BC’s Commercial Vehicle Route Planner is live!
BC’s Ministry of Transportation has released a new tool that plugs into Google Maps and now allows commercial carriers and drivers to plan their route of over-sized shipments in a safe, efficient and positive way.
How will this tool benefit commercial carriers and drivers alike?
Today, it is expected that all government, commercial and medical fields utilize technology to make processes more efficient and easier for both internal use and for the public. BC’s Ministry of Transportation has kept up with this expectation by being on top of technological advances for quite some time. Take for instance their DriveBC website which contains weather and road construction information plus hundreds of web cams to inform all public and commercial travelers of BC of potential hazards. In addition, they have also provided the Weigh2GoBC transponders to cut down on commercial vehicle scale times as well as the ability to purchase commercial vehicle permits online which save carriers time and the drivers’ money.
Showing that they will not stop in these endeavors, BC’s Ministry of Transportation released on Feb 5, 2014, the new tool Commercial Vehicle Route Planner that is welcomed by many commercial carriers and drivers operating within BC’s borders. Why? There are so many road construction projects on the go, ever changing weather, as well as many bridges and other obstacles which make planning a route of over-sized shipments difficult at best. In the past, we were required to contact a commercial vehicle safety officer or the BC permit office in order to hash out routing and directions for our shipment, then trace it out on a map to visualize it for our drivers.
This tool now allows a dispatcher or driver to punch in their origin, destination and dimensions and it will calculate the practical route and show visual warnings of any dimensional or construction restrictions. If there are any restrictions, it gives the user freedom to adjust the routing by clicking on the routing lines and dragging it in another direction where it will dynamically issue any further warnings. If all is clear, it notifies the user of this as well.
To give you an idea of how this tool can help both dispatchers and drivers, take a look into last year’s accidents that happened on Hwy 99 in Delta and the I-5 in Skagit County. If both drivers had access to a tool like this that could provide easy access to relevant information about structures and restrictions, it may well have contributed to the prevention of such accidents.
We at T&P Trucking give a big “Thank you!” to BC’s Ministry of Transportation for providing all with such a useful tool.
Similar articles can be found at the Ministry of Transportation and BCTA.
Sam Pattison