Data sources

Data Sources

Traffic Incidents

###City of Tulsa

The City of Tulsa publishes a list of traffic accidents. It has several formats - a web page with map, a text-only list, and, perhaps most useful for out purposes, an XML feed. The Text-only page has this information about the list:

This web page uses data from the City of Tulsa's 911 Center. It is updated approximately once a minute from information entered by call-takers into Tulsa's Computer Aided Dispatch System (CADS).

Crashes on interstate highways will appear on this page only when Tulsa Fire Department is dispatched as a medical first responder.

During inclement weather, Operation Slick Streets is declared by the Tulsa Police Department. When Slick Streets is in effect Non-Injury calls will not be entered into the dispatch system, and will not appear on this web page. The words 'Slick Streets Declared' will appear in the table above during these times.

Here is a sample of the XML feed:

<xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8">
<Incidents>
  <Incident>
    <Type>Non-Injury</Type>
    <Description>NON-INJURY COLLISION</Description>
    <Date>10/01/11</Date>
    <Time>4:52:47 PM</Time>
    <Location>1558 E 46 PL S ; IN FRNT</Location>
    <Number>1</Number>
  </Incident>
  ...
</Incidents>

Some notes:

• The Number is the sequence number of the incident in the feed. As incidents are resolved, they are removed from the feed, and the numbering may change.
• As more information becomes available, the details (Type, Description, and Location) will change.
• Different APIs, including Google APIs, can be used to convert the Location to an address. The City of Tulsa site uses JavaScript, included in the source for the map version. However:
  • It requires adding "Tulsa, OK" to the Location, which makes incidents in nearby cities appear unmapped.
  • The Location may include information, like "; IN FRNT", which are useful for first responders but not really part of the address. It may also include text about which side of the road is affected, like "SB" for south-bound, which isn't part of the Google address.
  • Incidents on highways use a Location like "6400 E BAEB EXPY", which Google can't map to a Lat/Long.

Philip Burger's site http://tulsatrafficalert.org has been accumulating traffic alerts since December 2009. He uses URLs like http://tulsatrafficalert.com/a/35865 for each incident. His site could be scraped to get historical data and test different algorithms.

Tulsa Police Department

The Tulsa Police Department site displays a list of all open calls, divided by their divisions. There are also division specific lists for Gilcrease, Riverside, and Mingo Valley. These include non-traffic incidents. They also have a traffic incidents page, which appears identical to the City of Tulsa page, described above. These sites are probably run by the same group, so there is no new information for traffic purposes.

Road Closures

City of Tulsa

The City of Tulsa keeps track of road or lane closures due to special events or construction. There is a map view, with pre-calculated pin locations. Clicking on a pin will open a page with more details about the closure.

There doesn't appear to be a data feed of all the road closures, but the JavaScript could be parsed to get all the information. This include a latitude and longitude, but not an extent.

addPoint(lat, long, title, description, type, color, link);
addPoint(36.0655061,-95.9579014,"South Lewis Avenue, East 65th Place to East 71st Street","Construction continues in the widening of this section of Lewis Avenue from four lanes to five lanes. During construction of this project, two lanes are open for northbound and southbound traffic.","Lane Closed","yellow","/road-closure-map/map-points/south-lewis-avenue,-east-61st-street-to-east-75th-street.aspx");

ODOT

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation has a page of press releases about road closures in Oklahoma. These are not geo-coded.