CommuteScout

Check Route

Check current conditions along a major California highway corridor. The flagship trip-check tool: give it a start and end place and it returns everything active along that stretch right now - CHP incidents, lane closures physically in place, chain controls, and wildfires within ~10 miles - ordered by miles from the start, plus a summary. ALWAYS pass from_coords and to_coords ("lat,lon") when you know where the places are - for landmarks, small towns, or anything not a m

Check Region

Full current-conditions report for a California region. Use this for area-scale questions ("how is the Bay Area?", "what's happening in SoCal?") instead of stitching together point queries. It sweeps every source over the whole region at once: CHP incidents (severity-sorted, worst first), lane closures in place (full closures called out), chain controls, and wildfires inside the region. Regions: Bay Area, Sacramento metro, Tahoe/Sierra, Central Valley, Southern Cali

Get Incidents

Live CHP traffic incidents statewide, optionally filtered. Data: the California Highway Patrol statewide computer-aided dispatch feed - collisions, traffic hazards, disabled vehicles, closures as CHP logs them. Refreshes about once a minute; incidents disappear when CHP closes the log. Fetched live on every call. Filters (combinable): - highway: a route like "I-80", "US 50", "17", "Hwy 99". Matches incidents whose location text mentions that route. - center: "

Get Lane Closures

Caltrans lane and road closures physically in place RIGHT NOW. Data: the Caltrans Lane Closure System (LCS). Only closures that crews have actually established (CHP code 1097) and not yet picked up are returned - scheduled-but-not-started closures are excluded, so this is "what is blocking lanes now", not a construction calendar. Refresh: 5-minute cache over per-district Caltrans feeds. Filters: route (e.g. "I-80", "US 101", "1"); district (Caltrans district 1-12, e

Get Chain Controls

Current chain-control requirements on California mountain highways. Data: Caltrans chain-control status for fixed checkpoints on mountain routes (I-80 Donner, US-50 Echo Summit, SR-88, SR-89, and others). Levels: R-1 = chains OR snow tires required; R-2 = chains required except 4WD/AWD with snow tires on all four; R-3 = chains on ALL vehicles (rare, usually precedes closure). Refresh: 5-minute cache. Filters: route (e.g. "80", "US-50", "SR-88"); center "lat,lon" with

Get Wildfires

Active California wildfires, flagged when close to a major highway. Data: the interagency WFIGS current-wildfire feed (NIFC) - name, size in acres, percent contained, discovery date. Points are each fire's ORIGIN, not its perimeter: a large fire can affect roads far from this point. Refresh: 5-minute cache; size/containment typically update once or twice a day. Small, fast-moving local fires may appear in CHP incident logs (get_incidents, type "FIRE-Report of Fire") befo

Rank Routes

Which major corridors have the most going on right now. Answers broad questions like "what are the busiest routes", "where is traffic worst", or "which highways should I avoid today" across all 17 tracked corridors. by="activity" ranks on live events (full closures weigh most, then incidents, lane closures, chain controls); by="congestion" ranks on measured speed vs free-flow at each corridor's midpoint and needs the traffic feed to be configured - if it is not, the

Get Cameras

Live Caltrans roadside camera snapshots near a point or on a route. Data: ~3,000 in-service Caltrans cameras statewide. Every returned image_url was verified live moments ago (offline cameras that serve a placeholder frame are filtered out), so images can be shown directly. Snapshots refresh roughly every minute; stream_url (when present) is an HLS video stream. Filters: center "lat,lon" (required unless route is given) with radius_km; route (e.g. "I-80", "50") narr

Get Road Signs

What Caltrans changeable message signs are displaying right now. Data: statewide CMS sign text, blank and out-of-service signs already filtered - every record is a message a driver is physically seeing. Signs carry the road's operational truth ("CHAINS REQUIRED 10 MI AHEAD", "FULL CLOSURE HWY 96 DUE TO FIRE", "PREPARE TO STOP"), often before the event shows up in any other feed. Refresh: ~2-minute cache. Filters: route (e.g. "I-80") and/or center "lat,lon" with radius_k

Get Nearby Events

Live road events near a point anywhere CommuteScout covers, not just California: 37 states today, growing. Data: the same multi-state feeds the live map shows, normalized - state DOT incidents, roadwork and closures, chain and traction advisories, and nationwide wildfires. Every event names its publishing agency in the source field. Coverage varies by state (some publish roadwork only; docs/state-coverage.md has the matrix); states added later appear here automatical