On Friday, the city of Boston unveiled a webpage that allowed curious citizens to track the locations of snowplows all over the city. But the site was taken down hours later following a wave of heavy web traffic that interfered with the city’s public works monitoring system, a spokeswoman for the mayor said today.

The site had soft runs during prior snow events this season, but yesterday was the first time the city promoted the site through social media, said Emilee Ellison, spokeswoman for the office of Mayor Thomas M. Menino, in a short interview this morning.