New lanes on Bulleen Road are now open – a day earlier than scheduled.
Drivers can now travel on the new 700m section of road that includes a safer signalised intersection at Bulleen Park Access Road, however speeds will stay at 40km/h for today, Monday 4 December.
Over the past 10 days, North East Link crews have worked around the clock to build a new section of Bulleen Road and create the space needed for the new tunnel entrance and Yarra Link green bridge.
The new road will mean traffic can keep moving on the busy Bulleen Road as tunnelling gets underway from mid 2024.
A crew of more than 200 people worked to build the new lanes between Thompsons Road and Trinity Grammar, reusing 60,000 tonnes of soil from North East Link’s Watsonia site and more than 8000 tonnes of asphalt for the northbound and southbound lanes.
The work was carefully planned to minimise disruptions to the community and maintain access to the Veneto Club, local schools and shops, homes and sporting grounds.
Construction teams will continue to work over summer to assemble the massive tunnel boring machines (TBMs), build the TBM launch and retrieval boxes, and build the temporary traffic staging for the Manningham Road interchange, ahead of tunnelling starting in 2024.