Data & credits
Data
What the live numbers are, how they are made and how fresh they are; and the open data our pictures stand on.
Published Updated
Data & methods
- Southbound delay
- Our estimate of the extra minutes a trip takes over a clear run, on the route from Marine Drive and Capilano to Georgia and Burrard. It is made from the speeds and counts of road detectors. The level (Clear to Severe) is named from those extra minutes, with edges the museum chose from its own past readings (the method page has them).
- Northbound delay
- Measured on the bridge only: the queue on the Causeway is not in it. Why, and how its levels were chosen
- Centre lane
- Read from the lane signals on the bridge: southbound, northbound or closed, and since when. The lane signals are read about every three minutes, so “since” can be a few minutes out.
- Next switch
- Our model’s estimate of when the centre lane changes direction. The card shows a range from now to the “latest by” time: in nine of ten similar cases the lane had switched within it. It is shown at every hour whenever the model gives one; from 5 to 10 am it is marked low confidence, because the estimate is weaker then (the numbers are on the accuracy page). When the model is not confident of a time but expects the lane to stay as it is for at least half an hour, the card says “not before” a time instead, and no time of the switch. When it has neither, no time is shown. How accurate is this?
- The next three hours
- Our model’s forecast of southbound delay in 15-minute steps, with a range from the 10th to the 90th percentile, next to the usual pattern for that time. How accurate is this?
- Queue length
- Where the queue ends. It is worked out from the detectors and from pictures of the DriveBC cameras, which we count ourselves. The camera pictures on the Traffic and Cameras pages come straight from DriveBC.
How fresh is it?
While it is open on the screen, the page asks for the data every 15 seconds; a tab that is hidden does not ask. Data older than ten minutes is called late: the live cards on the home page then show dashes instead of numbers, and the Updated time at the top of every page is the time of the last reading. After 15 minutes every channel on the Traffic page is NO_DATA, which means no reading. A missing reading is never shown as zero.
Can I use the data?
The readings are for display on this site only. The detector readings come from sources without an open licence, so there is no download or interface yet. We will list one here when there is.
The source and licence of each channel are on the Traffic page. Questions or corrections: [email protected].
Credits
Pictures rendered from our model of the bridge and its shores are built on open data. We thank the people and bodies who publish it.
- Map data. © OpenStreetMap contributors. The data is available under the Open Database Licence (ODbL). We use it for building outlines and features on the ground.
- Building footprints. City of Vancouver Open Data, building footprints (2009), for the downtown peninsula, Stanley Park and the waterfront. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Vancouver.
- Terrain and heights. LidarBC, Government of British Columbia. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – British Columbia.
- Land cover. Metro Vancouver Open Data Portal. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Metro Vancouver.
These credits do not mean that any of these providers endorses this site. See Not affiliated. Archive photographs and DriveBC camera images are credited under each one.