B.C. Government Opens Up Traffic Webcam Data to Developers

The province is opening up traffic webcam data to the public, entrepreneurs, and software developers through a new initiative.

The data will be accessible through B.C.’s open government license with the hopes that new tools and services will be created. Along with the site name, view orientation, and GPS locations for each camera, users will have access to more than 320 cameras across the province. These include images that are used for travel information by motorists, commercial drivers, tourists, and many organizations including emergency responders. Real time images are already available on DriveBC.

"By sharing our valuable highway information, we hope to see the creation of new ideas and new tools that will prove invaluable to highway travellers in our province," said Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Todd Stone. "At the same time, we are supporting the innovation that is alive in our thriving B.C. tech economy and I look forward to seeing what the development community and others involved in transportation services can do with this data."

Government is seeking input from industry to explore the innovation opportunities that access to this data presents. The webcam data release builds on the traffic event data published by the ministry in September 2015 under Open511-DriveBC, which was the first Application Programming Interface (API) released by the ministry with data licensed under the Open Government License.