DriveBC's Open511 API

Name: DriveBC's Open511 API API
Brand: DriveBC's Open511 API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecMaps GeolocationRouting Directionsnone4 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Look up live road events, closures, and construction in British Columbia, filtered by area, jurisdiction, or event type. Returns GeoJSON geometry plus event details for routing decisions.

Connect the DriveBC's Open511 API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the DriveBC's Open511 API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Install Jentic One Beta (Self-Hosted)

Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with DriveBC's Open511 API API.

List active road events filtered by jurisdiction, area, severity, and event_type

Retrieve jurisdiction metadata for the publishers contributing Open511 data

Pull jurisdiction geographic boundaries as GeoJSON for map overlays

Look up named geographic areas usable as filter parameters on /events

GET STARTED

Start building with DriveBC's Open511 API API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Use Cases

Patterns agents use DriveBC's Open511 API API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Real-Time Driver Re-Routing

Pull active road events from /events and feed them into a navigation agent so it can avoid closures, accidents, or construction across British Columbia. The Open511 feed returns event geometry, severity, and roads_name, letting the agent score alternative routes without scraping DriveBC's website. Coverage is limited to BC public roads and updates are only as fresh as the underlying jurisdictional feeds.

Call GET /events with status=ACTIVE and severity=MAJOR, then return a GeoJSON FeatureCollection of all major active events for map rendering.

Construction and Roadwork Dashboard

Aggregate planned construction events for a logistics dashboard tracking BC freight corridors. Agents query /events with event_type=CONSTRUCTION and an area filter, then surface duration, schedule, and detour notes per event. The API does not include event photos or live camera feeds, so visual context must come from another source.

Fetch GET /events?event_type=CONSTRUCTION&area_id=bc.ca/highway-1 and emit a Markdown table of upcoming construction with start dates and affected road segments.

Jurisdiction and Area Discovery

Before filtering events, agents need to know which jurisdictions and named areas exist. The /jurisdiction and /areas endpoints expose the canonical identifiers and labels, while /jurisdictiongeography returns the polygon coverage so agents can map a user's coordinates to the correct filter values without hardcoding strings.

Call GET /areas, cache the response, and resolve a user's free-text region (e.g. 'Vancouver Island') to the matching area_id used by /events.

AI Travel Assistant Integration via Jentic

An agent answering 'is the Coquihalla open?' can use Jentic to discover the Open511 endpoint, load the events schema, and execute the call without browsing DriveBC documentation. Jentic returns the structured response so the agent can reason over the geometry and severity fields directly. No API key is required because Open511 is open data.

Use the Jentic SDK to search 'check bc road events', load /events, and execute with road_name=Coquihalla to return the list of active events.

Key Endpoints

4 endpoints — drivebc's open511 api publishes real-time road events for british columbia's public road network, conforming to the open511 specification.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/events

List active and archived road events with filters

GET

/jurisdiction

List jurisdictions publishing through this Open511 feed

GET

/jurisdictiongeography

Get jurisdiction boundary polygons as GeoJSON

GET

/areas

List named areas usable as event filter values

GET

/events

List active and archived road events with filters

GET

/jurisdiction

List jurisdictions publishing through this Open511 feed

GET

/jurisdictiongeography

Get jurisdiction boundary polygons as GeoJSON

GET

/areas

List named areas usable as event filter values

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Open511 requires no credentials. Jentic still routes the call through its execution layer so the agent gets a typed response and consistent error handling, even though no API key is stored in MAXsystem for this API.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic with intents like 'check road closures in british columbia' and Jentic returns the matching /events operation with its filter schema, so the agent can pick area_id, event_type, and severity without reading DriveBC's docs.

Time to first call

Direct Open511 integration: half a day to model events, areas, and jurisdiction filtering. Through Jentic: under 15 minutes — search, load /events, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Complementary

BC Route Planner REST API

BC government routing engine that pairs naturally with Open511 closures

Use Open511 to find closures, then call BC Route Planner to compute a route that avoids the affected segments.

Complementary

BC Address Geocoder

Resolves BC addresses to coordinates that can be passed into Open511 area filters

Choose the BC Geocoder when an agent has a free-text BC address and needs lat/long before querying Open511 events.

Alternative

TomTom Routing API

Commercial global routing with traffic incidents — broader coverage than BC-only Open511

Pick TomTom when the user is outside British Columbia or needs global traffic and routing in one provider.

FAQs

Specific to using DriveBC's Open511 API API through Jentic.

What authentication does the DriveBC Open511 API use?

The Open511 endpoint exposes no security scheme in its OpenAPI spec — it is open data and does not require an API key. Agents call /events, /jurisdiction, /jurisdictiongeography, and /areas directly. When called via Jentic, no credentials are stored in the vault for this API because none are needed.

Can I get real-time traffic accident data for BC with this API?

Yes. GET /events returns active road events including accidents, construction, weather closures, and incidents. Filter with status=ACTIVE and event_type=INCIDENT to narrow to live accidents. Geometry is returned as GeoJSON so an agent can plot or geofence the events directly.

What are the rate limits for the DriveBC Open511 API?

The Open511 OpenAPI spec does not declare rate limits. The DriveBC delivery environment is shared infrastructure, so polling intervals of one minute or longer are recommended for production use. Cache /jurisdiction, /jurisdictiongeography, and /areas responses since they change rarely.

How do I list active road events through Jentic?

Search Jentic with the query 'check bc road events', load the /events operation schema, then execute with parameters like status=ACTIVE and area_id. The Jentic SDK returns the parsed JSON response so the agent can iterate over the features array without writing custom HTTP code.

Does Open511 cover roads outside British Columbia?

No. This specific Open511 deployment is DriveBC's, so it covers only roads within British Columbia. Other Open511-compliant feeds exist for other jurisdictions, but they are separate APIs at different base URLs and would need to be queried independently.

Is the DriveBC Open511 API free?

Yes. The Open511 feed is published as open data by the Government of British Columbia and is free to use for non-commercial and commercial applications, subject to the BC Open Data licence linked from the DriveBC website.