Deliveries notification

As work progresses on the West Gate Tunnel Project, there are large concrete segments manufactured in rural Victoria, that need to be delivered to our Footscray Road site, where we are constructing a number of bridges and an elevated roadway over Footscray Road.

The West Gate Tunnel Project will transport over 3,500 concrete segments for the elevated road to its Footscray Road site both during the day and at night.

Approximately 75 per cent of these truck deliveries will use CityLink, however some of the larger and heavier loads are restricted loads and will be delivered at night when roads are not as busy, because of their need to travel slower or take up more than one lane.

The delivery routes to Melbourne have been carefully planned in accordance with the Department of Transport (DoT) and the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) to avoid weight restrictions on some bridges and clearance restrictions on some overpasses.

Some deliveries will need to use Somerville Road and Francis Street at night, and while we appreciate diverting trucks onto local roads may mean some disruption for local communities, due to the size and weight of some of the pieces, there is no alternative  to get the material to where it is needed.

We know inner west communities are keen to get trucks off local roads – and while we will need to use roads through your neighborhood for a time – these deliveries are key to building the project which will ultimately lead to trucks being banned 24/7 on Francis Street and Somerville Road.

We will reduce the impact to people who live nearby as much as possible with the trucks traveling slowly and only using air brakes.

You can keep up to date on when our trucks will be using Francis Street or Somerville Road using our live calendar on our Benalla Deliveries webpage.  

When will these night deliveries start

• The overnight deliveries are scheduled to start from December 2020 and will continue for 2 years.
• The loads will travel through the inner west between the hours of 2am – 5am.
• There are a range of approved routes that may be used, five of which are from the M80/Western Ring Road and then through the inner west using either Francis Street or Somerville Road.
• There will around 15 trucks a week over a two-year period using these routes – of these some may be return journeys, while many will be one-way with the return journey via CityLink.
• The modern fleet of heavy trucks will have up to four escort vehicles with flashing lights, however this is not expected to disrupt nearby residential areas.
• The vehicles will travel at speeds between 5km/h and 40km/h so motorists need to be aware and only pass when it is safe.
• On average the vehicles will pass homes for just a few seconds and when required to stop at traffic lights etc, drivers will be instructed to use air brakes rather than engine brakes to reduce noise to nearby residents.

What to expect during delivery

The attached Fact Sheet provides more information about these and other loads, including an overview map of routes being used.

Table #1 below lists a summary of the approved Inner West Routes that will be used to deliver loads to the Footscray Road site.

Table #1

Table #2 below provides the expected number of deliveries over the next two years. Most of the empty trucks will make their return journey via CityLink.

Table #2

While this is the current status of deliveries, we will continue our engineering reviews with relevant road managers, transport designers and manufacturing plants to further reduce the quantities delivered via the inner west.

For updates and more information about our works, please visit the Benalla Deliveries webpage or call us on 1800 105 105.

Thank you

We appreciate our work can be disruptive and thank you for your understanding and cooperation.