Difference between level-of-service, traffic incidents and historical information”

[Carolin]

Hi there,

one of my partners wants to calculate the best available ETA via the PTV APIs.
He checked the documentation of PTV_TrafficIncidents and wonders, whether this layer includes the current traffic flow.
Can you explain the difference between the available data feature layers?

Thanks,
Carolin

[Bernd Welter]

Hello Carolin,

I guess we first have to give a clear definition of the different business themes - then we can provide a recommendation:

• Historical information: this data source considers data aggregated over a period of 2 years and enables users to get a time dependent "average" road condition at a specific point in time. This makes a segment's condition different if you compare a regular Monday morning rush hour condition with a chilled Saturday night condition. This data is covered by PTV_SPeedPatterns (cars) and PTV_TruckSpeedPatterns (trucks, lorries)
• Life traffic incidents: this data comes from TOMTOM's HD traffic stream and is updated every few minutes. It contains a clear beginning/end:
  • planned construction sites with a known scheduled beginning and end of the activity, sometimes just a few hours, sometimes up to years (e.g. Rahmedetalbrücke at the A45).
  • "Spontaneous" stress conditions such as "traffic blocked by an accident", usually for a comparably short period of a few hours.
  These blockings apply only on a small part of the road network. They are contained in PTV_TrafficIncidents (coverage might depend on a country in the current scope)
• Live Traffic Flow (aka "Level-Of-Service"): now that's the tricky part. Level of service usually means an almost LIVE condition of almost all the roads in a supported country. The reason for a potential degradation is often not relevant and the time reference is "right now"...
  This data is currently (July 2025) not available through PTV APIs

Within PTV Developer the usage of these technical feature layers is covered through the so-called traffic mode:

• AVERAGE: focus on historical data
• REALISTIC: both historical and live traffic incident data

Check the coverage:

• PTV Developer Showcase
• PTV xServer2 rendering Showcase