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The Western Distributor is a proposed toll road in Melbourne, Australia, to link the West Gate Freeway with CityLink via a tunnel beneath Yarraville. The $5.5 billion project was proposed by infrastructure company Transurban in 2015 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 away from homes in the city's inner west. The 5 km freeway-standard link would include a 1.5 km-long, six-lane tunnel and a new bridge over the Maribyrnong River. It is planned to be completed by 2020. A change to part of the plans, in which off-ramps over a reserve would replace a section of tunnel, has sparked criticism of the project. ==Background and route== The project was presented to the Victorian government in March 2015 as an unsolicited proposal by Transurban, which offered to pay two-thirds of the cost of construction in exchange for a 10 to 15-year extension of its CityLink toll contract. The remainder of the cost would be borne by federal funds. The Victorian government began assessing the proposal in March and says it will make a decision by December. It has proposed that if the road was to proceed it would seek funds previously committed by the federal government to the abandoned East West Link project. The Victorian government is considering the road project as an alternative to its $680 million West Gate Distributor, which in turn was designed to replace the western section of the East West Link. The proposed route has undergone some modification since plans were first released. The current plan is for eastbound traffic using the Western Distributor to exit the West Gate Freeway via an off-ramp near Williamstown Road, then enter the tunnel whose entrance would be on industrial land to the north of the freeway. Vehicles would emerge from the tunnel near Whitehall Street in Yarraville, then ascend to a new bridge over the Maribyrnong River and merge with traffic on Footscray Road, from where they would gain access to Swanson Dock at the Port of Melbourne, CityLink and the CBD via Docklands. A new link between the Western Distributor and Hyde Street would 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. Under the original plans for the project, traffic moving between the Western Distributor and the West Gate Freeway would have done so via a tunnel portal in the centre of the freeway. In September 2015 Transurban released a modified plan, which it said was the result of public consultation, that moved the tunnel portal to a site near Stony Point Reserve, north of the freeway and between Hyde and Beverley streets. The move, which would result in the tunnel length being reduced by between 500 metres and 1 km, has attracted criticism over the likelihood of additional noise, pollution and visual impact from the use of twin off-ramps connecting the portal to the freeway. The ramps and portal would be within 100 metres of Yarraville homes. Critics claim the proposed new location of the tunnel portal would result in the loss of part of the reserve and the creation of a "spaghetti junction" of overhead freeway ramps. A new community group, Concerned Locals of Yarraville, was formed and a petition started to oppose the move. Toll fees for using the 5 km road and tunnel have been estimated at $3 for cars and $13 for trucks,〔 but Transurban says it may exempt trucks carrying dangerous placarded goods as an incentive to remove those trucks from local streets. 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「Western Distributor (Melbourne)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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