A rare look inside Victoria's West Gate Tunnel project | 7.30

The ABC ought to make a parody show about this sort of thing….

What a co incidence the independent new road just happens to link with the existing partners toll.... Such a robust process..omfg

When will we learn that car dependent infrastructure is not IT. If you wanted to move large amounts of cargo, just use trains. Unlike trucks, they dont damage roads at huge magnitudes greater than cars, add to traffic , dangerous for collisions, hugely inefficient and roads being far more economically and environmentally costly. I feel bad for the engineers. We need to push our politicians to de-car our freight and passenger transportation where possible.

As someone who lives in the west, I don't care about cost overruns. Just get it built. We need it.

I love the clip where they say it will take trucks off the local network. Every truck in the clip had dangerous goods placards so they can’t use the tunnel!

Widening roads, adding roads and tunnels etc won't fix the problem in the slightest bit. We've got a very out dated mentality in this country about urban and suburban planning. We've got one central city that services every suburb for more than 75km in any direction when going west (Geelong being 76km and Ballarat 100km). We realistically need to de-centralize from Melbourne CBD and think of building cities away from "The city". We've got the industrial sector in the west which is growing once more, we've got countless new estates and suburbs popping up especially around the Werribee/Hoppers crossing area and roads that are outdated leading to the city. A secondary city in the west could alleviate a lot of traffic by allowing business' to move their trading away from the CBD or even the East. This may alleviate some of the traffic coming from the ports, but honestly most of the trucks coming from the ports going west use Footscray road, they're note going to detour to use the tunnel and then re-bottleneck at the ring road. Only time will tell, but I get the feeling this will make no difference in the short or long term.

And dont forget Transurban were gifted an additional 10 yes TEN years of tolling on the Monash / Tunnels / Tulla network - which have no interaction with this new tunnel. We will be paying transurban forever.

There is 100000% chance this alleviates traffic in Melbourne, as has every road, tunnel and bridge that's ever been built before. All of those solved traffic too. More 4WDs on the road, the better for all!

Every extra dollar spent on this project means one less dollar spent on other projects, such as the Airport Rail Link, Geelong Fast Rail, Level Crossing Removal Project, SRL, North East Link, Tram Accessibility Upgrades, City Loop Safety Upgrades, Regional Rail Revival, M80 Rind Road Widening, other Major Regional Road Projects, the list goes on.

The list of more worthy projects is painfully long. More traffic, more pollution, and an additional freeway where single occupant vehicles will sit at a standstill. A truly visionary project.

So we pay triple the cost with our hard earned taxes, and they will probably put a toll on it and hit us again!

I think regional roads have been heavily neglected in order to pay for Melbourne's major infrastructure projects. However, the need for the West Gate Tunnel is undeniable.

Thanks ABC for this video titled "a rare look inside the West gate tunnel" which comprises of virtually no look inside the actual tunnel.

public infrstructure should have no commercial interests involved ... BUT if it does it should not just be one. Transurban should be one of many tolling companies , it is absolutely insane. Banana republic territory

Original cost of tunnel 6.5 billion dollars, estimated finish date 2024. Current cost 12 billion dollars, no scheduled finish date. Expected cost 25 billion dollars, finishing date beyond 2030. I love it when the project engineer say's, the biggest project in the Southern hemisphere, there is only NZ, South America and the Antarctic in the Southern hemisphere as countries go.

Just one more lane bro

Still going to back up at the Burnley tunnel. All this work goes into 3 lanes

Offer Politicians a Kickback and they will agree to anything.

East west link phase 1 was going to go from eastern freeway to Tulla fwy. Eventually it was going to link up with Westgate fwy (basically where this tunnel is)or the other option was to western ring road. It would have been finished by now. But here we are with a freeway leading to a dead end at Dynan rd and the eastern fwy still leads to a dead end at hoddle st.

it’s basically the western half of the EWL isn’t it