ODOT’s TripCheck online traffic info site marks quarter-century of helping drivers plan ahead for safer trips

SALEM, Ore. (KTVZ) -- This month marks a major milestone for Oregon travelers. ODOT’s popular travel information website, TripCheck.com turns 25, but is hardly showing its age. 

Since its launch in May 2000, the website has helped millions of travelers navigate countless rainstorms, blizzards, wildfire closures, and plan their best route through rush-hour traffic. It even assisted travelers tracking the historic eclipse in 2017. 

TripCheck started as a modest tool, tucked deep in the ODOT website offering a few dozen cameras and generating fewer than 400,000 monthly views. Today it features 1,066 cameras – soon to be 1,084 -- and draws more than 2.3 million views a month. It has become an indispensable part of how we travel. 

The very name, Tripcheck.com, has become synonymous with real-time Oregon travel information. 

The tool is most popular during winter. From Nov. 1, 2024 through March 31, 2025, there were 149.5 million camera views on the site. From April 1, 2024 through Oct. 31, 2024, there were 34.1 million camera views. Travelers visit TripCheck extensively any time there is a high-profile event affecting the highway system, regardless of the time of year. 

“TripCheck is about more than just cameras,” said Galen McGill, ODOT’s State Maintenance and Operations Engineer. “TripCheck is also a comprehensive source of information about incidents, construction, road conditions, chain/traction tire requirements, weather, and traffic congestion. It also includes information for travelers about winter travel, rest areas, sno-parks, and scenic byways.” 

The site offers plenty of resources for Oregonians who rely less on personal vehicles and choose other travel options. TripCheck.com includes links to mass transit, bicycling and walking opportunities, park and ride sites, commuting, carpool and car shares, passenger rail locations and airports.

There’s much that Tripcheck.com can’t measure like the lives saved when drivers looked at a camera view of an icy pass and chose to stay home. We also can’t measure how much time commuters saved avoiding traffic jams.  

But a 2019 survey of users showed that 74% of respondents had altered their commute based on information they saw on TripCheck. 

Here’s a look at TripCheck’s first 25 years: 

• Days in operation: 9,136 days from May 8, 2000, to May 13, 2025.  

• Average number of daily users: 20,000 users per day.  

• Busiest day: Feb. 23, 2023, (winter storm), 1,556,855 page views. 

• Number of users on the first full day of operation, May 13, 2000: Roughly 1,600.   

• Website visits/user sessions in 2000: Approximately 4 million. 

• Website visits/user sessions in 2024: 28.1 million. 

• Average time spent on the site in 2024: 4 minutes 37 seconds.  

• Number of cameras statewide in 2001: More than 90.  

• Number of cameras statewide in 2010: More than 200.  

• Number of cameras statewide in May 2025: 1,066 total – including 642 from ODOT and 424 from other agencies.  

• Other government agencies providing information: Three states: Idaho, California and Washington; 25 counties; 20 cities (including Portland); and four National Forest Service offices.   

• How often data is updated: As often as every two minutes. 

Looking ahead 

Our site continues to grow. In 2024, TripCheck had 28.1 million user sessions.    

By the end of 2025, we’ll have 18 additional cameras along Eastern Oregon highways, bringing our total number of cameras statewide to 1,084. These cameras will cover areas that haven’t seen cameras previously on Interstate 84 and U.S. 26 among other Eastern Oregon highways. 

“Technology comes at us quickly, including, for example, the development of automated vehicles, and we have to stay connected so we can continue to deliver safety information as quickly as possible to the public,” said Brent Atkinson, who heads the TripCheck team.   

Atkinson leads a team of about a half-dozen who help with the site’s coding and graphics and other work necessary to keep the operation up and running 24/7. Additional support comes from technicians who keep our roadside technology running, maintenance and dispatch who relay information for TripCheck and a host of other contributors. Dispatch crews around the state make sure information about closures – and openings – gets relayed quickly and accurately. The information they input can be viewed in real time on TripCheck. 

“This is a very skilled group we’ve got,” Atkinson said. “We cannot waste any seconds in getting highway information posted onto the site.”