FREEWAY FEE WAY

This article describes Australia's largest current construction project, the building of Melbourne's City Link road, which will be Melbourne's first toll road. Although the Government of Victoria is the client, the full #950M construction cost will be privately financed. Melbourne's centre has always been congested by traffic passing through the city's three radial motorways. The new road will link the South Eastern arterial road with the Westgate freeway via two tunnels, and then link with an improved Tullamarine highway to take traffic north to the airports. Transurban City Link, a specially formed company, won the 34-year concession to build, finance, and operate the new motorway. The road will also have a new 490m long cable stayed bridge across the River Yarra, which requires the construction of an artificial island in the river. The whole project must be completed and open to the public by December 1999, but could be finished up to six months earlier; construction began in June 1996. The longer of the two three-lane tunnels, 2.8km long, is being driven by roadheader; the shorter tunnel, 1.1km long, also uses a roadheader, but has about 400m of cut and cover tunnel at each end. Melbourne is built on basalt rock, overlaid by water-filled gravels, then alluvial silts and clays.