In the bustling city of Melbourne, a transformative project has been underway, reshaping the landscape and skyline, while improving connectivity from the city’s west.
With a staggering 200,000 vehicles relying on the West Gate Freeway and iconic West Gate Bridge every day, one incident on this critical link is enough to bring traffic to a standstill
This Big Build project is set to redefine the city’s transport infrastructure.
The West Gate Tunnel Project will offer simpler and faster connections to the Port of Melbourne, Citylink tollway network and Melbourne’s CBD, saving up to 20 minutes per trip from the west.
With the new lane configuration of three collectors/distributors as well as three express lanes in both directions, drivers can look forward to much less of the dreaded ‘peak hour queuing’ after an incident.
Once complete, the tunnels under Yarraville, elevated structures on Footscray Road and across the Maribyrnong River, are set to remove up to 9000 heavy vehicles per day off suburban streets, as well as simplify and improve driver safety on the trip.
The tunnels are 4km and 2.8km long and currently hold bragging rights for being the largest tunnels of their kind (by diameter) in the Southern Hemisphere.
Over at our West Melbourne concrete operation, the team has been busy delivering various highdurability, low-carbon concrete mixes to the tunnel portal structures and the elevated roadway section of the project. Low-carbon concrete and the use of ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBFS) and fly ash in place of cement have helped to significantly improve the project’s sustainability credentials.
Roadway support corbels inside the tunnel are being installed using our high-durability steel fibre-reinforced concrete, a unique solution requiring a tight quality management regime.
A true team effort
Boral is working with the main contractors CPB and John Holland Joint Venture to deliver this project for Transurban.
A dedicated Boral Asphalt project team has been working on this big infrastructure investment since 2018 from the pricing stage to executing and installing the works across the project.
Our Deer Park asphalt plants have so far supplied 440,000 tons of asphalt to the project, with products ranging from a high per cent recycled asphalt product (RAP) for the deep lifts, to 14mm wearing courses with a modified binder and an open-grade asphalt. The open-graded asphalt offers a ‘whisper’ effect in significantly reducing road noise, as well as an increased skid resistance in wet weather.
Every one of our Victorian asphalt and spray seal crews have been involved in this mammoth project, and an asphalt crew from Toowoomba in Queensland even dropped into the city for a few months to lend a hand in the summer campaign.
Together these crews have worked 95,000 hours to get this Asphalt build to where it is today, with around a third of the work occurring at night and on weekends.
The project is expected to be completed in 2025, and our teams will continue to play a big part in the final stages of Building Something Great for all Victorians.