Using Apps to Notify the Public of Local Road and Bridge Closures

The traveling public increasingly relies on navigation systems, either as part of their vehicles or through their handheld phones or mobile devices. Currently there is not a consistent system, tool, or process being used by cities and counties in Minnesota to report road or bridge closures that local transportation agencies can use to display to the traveling public or provide to third-party mapping/navigation companies (e.g., Waze, TomTom, HERE Technologies, Google, Apple) so that these companies can display the information to the public. To move toward an approach for reporting road and bridge closures by local counties and cities, the Minnesota Local Road Research Board (LRRB) initiated this project, Using Apps to Notify the Public of Local Road and Bridge Closures. The objectives of this project were to identify and describe an approach the Minnesota LRRB could use to implement a user-friendly road closure reporting system and develop a guide on how local agencies could currently report closures to third-party mapping and navigation companies.