If you’ve caught a train through North Melbourne recently you might have noticed the new road just to the west of the rail lines.
It’s the Docklands/city end of the West Gate Tunnel – a tunnel more in name than nature. About half of the route is an elevated road over Footscray Road and Docklands, and there’s also widening of sections of the at-grade Westgate Freeway from 8 to 12 lanes.
The project was never seen as evil as the cancelled East West Link, probably because it’s avoided large scale home demolition, with the tunnelled section going under residential areas of Yarraville.
Even the 50 metre (16 storey) high ventilation towers don’t seem to be controversial, despite the angst over high density housing towers in established suburbs.
And I suspect many people assume Transurban is paying for the whole project (via tolls on this route and their extended Citylink tolls contract), but it’s actually got billions in government funding, even as the project cost continues to increase.
Partly the project is aimed at getting trucks out of Yarraville too, which is good, though the original plan that Labor took to the 2014 election would have been a far more modest set of road upgrades that would have achieved a similar outcome without funnelling more cars into Docklands and the CBD.
The road layout map shows at the city end, it will feed traffic from Dynon Road and from the WGT onto Wurundjeri Way – it’s this that you can see between North Melbourne and Southern Cross stations.
Other exits will bring traffic into the northern end of Spencer Street, with the Dynon Road bridge over the railway line given more traffic lanes to try and cope, and pedestrians and cyclists moved to a separate bridge built alongside it.
Bringing more cars into the north west end of the CBD like this is not a good idea. I hope they don’t remove parking along Spencer Street (in North Melbourne) – that will really make it a traffic sewer.
There are tolls that may help discourage unnecessary driving trips – but for those city exits they only apply in AM peak – $6.28 in 2024 dollars.
This is clearly a scheme designed in pre-pandemic times when the worst traffic was at that time of day, and it was imagined not to be a problem at other times. The reality is weekend travel demand is often just as strong as peak, and the Wurundjeri Way exit feeds directly to Marvel Stadium in Docklands, with the worst post-event traffic likely to be late at night.
Thankfully within the Hoddle Grid itself there’s been plenty of traffic calming, protected bike lanes and speed reductions, but if the traffic from the WGT fills up the surrounding streets, making it unpleasant for cyclists and pedestrians and slow for buses and trams, it’ll just emphasise what a poor project choice it has been for our city.
We all know the story: more roads might initially move the existing traffic more efficiently, but they also induce more traffic, so any predicted time savings quickly disappear.
We’re likely to be left with more traffic, money spent creating it that can’t be used on alternatives, and a more car-dependent city.
- An earlier blog about this project
- Update: 2/11/2024 – the Maribyrnong Truck Action Group have noted that the huge ventilation stacks being built will not include filtration
9 replies on “WGT city exits”
And how many times will we keep hearing this project is an alternative to the West Gate Bridge when it doesn’t provide any continuous connection from the new elevated Footscray Road back to the Bolte Bridge? When the West Gate Bridge is shut down due to incidents or maintenance, trucks will still be caught up in delays on arterial roads because the freeway ramp was left out. Hardly strategic thinking or making the transport network more reliable.
And I can’t wait to see what it does to the Wurundjeri/Flinders intersection, which is already gridlocked a lot of the time.
I’m still struggling to see the use-case for most of it. It takes traffic from the West Gate Freeway and apart from clogging up the city, feeds it into Citilink to head north. Problem is, there’s already 2 ways to do this: the (tolled) Bolte Bridge, which takes most of it’s traffic from the east, not west, because the (free M80 already handles the bulk of west to north traffic. So where is this traffic going to come from?
I said it before, and I’ll say it again, the government seemed to be opposed to East West Link, but imposed a toll road on the western suburbs when the area needed more public transport, not more toll roads. I am beginning to feel that the rich in the inner east gets listen to more than those in the western suburbs. And since the west has been saddled with the West Gate “Tunnel”, I think we should build East West Link to anger the inner east. But seriously, you just cannot build a toll road in the western suburbs if you were opposed to the building of a toll road in the inner east. Seems hypocritical to me. Or is it that the western suburbs are full of safe seats that Labor is going to win because of it being safe and that’s why no one cares about what the western suburbs thinks.
Dynon Rd bridge it’s only given a extra lane westbound for traffic exiting on to WGT so queuing doesn’t affect the through traffic. There no extra lane eastbound for extra traffic expected
Not for traffic but remove parking along Spencer Street would be good if was bus lane. Spencer St and Dudley St are 2 worst delay point for 216/220
I believe the project has changed slightly since the map you have included was published. To me it appears the Dynon-WGT Rd to Wurundjeri Way eastbound ramp has been replaced by a traffic light controlled right turn, which will hopefully limit some of the traffic flow. This is based off the current planning docs which are available for download here: https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/library/west-gate-tunnel-project/planning-documents
Looking at the original West Gate Distributor page you’ve linked, it appears all the issues cited criticism section are still present with WGT or been made worse! They thought the weaving interchange for Hyde St ramps would be a spaghetti interchange (A tad hyperbolic), yet look what Transurban have cooked up for the city end….
Its a real shame we are wasting money on this project, and a double shame that its so much harder for public and active transport projects to get off the ground and survive the media/opposition than roads
@Joshuasays The East bound ramp from Dynon Rd is still being built is (you seen on google maps)but difference is the Wurundjeri Way/WGT Dynon Exit is now intersection instead ramps from Wurundjeri Way ext to dynon rd flying over them
@Joshuasays Misread your post, yes the ramps from Wurundjeri Way to WGT Dynon Rd exit are removed(both directions)
One of the (many) things that frustrates me about this project is that it will make the Wurundjeri Way/Dudley Street intersection more unpleasant to cross for pedestrians, creating an even larger divide between Docklands and West Melbourne.