It’s not just at road level that the Hall Road Upgrade is reshaping life for locals in Cranbourne and Carrum.
While our Hall Road Upgrade crews have recently reopened the new-look Western Port Highway and Hall Road intersection, there has also been a monumental amount of work underground on the project with 1874 culverts now installed across the project.
Upgrading the drainage throughout this area has been a major aspect of the Hall Road Upgrade and required the creation of immense drainage systems across the breadth of the project.
Installing the 1874 culverts – massive underground concrete channels to carry water away from major structures such as homes or roads – helps ease flooding events and take huge stormwater surges away from Hall Road and surrounding properties. Each of these culverts weigh between 1 to 8 tonnes.
Crews upgraded entire drainage systems to help prevent flooding to the area by capturing and storing excess floodwater before releasing it slowly over time.
The ongoing works under the new eastbound lanes and recently completed works at Taylors Road will ensure that all rain downfall is able to pass under the road, and any rainfall run-off from the new lanes on Hall Road are stored and gradually released.
These culverts work in tandem with existing stormwater drainage systems in the region as well as the 7 retention basins installed across the project will hold up to a total of 7 million litres of water, equivalent of over two-and-a-half Olympic swimming pools.
The largest retention basin is located at Western Port Highway and Hall Road and can hold 2.5 million litres. This basin was installed August 2023 and stores water runoff from traffic lanes before slowly releasing it into the stormwater drainage network.
Another retention basin was built at the intersection of Hall, Evans and Cranbourne-Frankston roads in June 2023 and measures 4000 square metres and can hold up to 1.9 million litres.
An 8 week construction blitz has been completed at the Hall Road and Western Port Highway intersection where the existing roundabout has been removed, and new lanes and traffic lights are being installed. We can now coordinate the traffic lights along 6 kms of highway between Thompsons Road and Cranbourne-Frankston Road to ensure traffic moves smoothly.
In June, the new Hall, Evans and Cranbourne-Frankston roads intersection was opened to traffic, followed by the new intersection with traffic lights at Hall and McCormicks roads in August. The intersection of Taylors and Hall roads is also being upgraded, with the southern leg of the intersection complete and works underway to finish the northern leg by early 2024.
With several major construction blitzes planned for the remainder of the year in Cranbourne, including the Narre-Warren Cranbourne Road Upgrade, Camms Road Level Crossing Removal and City of Casey projects on South Gippsland Highway and Ballarto Road, we'd like to advise drivers to plan ahead and travel outside of peak periods if they can minimise delays.