West Gate Bridge

The West Gate Bridge is a steel box girder cable-stayed bridge in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It spans the Yarra River, just north of its mouth into Port Phillip, and is a vital link between the inner city (CBD) and Melbourne's western suburbs; with the industrial suburbs in the west and with the city of Geelong, 80 kilometres (50 mi) to the south-west. It is one of the busiest road corridors in Australia.The main river span is 336 metres (1,102 ft) in length, and the height above the water is 58 metres. The total length of the bridge is 2,582.6 metres (8,473.1 ft). It is the second longest in Australia behind the Houghton Highway and its twin the Ted Smout Memorial Bridge, and is twice as long as the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It is one of the highest bridges in Australia, most notably trailing that of the more iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge.The bridge passes over Westgate Park, a large environmental and recreational reserve created during the bridge's construction. The bridge carries up to 200,000 vehicles per day.TransportationMotor vehiclesThe West Gate Bridge carries five lanes of motor vehicle traffic in each direction, therefore a 10 lane duel-carriageway freeway bridge.The freeway corridor (including the bridge itself) carries a very high volume and occupancy of traffic, between 180,000 - 200,000 cars / trucks / motorcycles use it per day, according to VicRoads. This makes the West Gate Bridge and West Gate Freeway one of the busiest road corridors in Australia.