St. Paul, MN (KICD)– Travelers in Minnesota may soon notice a new way of receiving critical road safety information as the state prepares to start using a new form of notification.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation has reached an agreement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to begin using Wireless Emergency Alerts to share critical information to motorists without the user needing to download an app or subscribe to the service.

Alerts from MnDot will typically include a link to the state’s online road information system and would be used in the event a highway closure of more than four hours is expected to weather or other major incident. They will be sent to all mobile phones within a one-mile band around the affected highway beginning ten miles ahead of any closure location.