Residents in Melbourne’s inner north are demanding answers about how traffic will be controlled when the West Gate Tunnel project starts funnelling thousands of extra cars onto their streets every day.
The $10 billion toll road is set to open in late 2025 – three years late and $3.7 billion over budget – and is projected to pump an extra 9000 vehicles directly into North and West Melbourne and Docklands via an off-ramp connecting to Dynon Road.
Mary Masters (front) and other West Melbourne residents want to know how thousands of extra vehicles will be managed when the West Gate Tunnel opens.Credit: Paul Jeffers
The City of Melbourne fought unsuccessfully to have the design changed when the project was being planned in 2017, and argued it would cause peak-hour road conditions for up to 14 hours a day in those neighbourhoods and undo decades of work to reduce traffic in the inner city.
West Melbourne resident Mary Masters said she and other families in the fast-growing CBD-fringe were concerned about the influx of traffic and wanted clarity about plans to mitigate it.
“Nobody seems to know where these cars are going to go and how we make the area safer for residents,” she said. “And for drivers, what happens when you hit the city – do you come to a standstill or, most likely, do you find rat-runs through North and West Melbourne?”
The state government and the City of Melbourne committed to jointly funding a $100 million “transport and amenity program” to alleviate the project’s impact on inner-city suburbs.
Pylons for the elevated freeway over Footscray Road heading towards Docklands and West Melbourne as part of the West Gate Tunnel project.Credit: Jason South
But Masters said it was unclear how much of that money had been spent or how projects were being selected. “We’ve tried repeatedly to get audiences with council and state government to get any visibility,” she said.
North and West Melbourne Association secretary Kevin Chamberlin said the disaster of Sydney’s new Rozelle Interchange, which brought parts of the inner west to a standstill when it opened in November, had Melbourne residents on alert.
“It’s all very unclear as to what the impacts will be on North and West Melbourne, Kensington, Flemington, Parkville and Carlton,” he said.
“There could be some very bad outcomes, like making [the] reopened Grattan Street (at the University of Melbourne) nothing more than a traffic sewer through one of the most potentially exciting precincts in Melbourne.”
The West Gate Tunnel project has already rejected calls from residents to build a sound wall along Railway Place, next to North Melbourne Station, where residents are concerned about noise from the elevated highway connecting to the extended Wurundjeri Way. Instead, project management says it will conduct noise monitoring after the road is opened.
Transurban’s new toll road will provide an alternative to the West Gate Bridge and a more direct route for trucks to access the Port of Melbourne, meaning fewer trucks on roads in the inner west.
It comprises about four kilometres of tunnels underneath Yarraville, 9.2 kilometres of new elevated roads and flyovers above Footscray Road and across the Maribyrnong River, the extension of Wurundjeri Way in Docklands, and widening six kilometres of the West Gate Freeway from eight lanes to 12 lanes.
Eric Keys, a consulting transport planner who reviewed the tunnel project for the City of Melbourne in 2017, said it was a failure of the planning process that it did not conduct in-depth modelling of how extra traffic would affect inner-northern suburbs. As a result, the planning committee failed to explore how to mitigate those impacts.
Premier Jacinta Allan in the West Gate Tunnel in August, in her then role as infrastructure minister.Credit: Simon Schluter
“I think the risk is it’ll actually be worse [than forecast]. In terms of what the residents are currently used to, it’ll be a noticeable worsening of their standard of living,” Keys said.
A government inquiry and advisory committee that examined the project concluded there would be “saturation of through traffic movements through North and West Melbourne for much of the day” as a result, along with the development in the northern CBD and the Arden-Macaulay precinct. Increased traffic on North Melbourne roads was also likely to slow down the trams on route 19 and 59, the report said.
Project planning documents forecast that by 2031, the project would send an extra 3000 vehicles a day onto Victoria Street and 2500 onto Dryburgh, Curzon and Arden streets.
Gatehouse Street, which connects through to Parkville and Carlton, will have an extra 1500 vehicles daily and a 30 per cent increase in rush hour traffic.
Toll road giant Transurban convinced the state government to build the massive tunnel and elevated road shortly after Daniel Andrews won the Victorian election in 2014 and cancelled the East West Link road.
Melbourne University associate professor in urban planning Crystal Legacy said that by adding to congestion on inner-city roads, the West Gate Tunnel would increase pressure to eventually build the East West Link, which would have taken traffic underground from the Eastern Freeway Street in Clifton Hill to CityLink in Royal Park.
“You can’t help but feel the only solution to the new problem that’s being introduced will be another big road,” Legacy said. “These are things other cities around the world aren’t doing any longer. But Melbourne seems not only committed to it, but committed to creating the conditions for future toll road ‘solutions’.”
The North East Link – Victorian Labor’s other giant toll road project, which has now blown out from $10 billion to $26 billion – will expand the Eastern Freeway up to 20 lanes, which some have argued will cause traffic chaos when it meets Alexandra Parade and Hoddle Street and further necessitate the East West Link.
A spokesperson for the West Gate Tunnel Project said the Wurundjeri Way extension would reduce traffic on key roads in the city and Docklands and take 5000 cars off Spencer and King streets daily.
“The West Gate Tunnel Project will transform travel in Melbourne, delivering a vital alternative to the West Gate Bridge and removing more than 9000 trucks a day from residential streets,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said that during the project’s environment effect statement, the City of Melbourne’s expert traffic modelling witness, Stephen Hunt from Ratio Consultants, said changes in traffic would be moderate.
City of Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp said the council was focused on delivering projects through the $100 million amenity scheme that reduced traffic, boosted greenery and made it easier to get around.
Key projects so far include a linear park along Hawke Street in West Melbourne, streetscape improvements on Franklin Street in the CBD, and a master plan for Spencer Street North, which Capp said “could be transformed into a pedestrian-friendly stretch like Lygon Street” as traffic shifts onto Wurundjeri Way.
“The Victorian government’s West Gate Tunnel project will significantly impact the way people move around Melbourne – and we’re doing everything we can to secure positive outcomes for local residents, businesses and visitors,” Capp said.
A state government spokesperson said some of the $100 million fund had also been spent on new tram stops on William Street and bike lanes on La Trobe and Abbotsford streets.
Although it will alleviate the impact of heavy truck traffic in parts of the inner west, the project will also send thousands more trucks down sections of Williamstown and Millers roads in Yarraville every day.
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