Traffic Conditions Data

So I was poking around the Dashboard Widget archive on the official Apple site and spotted a Yahoo Traffic Conditions widget. This is interesting because they are somehow getting the data from their web site in a easy-to-parse format. So, I peeked under the hood and, sure enough, there’s an RSS feed for traffic conditions! A url will look something like this:

http://maps.yahoo.com/traffic.rss?csz=14607&mag=4&minsev=2

The parameters are:

  • csz The location from which you want to do your search – as far as I know only cities are supported at the moment. You can provide both a zipcode, a city or an address – all seem to work.
  • mag The level of ‘magnification’. 3 = 4 Miles, 4 = 10 Miles, 5 = 40 Miles
  • minsev The minimum severity of the traffic condition. 1 = Minor, 2 = Moderate, 4 = Major, 5 = Critical

This is definitely exciting, I can see lots of applications of it already. My friend, Darrin, is already working on a VXML Traffic app – so that you can call a number and get the current traffic conditions. So there’s that, at least

Updated: Apparently pre tags don’t care too much for links – the link has been fixed.

Update: Generate the above URL quickly and easily. (Requested by LifeHacker)

Location:
Radius:
Severity:
URL: http://maps.yahoo.com/traffic.rss?csz=14607&mag=3&minsev=1

Posted: May 1st, 2005

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