|
The West Gate Distributor is a proposed toll road in Melbourne, Australia, to provide access between the West Gate Freeway and the Port of Melbourne, primarily for heavy freight vehicles. The project, estimated to cost $680 million, was promised in 2013 by the then Victorian Labor Opposition to allow an estimated 5000 trucks a day to bypass the congested West Gate Bridge. The project is Labor's alternative to the Napthine government's controversial $18 billion East West Link, which it cancelled in April 2015. Labor promised to have contracts for the West Gate Distributor project signed within six months of forming government following the 2014 state election, and said the road would be completed by 2018. The project would involve the construction of new lanes on a section of the West Gate Freeway and on-ramps and off-ramps connecting to a new elevated road along Hyde Street, Yarraville. The route would continue along a widened Whitehall Street and Moreland Street towards Footscray Road, from which trucks could enter the port precinct. The government says a decision to proceed with the project will now hinge on the assessment of a rival project, the $5.5 billion Western Distributor, which was an unsolicited proposal by infrastructure company Transurban. ==Background== Plans for the West Gate Distributor project were announced on 19 November 2013 as part of the Labor Party's Project 10,000 transport plan, which promised a range of major road and rail improvements that would provide a transport alternative to the Coalition government's East West Link toll road. Labor said the projects would create a total of 10,000 construction jobs in Victoria. An artist's representation of the road contained in the Project 10,000 public document showed a two-lane off-ramp for eastbound freeway traffic, located east of the Westgate golf course and Williamstown railway line. The off-ramp continues as an elevated two-lane road that crosses Stony Creek and sweeps northwards to merge with Hyde Street, south of Francis Street. A parallel two-lane road would allow southbound vehicles on Hyde Street to exit, then cross Stony Creek, pass under the West Gate Freeway and merge with westbound freeway traffic. Lanes would also be added in each direction on the West Gate Freeway between Williamstown Road and the Western Ring Road. Labor's plan is based on a proposal in Sir Rod Eddington's 2008 East-West Link Needs Assessment report, which had recommended the implementation of a Truck Action Plan that would include a new link from the West Gate Freeway to the port via Hyde Street in a bid to reduce truck movements on Francis Street and Somerville Road. The Truck Action Plan was a supplement to a new 18 km east-west cross-city road link.〔Investing in Transport: East West Link Needs Assessment, a study by Sir Rod Eddington, March 2008, Introduction, page 14; chapter 9, pg 220.〕 The Eddington study had found that total daily truck movements to and from the Port of Melbourne could more than double from 9000 to 23,000 by 2035.〔Investing in Transport: East West Link Needs Assessment, a study by Sir Rod Eddington, March 2008, chapter 6, pg 160, 162.〕 The announcement of the West Gate Distributor project marked a switch in strategy by Labor leader Daniel Andrews, who in October 2012 had spoken in favour of a second major river crossing in Melbourne's inner western suburbs to provide a road alternative to the West Gate Bridge. Andrews had criticised the Government's staging of the East West Link—announced a month earlier—and urged that the western part of the project should proceed first. From mid-2013 Andrews began opposing construction of the entire East West Link. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「West Gate Distributor」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|