Kansas City, Mo. ? Yellowish-orange letters on a large message board over northbound Interstate 35 in Olathe, Kan., bore an ominous warning Monday morning for commuters headed east on Interstate 435:

“435E center lane closed east of Quivira.”

Kansas City-area commuters now can expect similar messages thanks to a new $40 million traffic management system that alerts drivers to accidents and construction tie-ups on 75 miles of the area’s most congested highways.

Monday was the first day of operation for the new Kansas City Scout traffic management system. And while officials are excited about the system’s startup, a few glitches occurred, including message boards that would not display the intended warnings Monday afternoon.

“Scout truly is a work in progress,” said Dianna Kidwell, a spokeswoman for Kansas City Scout. “We are new to this, so we are learning as we go.”

The system, a partnership between the Kansas and Missouri departments of transportation, was officially turned on at 5:25 a.m. Monday, five minutes ahead of schedule.

It is operating from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The first message-board warning flashed about 6:30 a.m. on westbound Interstate 70 near downtown. A stalled vehicle was blocking a lane. Sensors embedded in the roadway had detected the problem.

An operator at Kansas City Scout’s traffic operations center in Lee’s Summit dispatched a motorist assist unit that pushed the vehicle out of the way within five minutes. The roadway quickly returned to normal.

The next incident occurred about 7:30 a.m. along eastbound Interstate 435 just west of U.S. Highway 69 in Overland Park. Two cars involved in a noninjury accident had pulled off the side of the road.

Monitoring a roadside video camera, a control-center operator had noticed two cars parked along the shoulder of the inside lane. Their hazard lights were flashing. Because the cars were not blocking traffic, roadway sensors had not picked up the problem. But a warning immediately went up on message boards in the area.

Twenty-seven minutes later, three cars were involved in a crash near Quivira Road, about a mile west of the initial problem. All of a sudden, what had been a mild inconvenience turned into a nightmare on eastbound I-435.

Ray Webb, Kansas City Scout’s director, said the roadway sensors picked up the problem immediately. The cars involved in the wreck were blocking lanes. Speeds dropped dramatically.

Systems similar to Kansas City Scout have been in effect for many years in some cities.

Nick Thompson, freeway operations manager for the Minnesota Department of Transportation in Roseville, Minn., said the Minneapolis-St. Paul area had been relying on such technology for more than 30 years.

The Twin Cities started small, monitoring one freeway, then expanding the system as congestion increased. Now, an electronic traffic management system encompasses about 80 percent of the freeways in the area.