_Westgate Freeway Continues to Crawl Along
The major road works on the Westgate Freeway from the M81 ring road to the Westgate Bridge and new tunnel, are proceeding despite the delays that have occurred. For those who use this link into Melbourne it has been a long wait with the weekday morning crawl and the end of weekend return to Melbourne from the west coast.
A summary of the works include:
- widening of the West Gate Freeway from eight to 12 lanes between the M80 Ring Road and Williamstown Road (but with these lanes being split into dedicated sub-links to and from the Burnley tunnel and eastern Melbourne; and to and from the new Yarraville tunnel, Williamstown Road and the new Hyde Street exit / entry);
- inbound and outbound new tunnels under Yarraville, connecting to a new bridge over the Maribyrnong River and to the new elevated Footscray Road.
The actual Freeway works are steadily coming to fruition and the advice is that the new tunnels, bridge and Footscray Road works are about 70 per cent complete. The estimated finish time for all works is not yet certain but expectations are about November 2025.