When it opens early next year, a tunnel beneath Sydney will save commuters up to 40 minutes of journey time.
Bypassing up to 52 sets of traffic signals between St. Peters and Haberfield, the Westconnex “missing link” will join the current M4 and M8 tunnels, linking Sydney’s west with the airport.
The 7.5 km tunnel is expected to take commuters only eight minutes to complete, cutting the transit time between Parramatta and Mascot during rush hour by as much as 40 minutes.
The current route from Parramatta to Sydney Airport requires drivers to leave the M8 at Homebush, get onto the A3, go through Greenacre, and then merge onto the M5 at Roselands. This potentially 30- to 40-minute ride is often slowed down by traffic.
The new link will cost $5.65 for passenger cars to use; this distance-based toll has a ceiling of $10.47 for usage of the whole 33 km Westconnex network.
On Sunday, Transurban CEO Andrew Head extended an invitation to local residents and media to see the tunnel.
According to Mr. Head, “The concrete and the steel have been put, but what we’re doing right now is testing the tunnel.”
We have all the different items you need to guarantee a safe voyage, like ventilation systems, lighting, cameras, speakers, and more.
A car halting or reversing in the tunnel may be detected by an automatic incident vehicle protection system, which notifies employees and emergency services.
The new link now has a number of additional safety technologies and systems that “relate to fire, that relate to watching traffic, recognizing issues and deploying personnel to attend to those occurrences as rapidly as we possibly can,” Mr. Head said.
According to Terry Chapman, project director for Transurban, “This asset is really genuinely world class and it’s a tremendous tribute to the designers and all the folks that worked on the tunnel.”
In order to prevent “GPS dropouts,” Westconnex has also partnered with popular navigation app Waze to deploy more than 1500 navigation beacons in the M4, M8, and M5 East.
The cost to utilize the tunnel for heavy trucks will initially be $16.95.
The M4 to M8 link will be used by upcoming developments such the Rozelle interchange, Western Harbour Tunnel, and Sydney Gateway once it is finished.
»$5.65 Westconnex Sydney tunnel skips 52 traffic signals«