Every state 511 feed. One integration.
Incidents, closures, construction, winter conditions, message signs, and camera inventory from state departments of transportation, normalized into a single schema. Integrate once instead of negotiating access and writing a parser for every state in the country.
511 is fifty programs, not one
There is no national 511 API. Roughly twenty jurisdictions share one vendor platform, the rest run their own. Some publish open feeds. Some issue a key instantly. Some require a signed data agreement, or an email to a named employee at the department, and answer on their own schedule. A few publish nothing at all and only expose data through a GIS portal. Every one of them names its fields differently.
Public feed URLs, no registration. Straightforward, but every one has its own format.
Self serve signup issues a key, usually with a documented rate limit you must respect.
A data sharing agreement, a request form, or a direct email to the state. Weeks, not minutes.
What the alerts feed carries
Incidents and closures
Crashes, disabled vehicles, lane and full road closures, with geometry, severity, and affected lanes.
Construction and work zones
Active and planned roadwork, including federal WZDx standard feeds published by dozens of states.
Winter road conditions
Segment level surface conditions, plow activity, and seasonal restrictions where states report them.
Dynamic message signs
Live sign text and location, useful for confirming what drivers are actually being told on the road.
Camera inventory
DOT camera locations with snapshot image and HLS video stream URLs where the state publishes them.
Weather and passes
Roadside weather station readings and mountain pass status from states that operate them.
Every record keeps its source jurisdiction and the state's own timestamp alongside our retrieval time, so you always know where a fact came from and how old it is.
Get the full API documentation
The complete reference, event schema, and current jurisdiction coverage list arrive by email within one business day.
511 data, answered
Is there a single API for all state 511 data?
Not from the states themselves. Every state runs its own 511 program, and roughly twenty of them share one vendor platform while the rest use different formats, different authentication, and different field names entirely. Several require a signed agreement or an emailed request to a named state employee. The Argus 511 Alerts API does that integration work once and serves every jurisdiction through one schema.
What data does the 511 alerts feed include?
Traffic incidents and crashes, lane and road closures, construction and work zones, winter road conditions, dynamic message sign text, roadside weather station readings, mountain pass status, and traffic camera inventory including image and video stream URLs where a state publishes them.
How current is the data?
Events are polled continuously and every record carries the source timestamp alongside the time we retrieved it, so you can apply your own freshness rules. We never rewrite a state timestamp to look newer than it is.
How is this different from a consumer traffic app?
Consumer apps show you a map. This is the underlying record set: structured events with location geometry, event type, severity, affected lanes, and start and end times, suitable for routing engines, risk models, and dispatch systems. It is also authoritative DOT data rather than crowdsourced reports.
Do you cover work zones in the WZDx standard?
Yes. The federal Work Zone Data Exchange registry carries open feeds from dozens of states, and those are ingested alongside the state 511 event feeds so work zones arrive in the same normalized shape as everything else.
Can I get the traffic data as a bulk file instead of an API?
Yes. Bulk snapshots in JSON or GeoJSON and webhook push delivery are available for high volume integrations. Tell us which fits your stack when you request the documentation.
How do I get access and what does it cost?
Documentation is free and arrives by email within one business day. API keys and bulk delivery are priced by volume and use case. Design partner slots are open now.