Drivers are set for nearly three years of construction traffic pain as lanes are added to the Bolte Bridge, CityLink tollway and the Tullamarine and West Gate freeways in an $850 million project.
Transurban signed a contract with the state government on Monday to widen the road from Melrose Drive to Power Street, beginning construction in October 2015, with a completion time of early 2018.
The project will include 33 kilometres of new lanes.
Premier Denis Napthine said the widening project would reduce travel times to Melbourne Airport by 16 minutes in the peak.
Transurban will build additional lanes:
- Inbound from near Racecourse Road through to Montague and Power streets
- Outbound from Footscray Road to near Racecourse Road
- On and off ramp lanes at Bell Street
- Outbound and inbound between Bulla Road and the East West Link connection, to be built between Brunswick Road and Flemington Road.
VicRoads will also build new lanes inbound and outbound between Melrose Drive and Bulla Road, financed by Transurban.
Public Transport and Roads Minister Terry Mulder described the lane increases as a “legacy project” for the government.
Toll increases for cars, motorbikes and light commercial vehicles would be suspended during the construction phase, Dr Napthine said.
He said there would be no new tolls on the road but truck drivers would pay more from April 2017. Trucks pay 1.9 times the toll of car drivers, but will pay three times more during the daytime and two times more at night when the increases take place.
Dr Napthine said the project would make roads safer and reduce casualty crashes by 20 per cent.
He claimed the improved flows would take 3000 commercial vehicles a day to use the road rather than “rat run” through suburban streets to avoid the tollway.
“As we increase capacity on the Tullamarine Freeway-CityLink it will provide better traffic flows and these commercial vehicles will vote with their feet and stop doing rat runs around suburban streets causing frustration and annoyance and ruining lives in suburban areas,” Dr Napthine said.
The project is estimated to increase road capacity by 30 per cent and create 700 jobs. Government figures suggest the traffic on the freeway and tollway will rise from 210,000 vehicles a day to 235,000 vehicles by 2031.
A new traffic management system will be introduced with speed signs above all lanes, ramp meters with signalling lights at on-ramps and signs with variable messages to alert drivers to changes and disruptions.
The state government also flagged proposed future increases in lanes between Melrose Drive and Melbourne Airport.
Transurban chief executive officer Scott Charlton announced construction company Thiess was preferred design and construction contractor.
In a statement to the stock exchange, Transurban said the project would be paid for through additional traffic, including from East West Link project which links with CityLink, greater tolls on trucks and an extension of the CityLink tolling contract to January 2035.
The Opposition’s roads spokesman Luke Donnellan said the government had done little on the city’s roads since it was elected in 2010, and was now making a flurry of announcements to distract from its lack of real action.
“Four years and nothing has happened and now at the last minute we are expected to believe that what they didn’t do in the last four years, they will definitely do in the next four,” Mr Donnellan said.
– with Clay Lucas
