The Live Roads USA API

Get started

Create a trial key with the form below and add it to the request. Open this in a browser, with your key at the end, and you have data:

https://liveroadsusa.com/api/v1/incidents?state=CA&road=I-80&key=lru_…

From code, send the key in a header instead:

curl -H "X-API-Key: lru_…" "https://liveroadsusa.com/api/v1/incidents?state=OR&chains=1&format=json"

It answers with GeoJSON, ready for a map. For plain JSON, add &format=json. CORS is open, so you can call it from a browser with no server in between.

Your key

Since October 8, 2026 the API is paid, and every request needs a key. The key you create here is a trial key: it works for 5 days from your first request, at 120 requests per hour, so you can see whether the API fits what you are building. To keep going after that, write to [email protected] with your project's name and intended use, and we reply with a plan and an invoice.

We ask for a name, an email and what it is for so we can tell you when an official source goes down, learn what the API is missing, and switch off a runaway loop without switching off everyone.

Plans

What a plan pays for: access to the service, meaning the API itself, its limits and support. It does not buy rights to the underlying data, which belongs to the agencies that publish it; their credits travel with every record and must be kept.

How to pay: for now, by email and invoice. Write to [email protected] with what you are building and the plan you want; we reply with an invoice and switch your key over, with no new key to install.

Parameters

One endpoint, GET /api/v1/incidents. Every parameter is optional and they combine: a request with none returns every live event in the country, newest first, up to the limit.

An unknown state, type or a malformed bbox gets a 400 that says what was wrong.

Example

Full closures in California, as GeoJSON (a real response from October 8, 2026, with limit=1):

GET https://liveroadsusa.com/api/v1/incidents?state=CA&closure=full&limit=1

{
  "type": "FeatureCollection",
  "attribution": {
    "text": "Data: Live Roads USA",
    "url": "https://liveroadsusa.com"
  },
  "meta": {
    "count": 1,
    "total": 12,
    "offset": 0,
    "limit": 1,
    "generatedAt": "2026-10-08T21:39:25.241Z",
    "licence": "Use requires a key (5-day trial, then a paid plan). Attribution is required on every plan: …",
    "sources": [
      {
        "id": "caltrans",
        "name": "Caltrans",
        "attribution": "California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)"
      }
    ]
  },
  "features": [
    {
      "type": "Feature",
      "id": "ca-lcs-16c1bacd",
      "geometry": {
        "type": "Point",
        "coordinates": [
          -119.47573,
          34.394706
        ]
      },
      "properties": {
        "id": "ca-lcs-16c1bacd",
        "type": "roadworks",
        "severity": "high",
        "status": "active",
        "title": "CA-192 at Shepard Mesa Road",
        "description": "Shepard Mesa Road · Utility Work · lanes closed: All of 2 · Santa Barbara County",
        "road": "CA-192",
        "direction": "both directions",
        "location": "Shepard Mesa Road",
        "state": "CA",
        "closure": "full",
        "chainControl": false,
        "chains": null,
        "overnight": false,
        "source": "caltrans",
        "sourceUrl": "https://roads.dot.ca.gov/",
        "tz": "America/Los_Angeles",
        "startedAt": "2026-10-08T16:01:00.000Z",
        "endsAt": null,
        "updatedAt": "2026-10-08T21:28:02.000Z"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Crashes and other incidents in Washington, as JSON:

GET https://liveroadsusa.com/api/v1/incidents?state=WA&type=accident,incident&format=json&limit=1

{
  "attribution": {
    "text": "Data: Live Roads USA",
    "url": "https://liveroadsusa.com"
  },
  "meta": {
    "count": 1,
    "total": 10,
    "offset": 0,
    "limit": 1,
    "generatedAt": "2026-10-08T21:39:25.241Z",
    "licence": "Use requires a key (5-day trial, then a paid plan). Attribution is required on every plan: …",
    "sources": [
      {
        "id": "wsdot",
        "name": "WSDOT",
        "attribution": "Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT)"
      }
    ]
  },
  "incidents": [
    {
      "id": "wsdot-687259",
      "type": "incident",
      "severity": "high",
      "status": "active",
      "lat": 47.103373041,
      "lon": -119.781765387,
      "title": "I-90 Exit 154/Adams Rd",
      "description": "I-90 Exit 154/Adams Rd. overpass (east of George): the overpass is closed due to a hole in the bridge deck. There is currently no estimated time to reopen. Traffic is currently detoured to the junction I-90/SR 281 Spur. Contact: North Central Region communications 509-667-2815 · High impact",
      "road": "I-90",
      "direction": "eastbound",
      "location": null,
      "state": "WA",
      "closure": null,
      "chainControl": false,
      "chains": null,
      "overnight": false,
      "source": "wsdot",
      "sourceUrl": "https://wsdot.com/travel/real-time/map/",
      "tz": "America/Los_Angeles",
      "startedAt": "2026-10-08T21:35:46.656Z",
      "endsAt": null,
      "updatedAt": "2026-10-08T21:35:46.656Z"
    }
  ]
}

What each event carries

Around the events, every response has attribution (the credit to show) and meta: count, total, offset, limit, generatedAt, the licence line, and sources, each source in the response with the credit line it asks for. The same credit goes in the X-Attribution header.

Errors

• 401 no key. Until the end of October 13, 2026 a request without a key still gets an answer, with a notice in the X-API-Notice header and in meta.notice; from October 14 it gets a 401.
• 402 the trial is over. The body says when it ended and how to get a paid plan.
• 403 the key was revoked. The body says why.
• 429 too many requests, with the wait in the retry-after header.
• 400 a parameter we can't read; 503 the upstream data could not be reached (try again in a minute).

A trial key's responses carry X-API-Trial-Ends with the end of its trial, so your code can see it coming.

Limits

Trial keys: 120 requests per hour. Personal: about 10,000 a day; Professional: about 100,000 a day; Enterprise: what we agree. Counted per key, not per IP, so an app with many users is not stopped by one of them. Over the limit you get a 429; every response says where you stand in X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining and X-RateLimit-Reset. Without a key, during the grace period, 20 per hour.

Responses are cached for 30 seconds and the sources update every few minutes, so asking more than twice a minute brings nothing new.

Terms

Data: <a href="https://liveroadsusa.com">Live Roads USA</a>

Building a product on the API without a paid plan, or without the attribution above, is not an authorized use. A plan pays for access to the service (the API, its limits and support); we don't own or license the underlying data, and each record's source and the credit lines in meta.sources must stay with it. The data comes from state departments of transportation, highway patrols, cities and the National Weather Service, through Roadscore; readers have a right to know that an event was posted by an agency and not invented by an algorithm.

Honest about coverage

The API returns what official sources published, not what is happening on the road. A highway with no events in the response is not a clear highway: it may be one nobody published anything about. Coverage grows state by state, and each state page says what is covered there. If you build alerts on this, tell the people who get them. Never use it for emergency decisions: in an emergency, call 911.

Publish data instead of reading it

This page is for reading the data. If you are a DOT, a city or an event organizer and want your closures on the map and in this API, with your agency named as the source, see partners. It is free for public agencies.

Contact

Paid plans, a lost key, a question about a field, or a source that looks wrong: [email protected].