DriveBC

DriveBC MCP Server provides real-time BC highway conditions, road events, closures, and weather alerts through a lightweight MCP interface. It’s designed to be consumed by MCP-compatible AI clients, delivering timely travel information with a smart 5-minute cache to balance freshness and API load.

How to use

You run the server locally and connect your MCP client to the stdio transport. The server exposes four primary endpoints you can invoke through your client: highway conditions, regional road conditions, road closures, and weather alerts. Data comes from the Open511-DriveBC API and is cached for five minutes to keep responses fast while reducing API calls. Use your MCP client to request specific highways, regions, or alert types and filter by severity or event type as needed.

How to install

Prerequisites you need before installing: Node.js and npm are installed on your system. You can verify by running node -v and npm -v in your terminal.

npm install
npm run build

To run the server for daily use, start it with the standard startup command.

npm start

For development, you can run the server in development mode to enable faster iteration and hot-reloading if supported by your setup.

npm run dev

Configuration

Configure your MCP clients to connect to the DriveBC MCP Server using the stdio transport. The server is designed to be used with MCP-compatible AI clients such as Claude Desktop. The following configuration examples illustrate the local stdio setup that points to the built MCP entry point.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "drivebc": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/drivebc_mcp/build/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

If you are using LM Studio, add a similar entry to your MCP configuration so the IDE can launch the local MCP server for you.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "drivebc": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/drivebc_mcp/build/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Notes and tips

The server runs via the stdio transport and is intended for use with MCP-compatible AI clients. A 5-minute cache helps keep data fresh while reducing the load on the DriveBC API. If you need to adjust cache behavior, look for the internal cache manager in the source and adapt the cache duration as appropriate for your deployment.

Data source and scope

Data is sourced from the Open511-DriveBC API, which provides real-time road events, closures, and weather-related alerts. The API is public and does not require authentication for standard read access.

Development and testing

Run type checking to ensure TypeScript correctness during development, then build and start to test end-to-end usage.

Available tools

get_highway_conditions

Fetches current conditions, incidents, and closures for a specific BC highway, with optional severity filtering and scheduling options.

get_regional_conditions

Returns road conditions and events for a BC region, with optional filters for event type and a configurable result limit.

get_road_closures

Lists active road closures and major restrictions, with optional region, highway, and minimum severity filters.

get_weather_alerts

Retrieves active weather-related alerts and road condition warnings, with optional region and severity filters.