Anticipating the first significant winter storm of the season today, the City of Charlottesville held a press conference yesterday to unveil two new strategies to cope with such situations. Twelve traffic cameras are now installed around the city. ”We can actually look at 12 different intersections around the city at real time with the conditions,” said Judith Mueller, director of the Department of Public Works. Also, every city plow truck has been equipped with GPS technology, so that crews know which streets have been plowed and which streets haven’t. “We can sit in our little command post and we can watch every vehicle, where the vehicle is, how fast it’s going, whether its got its plow down or not. We can monitor this all of the time,” Mueller said. When the storm clears, as they say, residents can weigh in on exactly how much all this technology helps.
| How’s it looking out there now? Here’s UVA’s RotundaCam with a live look at the lawn on UVA’s campus. The view is from Old Cabell Hall, looking at the Rotunda. This feed is displayed using QuickTime. If you can’t see the display, visit the RotundaCam site for more options. |
| Driving over the mountain on I-64? Look here first …. it’s snowy out there! Right now [1:30 PM], that’s not just a grey box below. You simply can’t see a dang thing! |
 While many local children celebrate the first significant snowfall of the year, City officials will be monitoring road conditions with new traffic cameras and plows equipped with GPS technology. |
Previous "This Just In" articles from this week:
Louisa to Charlottesville: You gave me gangs! [January 16]
County creates preventive task force
MySpace agrees to greater policing [January 15]
Attorney General will sit on online social networking committee