Railways in Melbourne
In February 2015, the State Government established the Melbourne Metro Rail Authority to oversee planning for new twin 9-kilometre rail tunnels through the central city between South Kensington station and South Yarra. The new Metro Tunnel will have five new underground stations and connect the Pakenham and Cranbourne lines with the Sunbury line, creating a new route through the CBD as an alternative to the City Loop. New underground stations will be created at Arden, Parkville, Domain and two new CBD stations, State Library and Town Hall. Enabling works were underway by 2016 and major construction work on the tunnel and stations began in 2017.The project has an estimated cost of $11 billion and is scheduled to be complete by 2025.
West Gate Tunnel
The West Gate Tunnel, originally known as the Western Distributor, is a 5 kilometre toll road currently under construction in Melbourne, Australia, to link the West Gate Freeway at Yarraville with the Port of Melbourne and CityLink at Docklands via twin tunnels beneath Yarraville. The $5.5 billion project was proposed by infrastructure company Transurban in 2014 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 freeway-standard link includes two tunnels with three lanes each that are approximately 4 km long outbound and 2.8 km long inbound, a new bridge over the Maribyrnong River, and an elevated road above Footscray Road. The project will also widen the West Gate Freeway from 8 to 12 lanes between the M80 Ring Road and the West Gate Bridge. The Victorian government announced in December 2015 it would proceed with the project. Major construction of the tunnel and elevated tollway began in January 2018 and is expected to be completed in 2022.