The first section of CityLink – the Western Link that includes the Bolte Bridge – opened 25 years ago this month.
The road has become a major fixture in daily Melbourne life as the three major freeways – the Tullamarine, the West Gate and the Monash – all feed traffic into the city centre.
Before CityLink, motorists who needed to get from Melbourne’s southeast to the north or west or vice-versa had to drive through the city centre, including down Swanston Street.
CityLink has also been responsible for some of Melbourne’s notable landmarks – the Bolte, the Cheese Stick (correct title: The Melbourne International Gateway), the Burnley and Domain tunnels – or those night-time drives through the colourful Sound Tube. The light displays on the Sound Tube and the Bolte Bridge are for more than visual enjoyment – they’re also often lit up to draw awareness to important causes.
Back in the 1990s, CityLink was Melbourne’s biggest-ever road project by a wide margin. It was also a major engineering feat that, along with the construction of the Bolte Bridge, also included building the two tunnel, and posed technical challenges such as tunnelling under the Yarra River.
The project was also innovative for its road technology approach. The tag on your vehicle windscreen is no big deal today but it was a real game-changer in the 1990s – most toll roads around the world at that time were managed via tolling booths. Electronic tolling was so new CityLink was the first road in the southern hemisphere to adopt it.
Customers using CityLink today gain travel-time savings of up to 30 minutes – same as 15 years ago – even with Melbourne’s population growing by around 1.3 million during this same time period.
