Limitations
To reduce the size and increase the relevance of traffic data, the Traffic API allows you to limit the area and detail of traffic flow data and incident data that you can obtain via queries. In addition, the limitations listed below apply.
Traffic Flow Data Limitations
Although requests that specify very large spatial filters do not result in an error response, the response specifies a limited amount of data, as described above.
Traffic Tiles and Zoom Level
- The traffic flow detail changes with the zoom level.
- Traffic is shown only on zoom levels 8-21
- At low zoom levels, map tiles show traffic flow information only for the highest-level functional road classes. Traffic on minor roads become visible and more detailed as the zoom level increases.
For example:
- At zoom level 14, traffic information is displayed on highways
- At zoom level 15, traffic information is shown on highways and state roads
However, you may have access to a customized profile that displays different traffic flow data, depending on the zoom level.
The images below demonstrate traffic tile detail available at different zoom levels. The first two images contain no traffic information, because the zoom level is at 5, which is too low. As the zoom level increases in further tiles, traffic flow data on increasingly lower functional road classes become visible.
In the image below, zoom level 8 shows some traffic flow information.
The higher the zoom level, the more detailed the traffic flow display becomes:
Traffic Incident and Zoom Level
- No display of traffic incident information: zoom levels 0-7
- Maximum bounding box width and height: 10 degrees of latitude and longitude
- Maximum permitted size of the proximity radius: 100km
- Maximum allowed corridor length: 500km
