Traffic service—ArcGIS REST APIs

You can use the traffic map service to visualize real time traffic speeds and incidents such as accidents, construction sites, or street closures. Traffic visualization displays information about how travel speeds on specific road segments change over time. The traffic incidents in the map service provides the location of the incidents and some attributes such as the severity, the expected start and end time, as well as the description of the incident. The traffic speed and incident data is updated every five minutes.

The traffic map service acts as a good background layer to display the results from Routing services. The traffic data used by the traffic map service is also used by the Routing services when performing analysis. If you want to emphasize why a particular route was returned by the route service, you can display the traffic map along with the route to show areas of traffic congestion that influenced the choice of roads used by the route.

The traffic data used by the service is updated every five minutes. Each traffic update also includes traffic speed predictions for next 4 hours. This allows you to visualize traffic for future planning. The service archives the traffic information for up to 4 hours. This gives you the ability to visualize traffic speeds within a 8 hour time window. The traffic incidents are not archived and are refreshed with every update.

Traffic speeds in the service are displayed as a percentage of free-flow speeds, which is frequently the speed limit or how fast cars tend to travel when unencumbered by other vehicles. The streets are color coded as follows:

Green (fast): 85 - 100% of free flow speeds
Yellow (moderate): 65 - 85%
Orange (slow); 45 - 65%
Red (stop and go): 0 - 45%

The IncidentType field in the traffic incident layers can have the following values:

ACCIDENT
CONGESTION
CONSTRUCTION
DISABLED VEHICLE
LANE_RESTRICTION
MASS TRANSIT
MISCELLANEOUS
OTHER NEWS
PLANNED EVENT
ROAD HAZARD
ROAD_CLOSURE
WEATHER

The Severity field in the traffic incident layers can have the following values:

critical
major
minor
low impact

where critical indicates a road closure and major indicates a blockage of multiple lanes. The minor and low impact values indicate incidents that have progressively less impact as compared to major incidents.

Using the traffic web map

ArcGIS.com provides a traffic web map that can be used to create browser-based and device-based applications that require traffic visualization. The web map provides a streets basemap for reference and also comes with pre-configured pop-ups for point features that provide additional information about the incidents. You can add other operational layers to the traffic web map and create your own web map or a web mapping application using the configurable templates available at ArcGIS.com. Refer to the developing with ArcGIS web maps page to learn about the different ways in which you can develop applications using web maps.

Using the traffic map service

The traffic service is a dynamic map service built on ArcGIS Server technology, so functionality that is listed in the Map Service Help is available with the traffic service.

The traffic service can be used with ArcGIS Web APIs to create fully customized web mapping applications or with ArcGIS Runtime SDKs to build applications for desktop and mobile devices. When using the APIs, the URL for the traffic map service is specified as:

http://traffic.arcgis.com/arcgis/rest/services/World/Traffic/MapServer

You can use the traffic service to request an image containing traffic visualization for your area of interest at a given time instant. The traffic service generates an image based on the one or more layers from the service that represent your area of interest. The layers in the service represent traffic speeds and traffic incident information for a region. A region is made up of one or more countries that support traffic visualization. The data coverage page provides the classification of countries into regions and can be used to determine the region corresponding to your area of interest.

For each region, the service contains a layer called "Traffic" that represents streets speeds based on both historical and live traffic where available. Historical traffic is based on the average of observed speeds over the past three years. The service also contains a layer called "Live Traffic" that represents only those streets which support live traffic speeds. Depending on your application you may want to request an image with one of the two layers being visible. For each region that support traffic incidents, the service provides three layers representing traffic incidents. The layers become visible at certain map scales and provide symbology that is relevant at the given map scale. For example, the Traffic Incidents Overview layer only symbolizes critical and major incidents. However, the Traffic Incidents Detailed layer symbolizes critical, major, minor as well as low impact incidents.

To work with the layers in the service, you need to specify the ids for the layers instead of the layer names. The following table lists the ids for the various layers in the traffic service:


Region Name	Layer Name	Layer ID
North America	Traffic Incidents Overview	2
	Traffic Incidents Intermediate	3
	Traffic Incidents Detailed	4
	Live Traffic	6
	Traffic	7
South America	Traffic Incidents Overview	10
	Traffic Incidents Intermediate	11
	Traffic Incidents Detailed	12
	Live Traffic	14
	Traffic	15
Europe	Traffic Incidents Overview	18
	Traffic Incidents Intermediate	19
	Traffic Incidents Detailed	20
	Live Traffic	22
	Traffic	23
Middle East and Africa	Traffic Incidents Overview	26
	Traffic Incidents Intermediate	27
	Traffic Incidents Detailed	28
	Live Traffic	30
	Traffic	31
Asia Pacific	Traffic Incidents Overview	46
	Traffic Incidents Intermediate	47
	Traffic Incidents Detailed	48
	Live Traffic	42
	Traffic	43
India	Live Traffic	34
India	Traffic	35
South East Asia	Live Traffic	38
South East Asia	Traffic	39

Legacy:

The Traffic and Live Traffic layers for India and South East Asia regions should not be used any more since the same content is available as part of the Traffic and Live Traffic layers in the Asia Pacific region. The traffic map service sets the default visibility of these layers to false.