West Gate Bridge Live Stream – Indicator Explanations

Inbound vs Outbound – what do they mean?

On the live stream, the West Gate Freeway is split into two directions: Inbound (towards the Melbourne CBD) and Outbound (away from the CBD towards the western suburbs). The travel time indicators show the estimated time to traverse a defined corridor in each direction.

Inbound – towards the city

The Inbound travel time represents traffic heading towards central Melbourne. In practical terms, this covers the West Gate Freeway from the western end near:

• Kororoit Creek Road / Western Ring Road area,
• through key interchanges such as Grieve Parade, Millers Road, Williamstown Road and Todd Road,
• then across the bridge and through to Kings Way at the CBD end.

Outbound – away from the city

The Outbound travel time represents the same corridor in the opposite direction:

• starting near Kings Way / city end,
• travelling over the West Gate Bridge past Montague Street, Graham Street, Todd Road and Williamstown Road,
• continuing past Millers Road and Grieve Parade,
• and finishing near the Western Ring Road / Kororoit Creek Road area.

Travel time estimates

The travel time indicator shows how many minutes it is expected to take to travel the Inbound or Outbound corridor at that moment. It is based entirely on official freeway sensor data published through VicRoads open data.

How it is calculated

VicRoads divides the West Gate Freeway into a series of segments (for example “Millers Rd to Williamstown Rd”, “Todd Rd to Graham St”, and so on). For each direction, the system:

• retrieves the latest actual travel time for every segment in that direction;
• sums those segment times to create a total travel time for Inbound and Outbound;
• converts the result into minutes and displays it on the overlay.

The poller script typically runs approximately every 30 seconds, meaning the estimates adjust frequently as traffic conditions change.

Congestion level (Light / Medium / Heavy)

Each freeway segment on the West Gate corridor is also given a condition by VicRoads: Light, Medium or Heavy. The live stream combines these segment-by-segment assessments into an overall rating for each direction.

How the overall condition is chosen

For the Inbound and Outbound routes separately, the system:

• checks the condition of each segment in that direction;
• ignores segments marked as “Blank” (no condition provided);
• picks the worst condition that appears: Heavy is treated as worse than Medium, which is worse than Light.

As a result, if even one section of the route is Heavy, the entire corridor will display as Heavy for that direction, giving a conservative view of congestion.

“Good or bad compared to usual?”

In addition to real-time values, the system is being extended to show whether current travel times are better or worse than a typical day for the same time of day and direction.

What this indicator will show

• whether the current travel time is faster than usual,
• roughly in line with a typical day, or
• slower than usual for this time and direction.

While the system builds up more history, this indicator may occasionally show a short message such as “calculating based on recent data” to make clear that it is using live information rather than a fixed timetable.

Weather, rain badge and environmental audio

The live stream also includes weather-related overlays and sound design to help viewers understand conditions on and around the bridge in real time.

Rain indicator

A compact rain badge appears when local weather data suggests rain is occurring or imminent near the West Gate Bridge. This uses live readings from a weather station in the Spotswood area.

Rain & environment audio

During rain events and coming soon the stream will play real environmental audio captured from a small private water stream which runs adjacent to the freeway. This sound includes both rainfall and water movement through the stream, creating an accurate and immersive representation of storm conditions.

Incident alerts

An unplanned incidents and alerts overlay highlights road closures, crashes and other disruptions in the West Gate Bridge area and surrounds. These alerts are drawn from official VicRoads data filtered around the bridge and key connecting routes.

Messages appear briefly on screen and then rotate through, helping viewers see at a glance if there is a particular event affecting traffic beyond normal congestion.