The West Gate Tunnel, formerly known as the Western Distributor, is an freeway-standard toll road in Melbourne, Australia, linking the West Gate Freeway at Yarraville with the Port of Melbourne and CityLink at Docklands. The western half of the toll road consists of twin tunnels - an eastbound tunnel, known as Bundawanh Tunnel, approximately long, and a westbound tunnel, known as Eureka Tunnel, approximately long - while the eastern half consists of a new bridge over the Maribyrnong River and an elevated road above Footscray Road.
The tunnel project replaced an earlier $680 million freight route proposal, the West Gate Distributor, which the Victorian Labor Party had taken to the 2014 state election as an alternative to the abandoned East West Link tollway.
The Labor government announced in December 2015 that it would proceed with the tunnel project, with an initial construction cost of $5.5 billion. Planning approvals were granted in December 2017 and major construction began in January 2018. It was scheduled for completion on 30 September 2022, although delays related to disposal of contaminated soil pushed its opening back 3 years with an eventual cost of $10.2 billion. It opened on 14 December 2025.
Route The West Gate Tunnel commences with two separate interchanges with the West Gate Freeway in Yarraville - the first portal to the Eureka Tunnel servicing out-going westbound traffic, then the second portal to the Bundawanh Tunnel servicing in-bound eastbound traffic 1.4 km further east - and heads northeast as a pair of subterranean tunnels, each with three lanes, continuing underneath Yarraville. The tunnels emerge to the surface to immediately cross the Maribyrnong River, and continues east as dual-carriageway elevated freeway running above Footscray Road, through the industrial precinct of West Melbourne, with ramps connecting freight traffic directly to the Port of Melbourne. After continuing east under CityLink through the South Dynon railway yards, the road then shares a series of at-grade intersections with access roads to Docklands and the city, before eventually terminating at the intersection with Dynon Road in West Melbourne.
History Background and funding The project was first proposed by infrastructure company TransurbanTim Pallas interviewed by Neil Mitchell 3AW 28 November 2019 to Victorian Labor opposition in 2014 as a means of alleviating congestion on the M1 corridor, providing a new river crossing as an alternative to the West Gate Bridge and moving trucks out of residential streets in the city's inner west. The project also involved widening the West Gate Freeway from eight to 12 lanes between the M80 Ring Road and the West Gate Bridge. Although discussions with Transurban continued through that year and into 2015, it remained undisclosed through the 2014 election campaign until a public announcement in April 2015 after Labor had won government.Transurban proposed that it would cover two-thirds of the estimated $5.5 billion cost of construction, with its costs recouped by tolling the road for up to 25 years and also being awarded a 10 to 15-year extension of its CityLink toll contract, which had been due to expire in 2035. The remainder of the cost would be borne by federal government funds. As part of the funding deal, Transurban was granted a 10-year extension on tolling its Melbourne roads and permitted to raise its tolls by 4.25 percent a year from July 2019. Its construction contract gave the company tolling and operational rights on the new toll road until 13 January 2045.
The Victorian government began assessing the proposal in March 2015 and announced in December that it would proceed. It said it would contribute $400 million of state funds and proposed seeking funds previously committed by the federal government to the abandoned East West Link project. The decision to proceed marked the end of continued work on the government's $680 million West Gate Distributor, which in turn had been designed to partially replace the western section of the East West Link.
The state government submitted the business case to Infrastructure Australia and the federal government in December 2015 with a request for Commonwealth funding. It announced the project would also include the widening of the West Gate Freeway from eight to 12 lanes between the M80 Ring Road and Williamstown Road and a $400 million widening of the Monash Freeway. When the federal government in April 2016 ruled out contributing to the project, the state government said it would proceed without federal funding, allocating $1.4 billion to the project over four years.
A 2019 report by the Victorian parliament's independent budget office found that by 2044–45, Transurban stands to make an extra $37 billion, in nominal terms ($7.5 billion in present value terms) as a result of the new CityLink tolls, combined with tolls on the new West Gate Tunnel project. The report showed that CityLink tolls will generate more revenue for Transurban than tolls on the West Gate Tunnel, which are valued at nearly $11 billion (nominal) by 2044–45.. State Opposition leader Michael O'Brien described the Transurban toll deal as "Labor's Grand Theft Auto. Who does a deal where Transurban puts in $4 billion and gets $37 billion out of it"?
