Philadelphia Weather: PennDOT, SEPTA Gearing Up For Latest Winter Storm
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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- PennDOT crews and SEPTA workers are getting prepared for the latest winter storm that will hit the region.
With more than a dozen monitors and hundreds of traffic cameras in the region, PennDOT crews are carefully looking over streets and highways to make sure traffic is flowing smoothly.
"They're watching traffic that's happening, any incidents, any crashes," said Ayanna Williams, PennDOT's community relations coordinator. "Just monitoring the traffic in the Philadelphia region and five counties."
A team works around-the-clock inside a dimly lit room called the Traffic Management Center in King of Prussia.
While crews in the field start to treat roads, officials also say that beginning at 6 a.m. Tuesday, many state roads, including much of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, will have reduced speeds.
"We have crews that will be out for the duration of the storm tonight and into the morning," said Williams.
If you're looking to stay off the roads Monday night and Tuesday morning, SEPTA will be operating. SEPTA workers are keeping busy inside its headquarters as they monitor all of their routes to keep service running smoothly and all 1 million of its commuters safe.
"All personnel are going to be out there on the scene, just making sure that we're not having signal problems or track problems, so we are having all of our personnel out on the system," said SEPTA spokeswoman Carla Showell-Lee.
Officials are also beefing up its response by opening what's called its command center.
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"The command center is a specific area where you will find all of our senior-level management sitting in one room to monitor all of the monitors that we have in there, to see what is happening on the system, and to answer any calls that might be coming in, too," explained Showell-Lee.
SEPTA officials advise commuters to give themselves plenty of time in case of delays due to the winter weather.
