Well you can this Friday as the Ministry of Transportation and Transfield Services will be hosting a highway winter maintenance open house at the Civic Square in front of Discovery North Bay Museum during the Downtown Christmas Walk.
The open house will run from 5 to 8 p.m.
"Last winter we had some really cold weather and there were complaints about snow pack on the roads after the storm was over," Gordan Rennie, Regional Issues and Media Advisor for the MTO told BayToday.
"We have contract requirements for that. On a highway like 17 it has to be bare 16 hours after the storm, and a four lane highway it's four hours after the storm.
"In some cases last winter it was very, very cold and it snowed heavy, wet snow and it got to minus 30 very quickly."
Rennie says the MTO will have more advanced patrolling going on this winter so the contractor will have a better sense of what the conditions are and get the equipment out quickly.
"There's also been a lot of enhancement to our 511 website, the road information network."
See the website here: ontario.ca/511
"Click on road conditions and it will show you in colour-coding what's happening, whether they are bare or snow covered."
Rennie says there are also a number of cameras that have been added to the network.
"There's a feed to all of our weather cameras across Ontario so people can see what the road actually looks like."
The public is invited to drop by to learn more about the enhanced 511 road information website and speak with staff about highway maintenance service improvements that have been made for this winter.