The proposed route underwent some modification since plans were first released. The final plan was for eastbound traffic using the Western Distributor to exit the West Gate Freeway via a tunnel portal near Williamstown Road. Vehicles will emerge from the tunnel near Whitehall Street in Yarraville, then ascend to a new bridge over the Maribyrnong River and onto an elevated road above Footscray Road, from where they will gain access to Swanson Dock at the Port of Melbourne, CityLink and the CBD via Docklands. A new link between the West Gate Freeway and Hyde Street—essentially the off-ramp and on-ramp component of the original West Gate Distributor—will allow placarded trucks carrying dangerous loads such as fuel to directly access the freeway network for either eastbound or westbound travel rather than use local streets.
In April 2017 the project was re-badged as the West Gate Tunnel.
A doubling of the length of the twin tunnels since the first plans were released led to a $1.2 billion blowout in construction costs over its initial $5.5 billion budget; in August 2021 Transurban revealed cost overruns linked to contaminated soil had risen to $3.3 billion, taking the total cost of the project to $10 billion, almost double the original estimate, although media reports claimed the blowouts were even higher, with a total cost as high as $11.9 billion. The Victorian government announced in December 2021 it would contribute another $1.9 billion to the construction costs, while Transurban would pay another $2.2 billion, and the builders would forego $1 billion, taking the total cost to $10.2 billion.
Business case A partly-redacted business case for the Western Distributor was released in December 2015. In a move that was later criticised by the Victorian Auditor-General, the business case also included lane widening and other freeway improvements on the West Gate and Monash Freeways, between 15 km and 60 km from the core West Gate Tunnel project. The business case concluded that the project had investment merit and would result in greater productivity, a more competitive port, less reliance on the West Gate Bridge and better liveability, particularly in the inner west. It found a benefit cost ratio (BCR) of 1.3 using "conservative state modelling" and explained: "What this means is for every $1 invested, the project will bring at least $1.30 benefit." With the Monash Freeway works excluded, the BCR was 1.1.
It highlighted two corridors that had been identified in the 2008 Investing in Transport–East West Link Needs Assessment infrastructure report by businessman Rod Eddington: a northern route connecting CityLink and the M80 under Footscray, and a southern route connecting CityLink and the West Gate Freeway in the vicinity of Williamstown Road. It said rapid traffic and population growth suggested the need for both corridors in the long term, but identified the southern route as the one that would produce benefits earlier and greater over time than the northern one. It said: "The southern corridor is likely to be a medium term solution. It accommodates future construction of the northern corridor and provides the 'real option' to defer significant investment in the northern corridor for 10 to 15 years. Pathway 1 (the southern route) addresses current needs ... it would also permit enhanced planning for the northern corridor in a more considered timeframe to optimise land use in the west and provide certainty to industry and residents."
The business case forecast that the tunnel project would carry approximately 25,000 to 35,000 vehicles a day in each direction across the Maribyrnong River by 2031, or a total of 50,000 to 70,000 in both directions. It said the majority of vehicles on the new route would originate from the outer west suburbs, with 20 to 25 percent of vehicles in the morning peak coming from the M80 Ring Road or Deer Park Bypass and 40 to 45 percent coming from the Princes Highway. It forecast that by 2031 16,000 to 22,000 vehicles would be taken off the West Gate Bridge as a result of the project, reducing the reliance on the West Gate Bridge for travel between the west and the CBD and eastern suburbs and providing greater redundancy in the road network. It said 9,000 to 11,000 trucks a day would use the route, which would remove 4000 to 6000 trucks a day from the West Gate Bridge and 2,500 to 3,500 trucks from Geelong Road.
The report noted that the arterial road network in Melbourne's west was used by trucks to access the port and industry in the inner west. It said: "These roads, located in largely residential areas, are disconnected, poorly configured and inadequate for such travel. Unless access is improved, the number of trucks on local inner west roads will more than double in 2031, reducing the liveability of the inner west and increasing pressure on Port activities." It said the tunnel project would reduce the number of trucks using local arterial roads, leading to improved amenity in the inner west. It also recommended extended truck curfews to help achieve that, urging fulltime curfews be imposed on Francis Street and Somerville Road through Yarraville and Seddon.
The project's business case provided "indicative" toll fees for using the 5 km road and tunnel of $3 for cars and $13 for trucks, although Transurban said it might exempt trucks carrying dangerous placarded goods as an incentive to remove those trucks from local streets. Trucks used as container shuttles might also qualify for a reduced toll price and daily cap to encourage them to avoid inner west streets.
Quizzed at a parliamentary accounts committee in June 2022, Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan did not answer questions on whether the $3.9 billion cost overruns for the project had diminished its cost benefit ratio.
Environment Effects Statement In May 2017 the state government released the project's Environment Effects Statement (EES), which assessed its environmental, social and health impacts. The community was given 30 business days to review the 10,000-page document and hearings began on 14 August 2017.