Record storm brings record 511 Web traffic

May 14, 2014

This week’s record spring snowstorm resulted in a record 19 million hits to WYDOT’s 511 Travel Information Service website.

The high volume of users caused slowed response times for some of the site’s pages during the storm.

“We are working to correct the problems,” said Vince Garcia, manager of WYDOT’s Geographic Information Systems/Intelligent Transportation Systems program. “WYDOT is making every effort to provide information in text, email and Web formats in an effort to save money by reducing the number of phone calls to the 511 system.”

Between 12:01 a.m. Sunday and 2 p.m. Monday, the 511 site’s text-based pages (wyoroad.info) received 14.76 million hits. The site’s high-bandwidth interactive map page (map.wyoroad.info/hi.html) got 4.21 million.

During the same period, the 511 telephone system responded to 64,455 calls.

“The Web traffic represents a new record number of hits for a single storm, while the phone calls were about half of our peak volume, suggesting our efforts are saving taxpayers money,” Garcia said.