Traffic Flow
Traffic Flow measures how the traffic is moving on the roads around each place, right now: the current speed and the speed when the roads are free, how jammed they are, the congestion as a percentage, the level in words, how many roads were measured and how many are closed, and the busiest road. It is live traffic data, measured at the moment the flow runs, so a flow that runs every morning at 8 tells you how 8 am looks. Places within 300 m of each other share one search. It does not count cars and has no peak hours or direction split: for those, run it at the times you care about. For closures and roadworks across a whole area, use Traffic incidents.
In the editor: How the traffic is moving on the roads around each place, right now: the current speed and the free-flow speed in km/h, how jammed the roads are (a jam factor from 0, free, to 10, standstill), the congestion as a percentage, the level in words, how many roads were measured and closed, and the busiest road. Live traffic data, measured now; places close together share one search.
Settings
Roads
Pick oneHow far around each place to look at the roads: the roads next to it (about 150 m), or every road within 500 m or 1 km. The figures are averages over those roads, weighted by the length of each road stretch.
The roads within about 150 m of each place. Places within 300 m of each other share one search; at most 50 searches a run. Live traffic has no car counts, peak hours or direction split.
- Adjacent roads
- Within 500 m
- Within 1 km
What comes out
Each item that leaves the block carries these fields, to use in the blocks after it as {{field}}.
Added to each place
Every place that comes in gets all of these fields, so later blocks can count on them. Numbers are rounded to one decimal (the confidence to two); a field is empty when no road was measured around the place.
speed_kmh: How fast the traffic is moving now, in km/h, averaged over the roads.free_flow_kmh: How fast it moves on those roads when they are free, in km/h.jam_factor: How jammed the roads are, from 0 (free) to 10 (standstill or closed).congestion_pct: How much slower than free flow, as a percentage (never below 0).traffic_level: The jam factor in words: Free flowing, Light, Moderate, Heavy or Standstill. No roads measured when there are none around it.traffic_confidence: How sure the measurement is, from 0 to 1 (1 is measured from many vehicles right now).roads_measured: How many road stretches were measured around the place.roads_closed: How many of them are closed now.busiest_road: The road with the highest jam factor.traffic_updated: When the traffic was measured (UTC).
How to use it
How busy the road is at each new site
The speed and jam factor sit next to the competitor count for xMap LLM to score the site: a site on a road that crawls every morning is seen and stopped at; one on a free-flowing ring road is passed at speed.
Morning congestion at our fuel stations
A fuel retailer wants to know which of its stations sit on roads that jam at rush hour, when drivers are most likely to stop.
Before: Nobody knew which stations sat in the morning queue.
With the flow: A sheet that grows every morning with each station’s speed and jam factor at 8, ready to compare by weekday.
Billboards where the traffic is slow
A billboard on a road that crawls is read; one on a fast road is a blur. Run it at the hours the board sells.
Leave the depot when the roads clear
A logistics firm wants to know, every half hour in the morning, whether the roads around its depots are still jammed.
Before: Vans left at fixed times and sat in the same queues.
With the flow: The fleet channel hears when each depot’s roads clear, from speeds measured minutes ago.
Drive-through candidates
xMap LLM weighs the speed, the jam factor and the busiest road for each spot, with the places around it.
Congestion around schools at drop-off
A city transport team wants a weekly picture of the traffic around every school at 8:15.
Each school gets its speed, jam factor and closed roads at the hour that matters, and the report maps them.
Good to know
- Live: the speeds are measured when the flow runs. The same flow at 8 am and at 3 pm gives different answers; schedule it at the hours you care about.
- Every place gets every field, rounded to one decimal. A place with no measured road around it says No roads measured, and its numbers are empty.
- It does not count cars, and it has no peak hours or direction split: live traffic data measures speed, not volume. Flows saved with the old Cars per day, Peak hours or Direction choices open and run with the new fields; a Filter that was on Cars per day now says no result has that field, so pick Speed (km/h) or Jam factor.
- Places within 300 m of each other share one search, and a run makes at most 50 searches; places beyond that are marked Not measured.
- Only searches that answered are charged; a place without a location is not searched.
- Filter and Branch have Speed (km/h) and Jam factor ready to use.
Works well with
- Traffic incidents: Road closures, roadworks and other incidents on online maps right now, with where they are.
- Nearby places: Places around a point from xMap’s own places database (300M+ places, refreshed every month): pick the types of place (more than 5,000, such as Restaurant, Cafe, Pharmacy, Hospital or Gas station, or a whole group of them) and how far to look.
- My data: Brings in a table you uploaded or a list you saved on the My data page: your stores, customers, target accounts or sites.
- Filter: Keeps only the items that match a rule.
- Branch: Splits items in two.
- Sort and limit: Puts the items in order, and can keep only the first ones: the 10 best rated, the 20 nearest, the highest fit scores.
- xMap LLM: Tell the AI what to do in plain words.
- Schedule: Starts the flow on a timetable.
Templates that use it
- Road speeds around the stadiums, every hour: How the roads around each stadium are moving, every hour, the most jammed first.
- Road speeds around the airport, every hour: How the roads around the airport are moving, in a short note every hour.
- Road speeds outside my depots, every hour: How the roads outside each depot are moving, every hour, the most jammed first.
Stories with it
- Sending every ambulance to the hospital it can reach (Emergency services)
- The evidence that got a school its crossing (Primary school)
- The dock knows before the load gets warm (Chilled food distribution)
- Every customer at the airport with time to spare (Car rental)
- Selling every billboard to the brand next door (Outdoor advertising)
- A week of walking, scored before her coffee (Hospitality consulting)
- No shift late, whatever the roads do at dawn (Airline ground handling)
Help articles
- Compare sites side by side: Two or three spots measured the same way, one column each, the best of every row marked and the best site and why.
- An instant site report of any spot: Paused for now while xMap improves the data behind it. Reports already made still open.
Industries that use it
Logistics & delivery · Security & emergency services · Airports & aviation
Try it
Build a flow with Traffic Flow on the home page, no account needed, or book a call. Try it live