Faster than refreshing DriveBC (without breaking the rules)

Let's be honest about what "live traffic" means on Vancouver Island's west coast.

What DriveBC is slow at

Highway webcam images often refresh on a 10–15 minute cycle. That's MOTI's hardware schedule, not a conspiracy. Staring at a stale JPEG tells you what the road looked like a quarter hour ago.

What DriveBC is faster at — if you're wired in

Behind the website sits Open511, BC's open road-events API. When dispatch posts a MAJOR incident or closure, it lands in that feed. The public website doesn't always feel instant. An automated monitor does.

Highway 4 Pulse:

• Polls api.open511.gov.bc.ca for Highway 4 events every 60 seconds
• Tracks all ten Vancouver Island Highway 4 webcams via drivebc.ca/api/webcams
• Watches nearby_objs.closures and majorEvents on camera metadata
• Scores the corridor GREEN / AMBER / RED with a plain-language summary

We don't scrape Facebook

Meta forbids it, and groups are chaos anyway. Instead we added community tips — you report what you see, labeled unverified. It's the useful part of Facebook without the scroll.

What we can't do

We can't see accidents before BC posts them. We can't make cameras refresh faster than MOTI. We can save you from opening six tabs every time the weather turns.

Bookmark islandplanner.ca/pulse.html — it auto-refreshes. Heading west? Pair it with a Go Bag Dead Zone briefing for offline.