West Gate Distributor

The West Gate Distributor was a proposed toll road in Melbourne, Australia, to provide access between the West Gate Freeway and the Port of Melbourne, primarily for heavy freight vehicles. The project was eventually scrapped in favour of a similar project known as the Western Distributor (now known as the West Gate Tunnel, which is currently under construction).

The project, estimated to cost $680 million,^[1] was promised in 2013 by the then Victorian Labor Opposition to allow an estimated 5000 trucks a day to bypass the congested West Gate Bridge. The project was Labor's alternative to the Napthine government's controversial $18 billion East West Link, which it cancelled in April 2015. Labor promised to have contracts for the West Gate Distributor project signed within six months of forming government following the 2014 state election, and said the road would be completed by 2018.^[2]

The project would have involved the construction of new lanes on a section of the West Gate Freeway and on-ramps and off-ramps connecting to a new elevated road along Hyde Street, Yarraville. The route was to continue along a widened Whitehall Street and Moreland Street towards Footscray Road, from which trucks could enter the port precinct.^[3]

The government awarded a contract in December 2015 for the first stage of the project, which was for road widening, signalling and bridge works, and that work was completed in mid-2017.^[4] Plans for further work on the project were abandoned when the government opted in April 2017 to instead proceed with a rival project, the $5.5 billion West Gate Tunnel,^[5] which was an unsolicited proposal by infrastructure company Transurban revealed in March 2015.^[6]