PennDOT maps out road construction work on new website

If you’re struggling to keep track of Pennsylvania’s 985 active road construction projects, you can finally rest easy.

If you’re struggling to keep track of Pennsylvania’s 985 active road construction projects, you can finally rest easy. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is out with a new interactive map designed to give residents a better handle on current and future repairs.

The website projects.penndot.gov lets you virtually zip around the state from work zone to work zone, accessing up-to-date information on everything from repaving to bridge-replacement jobs.

“If you are travelling through the state, let’s say, for the upcoming Labor Day holiday, you can say, ‘Let’s see what construction is going to be on Interstate 81 or I-95,’ and you can look for that entire corridor without checking a few different locations,” says PennDOT spokeswoman Erin Waters-Trasatt.

The site contains information on upcoming projects, extending as far as jobs planned in 2026. Along with each road involved, cost and estimated completion date are provided.

“It is so important for taxpayers to be able to see where their dollars are being spent,” said Jana Tidwell with AAA Mid-Atlantic. “And this is definitely as transparent as you can get.”

Along with transparency, the effort is earning initial praise for its ease of use.

“It is a very straightforward interface,” said Dawn McDougall, executive director for Code For Philly, a civic technology nonprofit.

Think of the site as a centralized, digitized version of one of those “Your Tax Dollars At Work” signs, she adds.

One limitation to the site, however, is that it doesn’t combine its map with real-time traffic reports, though PennDOT said it may look to integrate that feature down the road.

The mapping project was paid for with $25,000 in federal planning funds.