A significant part of the Washington State Department of Transportation website was back online Wednesday afternoon after the site went down in the morning, fracturing the flow of travel information to the public.
Statewide traffic cameras, online commercial vehicle permits, the state’s travel map, ferry schedules and mobile app were all impacted, causing major disruptions for people trying to track the chronically late ferries or navigate mountain passes.
At about 12:30 p.m., WSDOT said the agency’s landing page was restored, with access to several links including the mountain passes page. Other parts of the website, like the traffic cameras, appeared to be up and running in the evening.
“While much of our service is restored, it will take a little while longer for everything to return to normal,” WSDOT spokesperson Stefanie Randolph said.
Randolph said the agency was investigating the outage’s cause.
A “cybersecurity incident” targeting the real-time information flow crashed the site in early November, according to WSDOT staff. No personal information was accessed, and an investigation is underway, staff said.
Asked for an update on the November incident, Randolph directed questions to the local FBI office. A spokesperson for the law enforcement agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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