Monash Freeway
Monash Freeway | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Type | Freeway |
| Length | 34 km (21 mi) |
| Opened | 1973 |
| Toorak Road, Warrigal Road, Springvale Road, Stud Road, South Gippsland Freeway, Princes Highway | |
| Location(s) | |
| Major suburbs / towns | Chadstone, Mulgrave, Doveton, Narre Warren North |
| Highway system | |
Monash Freeway is a freeway linking Melbourne's CBD to its southeastern suburbs and the Gippsland region.
History
The Monash Freeway is an amalgamation of two initially separate freeways: the Mulgrave Freeway (initially designated 
) linking Warrigal Road, Chadstone to the Princes Highway in Eumemmerring; and the South Eastern Freeway (initially designated 
) linking Punt Road, Richmond and Toorak Road, Hawthorn East.
Mulgrave Freeway
Initial construction on the Mulgrave Freeway started in 1970 and was completed in 1973, with bi-directional interchanges with Heatherton and Stud Roads. Later in the 1970s and in the early 1980s it was progressively extended westward to Forster Road - with additional interchanges at Blackburn, Ferntree Gully, Wellington and Jacksons Roads (and eventually Police Road many years later) - then to Huntingdale Road, and finally to Warrigal Road in Chadstone. Construction at the Hallam end extended underneath an interchange at the Princes Highway and southwards along the old alignment of the South Gippsland Highway to the interchange with Dandenong-Hastings Road, now the Westernport Highway at Lyndhurst; this section was initially named the Eumemmerring Freeway, but later named the South Gippsland Freeway. The designation was dropped in 1988, coinciding with the opening of the South Eastern Arterial.
Interestingly at this time the Tullamarine Freeway also carried the route shield. A look at a 1969 freeway plan of Melbourne shows why. The two freeways were to be linked to each other from around East Malvern (at the Mulgrave Freeway end) and at Flemington (at the Tullamarine Freeway end), sweeping through the St Kilda area. The plan never came to fruition, however the two freeways have since been linked by the West Gate Freeway extension and the CityLink project.
South Eastern Freeway
Initial construction of the South Eastern Freeway had completed by the mid-1960s, connecting Burnley to Olympic Park at Harcourt Parade, which fed traffic to Punt Road at the Hoddle Bridge: an overpass across Punt Road quickly followed to end at Anderson Street and the Morell Bridge, with a single-carriageway feeder road to the Swan Street Bridge (and Batman Avenue) 800 metres beyond. The freeway was eventually further extended east from Burnley under the MacRobertson bridge along the Yarra, to Toorak Road (with a single-carriageway feeder road taking excess traffic to Burke Road), completed in 1971. Initially designated 
in the 1960s, it was later signed as until 1988, when the South Eastern Arterial was completed.
South Eastern Arterial link
The resulting gap between the Toorak/Burke Road end of the South Eastern Freeway and the Warrigal Road end of the Mulgrave Freeway frustrated drivers for many years, needing to rely increasingly on feeder roads to bridge the distance between them. The State Government proposed a road to connect them during the mid-1980s, before finally agreeing on an alignment and allowing construction to commence on a dual-carriageway link between the freeways; construction finished in 1988, and the link - and later the entire length of the now-connected freeway, from the city to Eumemmerring - was re-christened as the South Eastern Arterial; the new stretch of road also re-designated 
, with the Princes Highway (Dandenong Road) becoming an alternative route.
The project attracted a great deal of controversy just before it opened and well afterwards: in order to save costs, only one freeway-style interchange had been constructed (underneath High Street in Glen Iris). Every other interchange with major roads along the route (Toorak, Burke, Tooronga and Warrigal Roads) was an at-grade intersection controlled by traffic-lights, and due to the fact that the road was constructed through residential areas, reduced speed limits were also enforced. This led to heavy congestion, frequently kilometres long, on the freeway, fuelling anger and frustration, and even attracting a rather-apt moniker of "the South-Eastern Carpark".
With a change of government several years later and a lot of political showmanship, more money was poured into the link road, constructing underpassed interchanges at Toorak and Burke Roads (and just an underpass at Tooronga Road), and a new overpass across Warrigal Road. New noise barriers and extra lanes were also constructed, and the freeway 'upgrade' was completed and the entire length renamed back to the South Eastern Freeway, before changing name again to the now-current Monash Freeway, named after the Monash University and Local Government Area, and indirectly after Sir John Monash, an Australian soldier and engineer. The improved road dramatically improved the rate of out-bound traffic, however the bottleneck at the Swan Street bridge still remained and the queues only got longer. A portion of the Monash Freeway at the city end (from Toorak to Punt Roads) was eventually incorporated into the CityLink project in the late 1990s by way of tunnels underneath the city to link to the eastern-end of the West Gate Freeway, allowing for an uninterrupted voyage past the CBD.
Hallam bypass
The freeway was extended by 7.5 km in late 2003 when the Hallam Bypass was completed after 3 years of construction (also opening 6 months ahead of schedule and A$80 million under budget), connecting the Monash Freeway in Hallam to the Princes Freeway in Berwick. The sweeping curve of the freeway at the Hallam end that became the South Gippsland Freeway had its capacity reduced from three lanes to two, resulting in a notorious bottle-neck at peak hours, especially for out-bound traffic exiting at the Princes Highway interchange outside Dandenong; the extension finally bypassed the entire problem. Once completed, using the Monash Freeway made it possible to travel from Beaconsfield in the south-east of Melbourne, all the way into Corio in the north-east of Geelong - via CityLink and the West Gate and Princes Freeways, some 110 km - without stopping at a single set of traffic lights. The construction of the bypass also included the Hallam Bypass Trail shared path.
The entire stretch of the Monash Freeway bears the designation 
.
Interchanges
The Monash Freeway officially begins at the Princes Highway (Berwick) interchange from the Princes Freeway:
- Princes Highway
, Berwick: bi-directional - Narre Warren North Road
, Narre Warren: bi-directional - Ernst Wanke Road, Narre Warren: city-bound only
- Belgrave-Hallam Road, Hallam: bi-directional
- South Gippsland Freeway
, Hallam - Heatherton Road
, Endeavour Hills: bi-directional - Stud Road
, Dandenong: bi-directional - EastLink, Dandenong North (Currently under construction. Completion due in 2008): bi-directional (limited)
- Police Road/Jacksons Road,
, Mulgrave {Waverley Park): city-bound at Jacksons Road, out-bound at Police Road - Wellington Road
, Mulgrave: bi-directional (limited) - Springvale Road
, Mulgrave: out-bound only - Ferntree Gully Road
, Glen Waverley: city-bound only - Blackburn Road
, Mount Waverley: bi-directional (out-bound onramp off adjacent England Road) - Forster Road, Mount Waverley: bi-directional
- Huntingdale Road
, Chadstone: out-bound only - Warrigal Road
, Chadstone: bi-directional - High Street
, Glen Iris: city-bound only (onramp off adjacent Wills Street) - Burke Road
, Glen Iris: bi-directional - Toorak Road
, Kooyong: bi-directional
- After the Toorak Road interchange, the Monash Freeway comes under the southern link of CityLink and is tolled. The city-bound carriageway continues into the Domain Tunnel, CityLink, which joins the West Gate Freeway: the out-bound carriageway emerges from the Burnley Tunnel portal at Burnley.
See also List of Melbourne freeways