavement and potholes on the major series highway.
posted by eviemath at 12:52 PM on February 18, 2019


If you call DDOT in DC and tell them there's a pothole that could swallow a child they will tell you that they know and there are in fact thousands of them.

Our roads are really shit right now, unless you're in one of those lovely rich white people neighborhoods like Chevy Chase.
posted by aspersioncast at 2:28 PM on February 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


If only there were a page that told you where it was legal to bicycle on the highways. In California it's damn near impossible to figure out except by paying very careful attention to which signs that normally say "no pedestrians, cyclists, ..." have cyclists whited out on a few on ramps. Our local county 511 even has a bike mapper that specifically excludes bike accessible segments of highway in favor of routes on surface streets that go over blind death trap bridges with no sidewalks where multiple cyclist fatalities have occurred.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:10 PM on February 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


Our roads are really shit right now, unless you're in one of those lovely rich white people neighborhoods like Chevy Chase.

But then you're in Maryland.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:08 PM on February 18, 2019


Derail, but Chevy Chase is a neighborhood in DC as well as a town in Montgomery County, and the former is where I specifically observed a really nicely-repaved block the other day.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:54 PM on February 18, 2019


But I live on the *other* side of the quadrant, and man, Eastern Ave is fucked right now.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:56 PM on February 18, 2019


Only time I've ever used these is when I need to cross mountain pass roads on a motorcycle. Then they are critical....
posted by CrowGoat at 9:34 PM on February 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


« Older Hey Porter   |   Too weird a specimen to belong to any canon Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments