The US Federal Highway Administration coordinates the 511 framework, but the actual feeds are run by each state's DOT — 511 NY, California 511, FL511, Texas 511, and 36+ others. Each one publishes real-time incident, closure, and construction data for that state's roads. Aggregators ingest these same feeds and re-serve them with abstraction; SignalGuard goes directly to the state DOTs because freshness wins on ingress/egress windows.
Wire your state keys into SignalGuard and the venue's approach geometry is screened against every relevant state feed on each scan — including cross-border venues that touch multiple state networks.
What it tells you
- What's the actual road state on every approach to my venue right now? Per-segment closures, lane reductions, construction, accidents, weather impacts on highways and major arterials.
- What's planned for the next 24-72 hours? Scheduled construction and event-window lane closures, useful for ingress-plan diff vs. last week's scan.
- Which approach is degraded? Per-corridor scoring so ops teams know to push staff to a particular gate or signage to a particular interstate exit.
- How fresh is each event? Posted-at and updated-at timestamps direct from the DOT — no aggregator delay.
Pricing reality
Mostly free, instant signup. A few states require a manual application but no payment.
| Tier | States in this tier | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Instant API key | NY, CA, FL, TX, IL, GA, OH, PA, and 25+ more | Free |
| Manual application | A small set of states with smaller programs | Free |
| Aggregator alternative | HERE / INRIX / TomTom traffic APIs | $10K-50K+/yr |
Most stadium and festival ops teams can cover their footprint with 3-8 state keys, all free. The aggregator alternative is faster to wire (one key, all states) but adds latency and strips DOT-specific fields.
Best for
- Stadium ops (ingress/egress flow) — knowing which interstate exit is closed three hours before doors open is the difference between a clean gate-open and a parking-lot incident.
- Festival providers (multi-day access road monitoring) — a multi-day footprint means continuous monitoring across the build, doors, and load-out windows.
- Any urban venue with constrained approaches — when there are only 2-3 ways in, knowing one of them is closed is binary, and it has to be authoritative.
How SignalGuard wires it
Native integration. SignalGuard aggregates across configured states and exposes /api/state-511?lat=&lon=&radius_km=&states=NY,CA,FL for venue-scoped queries. BYOK per state:
- Identify the states your venue footprint touches. Most venues touch one; some metro venues touch two (e.g., NYC ↔ NJ).
- Register for an API key at each state's 511 site. The FHWA landing page at ops.fhwa.dot.gov/511 lists every state portal.
- Pass each key as an env var:
NY_511_API_KEY,CA_511_API_KEY,FL_511_API_KEY, etc. SignalGuard auto-detects which states are configured and includes them in the scan radius.
Keys are stored AES-256-GCM encrypted at rest. No per-scan setup; the route is called automatically when the radius intersects a configured state.
Run a scan
Run a scan with state 511 wired in → or review pricing tiers to see how movement signals fit into your plan.