Tuesday, 7 May 2024

West Gate Tunnel

Katie HALL (Footscray) (14:27): 2025 is going to be a very big year in Melbourne’s inner west. As well as the new Footscray Hospital and the Metro Tunnel opening, the West Gate Tunnel will be opening. The West Gate Tunnel will deliver for Melbourne’s inner west the road infrastructure that we need to get trucks off our roads. I am thrilled that in today’s budget there is an allocation of $10.2 million to deliver enforcement cameras across roads in Melbourne’s inner west, which will have a truck ban. Twenty-four hours, seven days a week trucks will not be allowed to go down those streets ‍– unless, for example, it is a Coles truck delivering groceries to someone’s house. They will be banned. For our community for decades we have been fighting for the road infrastructure we need to make sure that our air quality is improved and that we do not have to put up with trucks using local roads, because we just have not had the infrastructure that we have needed. So next year when the West Gate Tunnel project opens I am so pleased that we will have the enforcement cameras we need to make sure that the tunnel does what the tunnel is meant to do and keep trucks off local roads in Melbourne’s inner west.