Real-time road data

Real-time road data provides current updates on road conditions and events for your selected routes, supporting dynamic monitoring and rapid response. This data differs from the periodically collected data available in BigQuery, and is suitable for scenarios requiring timely information.

This data streams continuously and includes: trip duration, which indicates travel times on a route, and speed reading intervals, which show road segment density.

To access real-time road data your contract must includes the Real-Time Operations package.

Create a cloud Pub/Sub subscription

Once your project is set up to receive real-time data, a dedicated Google Cloud Pub/Sub topic becomes available for your project. This Pub/Sub topic is where you can find the real-time data for all your created routes.

The following code sample shows the format of the topic URL.

projects/maps-platform-roads-management/topics/rmi-roadsinformation-PROJECT_NUMBER

You must subscribe to the Pub/Sub topic provided to you to receive real-time data messages. See Subscribe to a topic for a quick overview on how to subscribe and consume messages from a Cloud Pub/Sub topic.

Real time traffic data message schema

Each real-time data message incorporates data such as:

• Road details like travel_duration and speed_reading_intervals.
• Route identifiers like selected_route_id and display_name.

Each message is published adhering to the following Protobuf format.

syntax = "proto3";

// Contains the road information like travel duration and speed reading
// intervals for a selected route.
message RoadsInformation {
  message TravelDuration {
    // The duration of travel through the route based on current road conditions.
    float duration_in_seconds = 1;
    // The duration of travel through the route without taking road conditions into consideration.
    float static_duration_in_seconds = 2;
  }
  message Timestamp {
    // Represents seconds of UTC time since Unix epoch
    // 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z. Must be from 0001-01-01T00:00:00Z to
    // 9999-12-31T23:59:59Z inclusive.
    int64 seconds = 1;

    // Non-negative fractions of a second at nanosecond resolution. Negative
    // second values with fractions must still have non-negative nanos values
    // that count forward in time. Must be from 0 to 999,999,999
    // inclusive.
    int32 nanos = 2;
  }
  // Represents the latitude and longitude of a coordinate
  // within speed reading interval.
  message LatLng {
    float latitude = 1;
    float longitude = 2;
  }
  message SpeedReadingInterval {
    // The coordinates on the polyline for the speed reading interval
    repeated LatLng interval_coordinates = 1;

    // Describes the categorized current speed of road conditions. Possible values are:
    // - "NORMAL": Road is flowing smoothly, no slowdown is detected.
    // - "SLOW": Slowdown detected, but no congestion formed.
    // - "TRAFFIC_JAM": Congestion detected.
    string speed = 2;
  }
  // Id for selected_route.
  string selected_route_id = 1;
  // User provided name for the route.
  string display_name = 2;
  // Intervals representing the road density across the route.
  repeated SpeedReadingInterval speed_reading_intervals = 3;
  // Travel time information.
  TravelDuration travel_duration = 4;
  // The time the road data was collected.
  Timestamp retrieval_time = 5;
  // Contains a geojson polyline representing the optimal route determined based
  // on user's input waypoints.
  string route_geometry = 6;
}

Stream Route Data to BigQuery using Pub/Sub

You can configure a Pub/Sub subscription to stream road data directly into a BigQuery table. This allows for robust data storage and enables powerful analytics on the provided route information. Before setting up this type of subscription, you need to create a suitable dataset and table in your BigQuery project to write the data in.

See Streaming data to BigQuery for detailed instructions on how to create a Pub/Sub subscription that writes to BigQuery.

BigQuery Table Schema

The messages published to your Pub/Sub topic, which can also get written to your BigQuery table, conform to the following schema. You should use this schema when creating your target BigQuery table to ensure compatibility.

  {
    "mode": "NULLABLE",
    "name": "selected_route_id",
    "type": "STRING",
    "description": "Id for selected_route."
  },
  {
    "mode": "NULLABLE",
    "name": "display_name",
    "type": "STRING",
    "description": "User provided name for the route."
  },
  {
    "fields": [
      {
        "mode": "NULLABLE",
        "name": "speed",
        "type": "STRING",
        "description": "Describes the categorized current speed of traffic. Possible values are: \"NORMAL\": Traffic is flowing smoothly, no slowdown is detected.  \"SLOW\": Slowdown detected, but no traffic jam formed. \"TRAFFIC_JAM\": Traffic jam detected."
      },
      {
        "fields": [
          {
            "mode": "NULLABLE",
            "name": "latitude",
            "type": "NUMERIC"
          },
          {
            "mode": "NULLABLE",
            "name": "longitude",
            "type": "NUMERIC"
          }
        ],
        "mode": "REPEATED",
        "name": "interval_coordinates",
        "type": "RECORD",
        "description": "The geometry for this interval"
      }
    ],
    "mode": "REPEATED",
    "name": "speed_reading_intervals",
    "type": "RECORD",
    "description": "Intervals representing the traffic density across the route."
  },
  {
    "fields": [
      {
        "mode": "NULLABLE",
        "name": "duration_in_seconds",
        "type": "FLOAT",
        "description": "The duration of travel through the route based on current traffic conditions."
      },
      {
        "mode": "NULLABLE",
        "name": "static_duration_in_seconds",
        "type": "FLOAT",
        "description": "The duration of travel through the route without taking traffic conditions into consideration."
      }
    ],
    "mode": "NULLABLE",
    "name": "travel_duration",
    "type": "RECORD",
    "description": "Travel time information."
  },
  {
    "fields": [
      {
        "mode": "NULLABLE",
        "name": "seconds",
        "type": "INTEGER",
        "description": "Represents seconds of UTC time since Unix epoch 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z. Must be from 0001-01-01T00:00:00Z to 9999-12-31T23:59:59Z inclusive."
      },
      {
        "mode": "NULLABLE",
        "name": "nanos",
        "type": "INTEGER",
        "description": "Non-negative fractions of a second at nanosecond resolution. Negative second values with fractions must still have non-negative nanos values that count forward in time. Must be from 0 to 999,999,999 inclusive."
      }
    ],
    "mode": "NULLABLE",
    "name": "retrieval_time",
    "type": "RECORD",
    "description": "The time the traffic data was collected."
  },
  {
    "mode": "NULLABLE",
    "name": "route_geometry",
    "type": "STRING",
    "description": "Contains a geojson polyline representing the optimal route determined based on user's input waypoints"
  }