Advanced Traffic

Deep coverage flow

Deep coverage for flow can be requested by including the deepCoverage option in the advancedFeatures parameter.

Deep Coverage provides a major traffic coverage increase focused on urban roads in cities.

Standard flow vs. deep coverage flow

Standard flow limits the returned flow data primarily to highways, motorways, and major arterial roads.

Deep coverage flow extends flow data to lower-functional-class urban roads and city arterials that would otherwise be omitted. The trade-off is a significantly larger response payload, but with much more granular coverage across dense urban road networks.

Example: standard flow request

curl \
   -X GET \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
   "https://data.traffic.hereapi.com/v7/flow?locationReferencing=shape&in=bbox:13.400,52.500,13.405,52.505"

The response returns flow segments for the specified bounding box using standard coverage — primarily highways and major arterials. Smaller urban side streets and lower-class arterials within the same area are excluded.

Example: deep coverage flow request

curl \
   -X GET \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
   "https://data.traffic.hereapi.com/v7/flow?locationReferencing=shape&in=bbox:13.400,52.500,13.405,52.505&advancedFeatures=deepCoverage"

Adding advancedFeatures=deepCoverage instructs the API to include flow information for urban arterials and lower-class roads within the same bounding box — road segments that are absent from the standard response. This can substantially increase the number of returned flow segments, covering the city's arterial grid in addition to the motorways.

Deep coverage 2.0

Deep coverage 2.0 expands the earlier city-centric deep coverage model to nationwide coverage.

Compared with the legacy Deep Coverage 1.0 model, Deep coverage 2.0 is designed to provide:

• broader country-level availability instead of coverage concentrated in selected cities
• higher overall road-network coverage, including stronger FC4/FC5 representation
• consistently larger coverage than legacy deep coverage 1.0 in the same markets

Lane level flow

In some cases, there is flow information available for specific lanes of a multilane roadway, mostly motorways/freeways and major roads.

Lane level for flow can be requested by including the lanes option in the advancedFeatures parameter.

The lanes parameter will enable flow defined per separate lanes heading in the same direction, this includes standard split lanes as well as the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes.

Lane level traffic can be represented for a whole roadway in the CurrentFlow object or for a sub-segment under a SubSegment object. When lane level flow is provided, the non-lane-level speed is also provided so that even when lane level traffic is requested, the client can opt to not use the lane level information.

Each lane object has the following fields:

• laneNumbers - lane numbers use the HERE Map method of lane numbering where the left lane is 1 and each lane to the right of the left lane is numbered sequentially. For example, in a three-lane road, the left lane is 1, the center lane is 2, and the right lane is 3. Lane 1 is always the left lane, regardless of the driving side. If multiple lane numbers are presented, all lanes will have the traffic condition. Lane numbers will always be sequential.
• laneType - populated to indicate special lane type hov, see below for details.
• speedUncapped - uncapped speed as described for flow.
• jamFactor - jamFactor as described for flow.

High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane

Lanes with laneType of hov are designated High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes. Their use is restricted depending on local road regulations. HOV lanes are not
present in all countries.

HOV lanes are only provided when the advancedFeatures parameter contains lanes.