New Illinois law requires IDOT mobile app for road conditions

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) — You may have used IDOT's Getting Around Illinois website to avoid traffic jams over the holiday weekend. The department will now be tasked with developing a mobile application to let drivers know about road conditions.

A bill signed into law Friday states that the app must help drivers stay informed about accidents, construction zones, lane closures, and weather conditions.

Rep. Carol Ammons (D-Urbana) believes this is a common sense idea, even though Republicans were concerned about the cost. Sponsors noted that many college students across the state are making their own mobile apps each year.

"I don't believe it will cost millions of dollars," Ammons said. "It will cost them a little effort for them to recruit a student who is in engineering, who is in computer science, in order to create this app and to maintain it if they want to do that."

Republican lawmakers argued that IDOT won't be able to create an app with the same backbone as apps created by Google, Apple or TomTom.

"We're putting them up to fail," said Rep. Jeff Keicher (R-Sycamore). "And we're not going to have an app that anybody is going to utilize, not because it won't be valuable but because the other information is out there."

Keicher suggested IDOT should visit with any of the online vendors to try and have a plug-in with their applications. Republican lawmakers estimate that the app could cost over $2 million to launch.

Senate Bill 1526 passed out of the House on a 69-40 vote with one member voting present on May 11. This plan passed out of the Senate on a 53-4 vote on March 29.

The new law takes effect on January 1.