5-1-1

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The official 511 logo used to designate traveler information.

5-1-1, initially designed for road weather information, is a transit and traffic information telephone hotline in some regions of the United States. Travelers can dial the three-digit number 511 on traditional landline telephones and many mobile phones.

As of March 2001, at least three hundred telephone numbers existed for travel information systems in the United States. To overcome the confusion caused by this array of numbers, the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a national assignment of a single three-digit dialing code, N11. On July 20, 2000, the FCC assigned 511 as a nationwide telephone number for ITS traveler information. Its use is being promoted by the US Department of Transportation's Intelligent Transport Systems initiative.

1 System creation
2 Regions
3 References
4 External links
- 4.1 Region-specific 511 sites
- 4.2 General information

[edit] System creation

The existing national guidelines for the federal 511 system was born from research proposed and conducted at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks through a Federal Highway Administration research grant under the name ATWIS (Advanced Transportation Weather Information System). This original system had a five-digit calling code, #7233, and was known as #SAFE (Pound Safe). Demonstrating the effectiveness of a statewide, and then a multi-state, system for traveler information, #SAFE provided route-specific road weather information to travelers via cellular telephones. As part of the federal mandate on the grant, ATWIS/#SAFE was required to demonstrate a feasibility of being privatized. After several companies were examined for the necessary capabilities and knowledge needed to implement and deploy this traveler information system, Meridian Environmental Technology, Inc. was deemed the only truly capable company.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Regions

[edit] San Francisco

The Bay Area's 511 logo

The logo on a road sign

In addition to the phone service, travelers in the San Francisco Bay Area can access transit information on a website, which provides information on mass transit schedules and an interactive trip planner, which will provide an optimal routing between a given origin, destination, and optional time constraints. In addition, 511.org provides information on bicycling, ridesharing, and the toll road system Fastrak. 511.org is a service of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and was designed by the transportation engineering company Parsons Brinckerhoff, Farradyne (now Telvent Farradyne ^[1]). The system had a fair amount of controversy when it was announced that it would use electronic toll tags to track vehicles as they traversed Bay Area freeways.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Northern New England

The Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine departments of transportation co-operate a 511 line, and each state operates its own website with information from all three states.

[edit] Elsewhere in the United States

Similar services are operated in other cities and states; for example, the Minnesota Department of Transportation operates a website for traffic and road condition information. Florida is claimed to have the most-used 511 system in the nation, on a per capita basis.^[2]

[edit] Canada

In January 2005 the Intelligent Transportation Systems Society of Canada (ITS Canada) consortium filed an application to assign 5-1-1 for a similar purpose in Canada. It proposed that in addition to traffic, the number would report weather, which also has a major impact on traffic, particularly in a country with such harsh winters. The application was approved by the CRTC in Canada on July 28, 2006. ^[3]