511PA Reviews

by Morac

511PA is almost completely useless.

I ran it and allowed it to use my location all the time, yet it kept notifying me of traffic issues in areas no where near where I was or in the wrong direction from where I was traveling. For example I was traveling south on I-95 from Philadelphia and 511PA kept giving me traffic slowdown announcements for 95 between Aramingo and Girard. I set 511PA to only inform me of issues in the direction I was driving, but that apparently doesn’t work.

Also 511PA was notifying me every few minutes. That was annoying because my car has Car Play and every time I got a notification the car switched to playing music from Apple Music instead of the radio. I had to keep switching back.

Finally 511PA runs continuously in the background, even if the option to give notifications is disabled in the driving screen. I watched 511PA drain 10% of my phone’s battery over the course of a few hours while I was sitting in my living room.

Considering the alerts 511PA gives me are mostly not applicable to where I’m driving and the severe battery drain when 511PA shouldn’t even be doing anything, I strongly recommend against using 511PA. You’ll get more reliable use from Waze, Google or Apple Maps.

by Snickerdoodle 123

Is worthless! Did not even show “super load” movement 1 mile from where I live!

by Kiana2L

It seems that so many cameras are no longer working. It really makes 511PA kind of pointless. It was great when the cameras actually worked. Please fix!

by Pats31

Awful user interface, laggy and difficult to use. Not to mention that it gives no useful information and is extremely slow.

by GrumpyTurnip

App requires user to turn on location to work. Claims it’s for determining if 511PA is legal in current area but the website works fine on my phone. Also somehow, one time it actually worked without locations turned on so I don’t know what happened there. That one time it actually did work 511PA was pretty good. A shame that it doesn’t work without locations turned on otherwise it would have gotten a 4 or 5 star.

by ATruckDriver

The only working feature that is accurate is the map which shows where the construction is taking place and where the four wheelers are busy creating wrecks. The traffic conditions seem to be fed from Google. Advance audio warning for anything? Forget about it. 511PA locks up frequently.

by Broadfall

511PA is a waste of space on the internet. I wonder how much the state paid to be part of 511PA. It wants your location even if your not using 511PA and is difficult to just look around 511PA without turning location services on. how about you make an app that can opened while your on the road and send you alerts instead of being invasive and having to have my location even when Im not driving or using 511PA . secondly what are you doing with info your collecting. please make a simple app that reports traffic and other important travel alerts and stop requiring people to turn on location services when 511PA is not in use. please people. the technology is there, its pretty simple.

by Meltingtheplanet

Why does 511PA need access to my gps? So my position and speed can be relayed to the police? Then 511PA can't be used when moving. I'm a passenger in the car and can't get road conditions. What's the purpose? Makes NO sense!! Sounds like politicians had their hands in this one.

by Concerned About Roads

Horrible! Won’t shut alerts off, annoying!!! Have to keep deleting app . Why is this so hard to have an easy to use app to tell us road conditions??

by 1kerriecat

Very “junky” app. Minuscule stream across the top regarding a major storm. Awful to navigate. Maybe hire a college kid to redo 511PA?

by Symmetric

It looks like 511PA was done with a tool that make an app from there already poor/ancient website. They should hire a high school student to redesign them both.

by Cartoon Ds1976

511PA is genuinely terrible. I'm pretty sure even a redesign wouldn't fix everything that's wrong with 511PA.

by Hakaibutsu

I’m glad it shows road conditions for winter but a couple things..

Can’t copy and paste an address, you MUST manually type it in which is super annoying.

No GPS blip to show you your current location, you’ll have to bounce between your “Maps” app and 511PA to pinpoint you exact location, also super annoying.

by Havoc 9994367812

After reading some of the reviews I must comment. 511PA works but it will not let go of your gps unless you go back to phone settings and disallow it ANY access to gps, even though I had set the gps access to “only while using 511PA .” This also forces me to go to settings and give it access to my gps. Then I have to look at the warning ticker that runs across the top telling me if there were any closed roads on the way to my destination. Afterward I look at the map to see how the traffic is flowing on the roads of my travel. All this BEFORE leaving. Road cameras are much better on WeatherBug app. So if you don’t want to prepare excessively for your trip, buy and use a Garmin gps unit.

by JWGunter

Unwieldy to use compared with other solutions.

by Kaje32

Always want to location and anonimus reporting ...sorry not work for my

by DAVE In Allentoen.

Put the “bong” sound before the message so you know to pay attention, not after. This way you know or to listen for an upcoming message. You miss half the message before you realize there is one. The voice speaks too fast. Slow it down so you can pick up details.

by Ricktrains

Ok, first of all, it needs your current location to give you nearby alerts. Duh.
Secondly, even if, which I doubt is true, they report your speed, if you are obeying the speed limit, who cares? ( Yeah, I forgot, none of you know how to drive, let alone how to obey silly things like speed limits...)
What I feel it does need: send alerts when something, like a road closure, occurs in your vicinity. I had a major road closure just 3 miles away, that I had to look up just to find, after a friend had already told me about it! Kinda pointless if you have to search for things that are important to know about when they are that close.
Real-time weather data. It lags, royally, on current roadway conditions. App showed as clear, but, said road closure above was due to a serious bad weather related accident, bringing down power lines across the roadway. Would not have happens on clear pavement 511PA said was there.
Fix these two things, you got yourself a five-star, great, well worth your time to get, app.

by Obie1829

Just used 511PA during Memorial Day traffic and it was true reports all the way. Would not hesitate to use again.

by Unhappy Travler

511PA is designed for a local commuter, not a traveler passing through PA. Developer should look at any other 511 app to see how to do it better.

by Compman777

Sound is very low since update.

by Poconoed

App need a bad update. Half the time cameras don’t work. No live view, still picture or just a black screen.

Update: 3/7/19 app on phone don’t show traffic delay on the traffic map icon after new update.