Very busy at the moment – and still trying to get the Europe blogs done.
So here’s a quick one.
The West Gate Tunnel opens on Sunday – despite the name it’s a mostly elevated road connecting the West Gate Freeway to CityLink, but also with exits to the docks and to Melbourne’s CBD.
The dock connections are designed to help get trucks off local inner-west roads. Good idea – but as this ABC article reminds us, that could have been done years ago with the original, more modest “West Gate Distributor” plan that Labor took to the 2014 election.
The WGT we ended up with promises to cut car journeys to Melbourne’s CBD by 20 minutes. The history of every motorway ever suggests that this won’t last, thanks to induced traffic.
The question is: why would you want to make it easier to drive to the CBD, bringing more traffic in?
City of Melbourne was concerned about this early on – but ultimately came to a deal with the State Government for a $100 million “Transport Amenity Program” which now appears rather than trying to calm the inevitable extra traffic, will prioritise it – including by removing pedestrian crossings.
Some money has gone to bike lanes and tram stops. But I sense that these changes and the extra traffic flooding into North and West Melbourne is not going to do pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users any favours.
Part of the broader project, the Wurundjeri Way extension, which opened a little while ago, already seems to be having a similar effect.
Car trip planners such as Google Maps now suggest using it and Flinders Street for car journeys between the western and southern suburbs, adding to traffic on roads in the southern end of the CBD.
As far as I can tell, the original West Gate Distributor would not have had the effect of encouraging car traffic into the CBD, nor would it have extended Transurban’s tolls on Citylink.
It’s a great shame Labor didn’t stick with their original plan.
But what they can do now is make sure that the cars the WGT inevitably induces don’t stream through inner Melbourne, making traffic jams worse, delaying trams and buses, and making it more unpleasant and more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists and local residents.
(Note to self: have a look at this in 5 and 10 years and beyond, and see what happened.)
5 replies on “West Gate Tunnel impacts”
As I mentioned previously, Labor was against East-West Link (which would service Melbourne’s inner east), but was okay with a toll road in Melbourne’s West. And with the West Gate Tunnel, there was shortcuts taken, including a lack of a filter to prevent the spread of emissions from the tunnel. Apparently, the opposition to the West Gate Tunnel in Melbourne’s west was not as influential as the opposition to East West Link in the inner eastern suburbs, hence the dumping of East West Link but toll roads for the west.
There are a few main problems with this project (I’m sure there’s many more)
1. Other than trucks using it to access the port there’s not much benefit for cars other than the Wurundjeri way extension. Very few car and truck trips (eg. from Millers Rd) are looking to go from the Westgate freeway to the north via Citylink especially in peak where they’d ‘save 20 minutes’. They’d just use the M80 as it’s toll free, opposite direction of peak and higher speed.
2. cars and trucks wanting to get to the Eastern freeway will use it as a cut through which will increase the traffic and calls to build the ‘East-West link’ from Citylink to Eastern freeway as they avoid using Hoddle St.
3. The elevated road along Footscray road and Surrounds will in 20 years time look like the Moonee Ponds creek trail under Citylink, very ugly and uninviting.
4. There will now be an increase in freight costs for everyone as all trucks that are now forced to use the Wesgate freeway because of local road bans will have to pay $80-$120 a day whether they want to use the Tunnel or not. This is so the ‘cost barrier is removed to use the tunnel’ which is absolute rubbish. If people want to use it they would want to without being forced to.
PS.
Personally I think instead of the government increasing it’s funding for the project, the Tolling period should have just been extended until the extra amount was paid off.
Well it’s open and although I’m yet to travel on it, modelling my regular trip from Reservoir to Altona still suggests using the M80 for no cost and equivalent timing over the 2 toll road options. Overall The WGT is just another stepping stone to Transurban building the East-west link at some stage linking Citylink to the eastern freeway. On another note, I wish hoddle street/punt road was one long tunnel for through traffic from Eastern to St Kilda road junction somewhere. The existing roads can remain above for express buses, local traffic and bike paths. Just a pipe dream
Need a city by-pass bridge from Brighton Beach to Geelong Fwy, Point Cook.
Road and rail. via South Road.
Link up Sandringham, Frankston, SLR, via Dingley to Pakenham line.
Werribee – Point Cook residents can catch train to SE suburbs, hospitals, Monash Uni. shopping centres, vice versa.
1000’s of cars and trucks instantly removed from the inner city areas.
Rail on South Road could be Sky Rail all of the way to past Warrigal Road.
Bridge only needs to high over the shipping lanes.
Wind turbines or solar arrays could be built as part of the structure.
Of course the additional cars will make a beeline straight to King/Queen/Lonsdale/Collins/Hoddle etc. with zero reform to both public transport priority and traffic lights where green time on the chosen street is measured in minutes rather than seconds. I would never expect a Labor, Liberal or One Nation government to fix anything like that, at least not in this generation.