Works are under way on the West Gate Tunnel tollway, despite key legislation around the project still missing and a push for alternatives to the project.
Premier Daniel Andrews visited a worksite on Whitehall Street in Footscray last Wednesday to announce works had begun for two tunnel boring machines to begin their excavation in 2019.
Mr Andrews said the tollway project remains the only viable way to remove “the blight” of container trucks from residential streets.
“Unless you build this alternative you will never get trucks out of local roads,” he said.
The works began just days ahead of Friends of the Earth Melbourne’s launch of an alternative transport strategy, Mobilise Melbourne: A Community Plan for Transport.
Friends of the Earth sustainable cities spokesperson Rachel Lynskey said governments have repeatedly failed to listen to the community about planning and transport in Melbourne.
“We’ll be presenting these … ideas to all state political parties, calling on them to ramp up investment in sustainable transport initiatives,” she said.
The Coalition and the Greens have vowed to use their numbers in Parliament’s upper house to block the tollway project by refusing to pass the legislation needed to extend Transurban’s tolling of CityLink for a further decade.
Benjamin Millar
