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Instead, the Victorian public has contributed about $4 billion to the project, while disputes over toxic soil have delayed its opening until now and doubled the ultimate construction cost.
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Labor came to power in 2014 promising ramps for trucks to get from the West Gate Bridge into and out of the increasingly congested Port of Melbourne. They were to cost $500 million.
But then-premier Daniel Andrews and then-infrastructure minister Jacinta Allan abandoned the scheme. Instead, they cut a deal with Transurban to build twin tunnels under the Maribyrnong, an elevated six-lane tollway and widen the West Gate Freeway.
These will finally open at the weekend, but motorists will pay for more to use the road than was suggested when it was announced.
A Transurban document released when the project was first publicly shows the company pledging to charge car drivers “around $3 in today’s prices” to use the road. That would be about $3.86, adjusting for inflation.
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On Friday, it was confirmed that car drivers wanting to enter the city during the weekday morning peak using the road would be charged $10.63, and $4.09 at other times.
Asked about this on Friday, Allan disputed whether the $3 figure had ever been floated.
“I’m not sure if the first figure you quoted was in real term dollar figures or in today’s figures, but the tolling prices that have been set here today are comparable to other parts of our road network,” she said.
Speaking on Friday, Allan said the project’s 2.8-kilometre in-bound tunnel would be named Bundawanh, meaning he or she dug in the Bunurong language. The four-kilometre outbound tunnel will be named Eureka.
On Saturday, the government will hold an event for those involved in its construction to celebrate the project’s completion.
The new highway comprises 6.8 kilometres of tunnels and 9.2 kilometres of elevated roads and flyovers linking Melbourne’s west with the CBD.
The first section of the project – a 1.4-kilometre Wurundjeri Way flyover – opened to the public in late October.
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Motorists travelling into the city from Melbourne’s west or Geelong are expected to save up to 20 minutes on their journey.
As part of a thank-you deal to motorists and residents in the area who have endured years of construction chaos and road closures, travel will be free at weekends in January.
A truck ban will come into effect on six roads in the inner west when the tunnel opens on Sunday.
Roads Minister Melissa Horne said on Friday that enforcement of the ban would initially focus on “education” for freight companies.
The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator would decide if and when to fine truck drivers who violated the ban and would consider how many times a particular driver had been caught, Horne said.
Transurban is paying for $6.1 billion of the West Gate Tunnel’s construction costs in exchange for operating tolls on the new road and a 10-year extension to its CityLink contract, which will deliver billions in additional toll revenue until 2045.
The tolling giant successfully pitched the West Gate Tunnel to the Andrews government in 2014 immediately after the new state government terminated the contract to build the East West Link.
The deal eventually secured by the company allowed it to not only toll the new road but extended its lucrative CityLink concession deed, locking in revenue streams from Melbourne motorists for decades longer than originally contracted.
Major construction began in early 2018, and the first contracted signed had its completion date as September 2022.
But the project, which extends from the West Gate Freeway in Yarraville to CityLink in Docklands, was plagued by the discovery of toxic soil and a legal stand-off between the state government, Transurban and the project’s builders, which contributed to the three-year delay and a $3.4 billion budget blowout.
The stalemate over costs was so toxic that at times construction ground to a halt and staff were sent home or made redundant with little notice.
One of the giant tunnel boring machines required to dig the tunnel sat idle in the ground until the issue of PFAS-contaminated soil could be resolved.
This included a protracted process to find a site to handle soil after it was excavated.
No locations were legally permitted to handle soil at the level of contamination found in sections of the project, placing pressure on the government and the Environmental Protection Authority Victoria to assess bids from three companies and eventually award a licence to Hi-Quality at Bulla.
The project was also regularly interrupted by the CFMEU, whose long-running dispute with one of the major builders, CPB Contractors, spilled out into walk-offs and demarcation battles.
The union walked off the West Gate Tunnel as recently as October. However, by this point much of the civil construction work had already been completed.
