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Lane Cove Tunnel

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South/Eastbound Entrance

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Inside the Lane Cove Tunnel

The Lane Cove Tunnel is a AU$1.1 billion, 3.6km twin tunnel in Sydney, Australia. The tunnels link the Gore Hill Freeway with the M2 Motorway at North Ryde. The tunnel was opened on Sunday, March 25 2007, two months earlier than when it was contractually due to open on May 9 2007.[1] The operator, Connector Motorways, gave the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) 30 days notice of opening on Friday, February 23. There was a toll-free period lasting for one month upon the initial opening of the tunnel (as occurred with the Westlink M7). The toll now costs $2.55 for Passenger Vehicles and $5.09 for Heavy Vehicles, both eastbound and westbound (Toll Prices).

A joint venture between Thiess and John Holland Construction were awarded the $1.1 billion contract from the (RTA) to construct and run the tunnel for a 33 year lease.

Previously, motorists had to drive along Epping Road through the suburb of Lane Cove, for the few kilometres between the two freeway sections. The tunnel is designed to improve the flow of traffic coming into the Sydney CBD from the fast-growing Northwest suburbs in the Hills District and the northern parts of Western Sydney. The new road has a toll each way. When the surface road changes are completed, the existing Epping Road will have 24 hour bus lanes each way, a larger median strip and other measures to move motorists towards using the new tunnel.

The tunnel was heavily criticised by the Lane Cove Tunnel Action Group, particularly through the use of placards located prominently by the side of Epping Road between Centennial and Parklands Avenues, for the tunnel's lack of air filtration.

Construction collapse

On 2 November 2005 at Lane Cove a hole appeared under a block of road facing apartments that decended through to a branch of the main tunnel. The hole was six metres wide and between eight to ten metres deep.

Occurring next to the Pacific Highway overpass at the start of the Gore Hill Freeway, the collapse caused traffic chaos for a few days. This branch tunnel was for the Pacific Highway off-ramp. Workers excavating the tunnel using a roadheader struck a pocket of underground water at around 2am local time which then began to flood the tunnel. The workers fled and escaped injury, but the emptying of the pocket of water made the soft rock (while most of Sydney is sandstone, there are regions of shale, such as in the area of the collapse) and soil fall down to fill the hole. This area of the tunnel was directly below the corner of an old block of units, and opened up a ten metre deep hole from the surface to the tunnel floor. The unit block then began to fall into the hole, beginning with the ground floor corner unit directly above the hole.

Police evacuated the residents of the unit block in the middle of the night. As a result, no one was injured or killed by this incident. After the evacuation police used robots to determine the stability of the units. One resident bird "Tweety" was rescued in the process. Workers then spent several days filling the hole with the contents of 180 concrete trucks, burying the AU$5 million dollar roadheader at the bottom of the tunnel in a concrete mausoleum. Efforts then began to shore up the unit block with steel supports, in the hope that it could be made stable enough that residents could safely return to collect their belongings.

With the closure of the offramp for the ensuing weeks, frequent bus services such as the 536 (Gladesville - Chatswood) service were re-routed, and the popular bus stop along Epping Road was relocated. Theiss offered to purchase units in the two affected blocks.

Falcon Street Gateway

The "Falcon Street Gateway" - are a new set of north facing ramps on the Warringah Freeway. The toll costs $1.27 for Passenger Vehicles and $2.55 for Heavy Vehicles (Southbound and northbound) Toll Prices at which on a per kilometre basis, they are the most expensive in Sydney. Connector Motorways promote that by using the new ramps, up to 19 sets of traffic lights can be avoided. The ramps were insisted upon by the RTA without having to spend taxpayer dollars (in addition to the widening of the Gore Hill Freeway), so the toll collected at the Falcon Street Gateway will also help fund the expanded Gore Hill Freeway.

2007 Election

The Labor government has been accused of interfering in the tunnel project to increase its re-election chances in the March 2007 election. The tunnel's expected late-2006 opening was pushed back to "January or February", closer to the poll date.[2] This timeframe was missed and the opening was announced to be March 25th, the day after the election.

In December 2006, it was announced that surface road changes designed to funnel traffic into the new, tolled, tunnel would be delayed until after the election. The delay, which will likely cut into tunnel revenues, was agreed to by the operators at a cost to taxpayers of $25 million.[3][4]

Though the government and Connector Motorways denied that the payment was improper, the opposition and media were incensed.

The Sydney Morning Herald described the payment as a "bribe" and a "political rort". According to a Herald editorial, "The use of public funds to compensate Connector Motorways for delays to road changes around the tunnel is ... as cynical a piece of political jobbery as Sydney has seen in many a long year."[5]

References

  1. ^ "$1.1bn Sydney tunnel opens". news.com.au. 2007-03-25.
  2. ^ "Tunnel launch branded as an opportunistic election ploy". Sun-Herald. 2006-12-17. Retrieved 2007-01-28.
  3. ^ "Iemma's $25m election bribe". The Sydney Morning Herald. 2006-12-08. Retrieved 2007-01-28.
  4. ^ "Government pays tunnel operator $25m". News.com.au. 2006-12-08. Retrieved 2007-01-28.
  5. ^ "Public money down the tunnel". Editorial. The Sydney Morning Herald. 2006-12-11. Retrieved 2007-01-28.
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