williamstown road and the west gate tunnel
The Government’s own traffic projections showed that once the West Gate Tunnel was operational, truck numbers on Williamstown Road would double. Those traffic projections were contained in documents created for the West Gate Tunnel Project’s Environment Effects Statement (EES) by consultants GHD.
Why would they double? Two main reasons.
1. WEBB DOCK. Legislated 24/7 truck bans on the east-west routes of Somerville Road, Francis Street and Buckley Street have stopped trucks travelling through the inner west to reach Swanson Dock and Appleton Dock at the Port of Melbourne via Whitehall Street and Footscray Road. They are forced to use the West Gate Tunnel instead. But trucks travelling north-south between the vast container parks in Tottenham/Brooklyn and Webb Dock, which they access via West Gate Bridge, will continue to use Williamstown Road, linking with Sunshine Road and Geelong Road. Many of those trucks are old and high-polluting vehicles, emitting levels of pollution as much as 60 times that of modern trucks meeting Euro 5 and 6 emissions standards.
Container trade through the Port of Melbourne is rising relentlessly: in 2024 the port handled the equivalent of 3.4 million 20-foot containers, a 9 percent increase over the previous year — but by 2055 it will handle 7.1 million. By 2068 it will be 15 million. Nine in 10 of those containers are carried by truck. The port forecasts that without greater use of rail and longer, higher-capacity trucks, the number of trucks visiting the port each weekday could triple in the next 25 years — from 11,000 to 34,000. The bulk of the growth will be at Webb Dock. This article explains the issue well, and answers why we currently have so many container trucks on residential streets of the Inner West.
2. NEW TOLLS FOR TRUCKS. As part of the West Gate Tunnel project, the state government struck a deal with Transurban: more lanes would be added to the West Gate Freeway, but Transurban would add new tolling gantries between Millers Road and Williamstown Road just for trucks. Now that the tunnel is open, truck operators must pay a toll to use the freeway, regardless of whether they use the new tunnel or not. Even with toll caps, many truck operators pay as much as $178 a day. How can they avoid them? Simple: exit the freeway and use Geelong Road and Williamstown Road instead. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of truck drivers may choose to take the cheap route past homes rather than remain on the “freeway” and pay a punitive toll. In short, the tolls create a huge financial incentive for operators to exit the freeway and drive past homes instead.
The doubling of truck numbers will make Williamstown Road unsafe for pedestrians, cyclists and car drivers. It will also negatively impact on the health of road users and residents of the surrounding area (see the supporting evidence). The City of Maribyrnong already has the highest rate of asthma-related child hospital admissions in Victoria. The diesel pollution fallout zone covers any home within 200 metres of Williamstown Road. The fallout zone includes a large number of homes, small businesses, sporting facilities and schools in Seddon, Kingsville and Yarraville.
From A (Container Park in Tottenham) to B (Port of Melbourne) via Sunshine Road and Williamstown Road.
Williamstown Road Cannot Cope with 5,000 Trucks a Day
The introduction of No Truck Zones on a range of inner west streets in late 2025 ignores the tunnel project’s own projections for massive increases of truck traffic on Williamstown Road and Millers Road. The exemption of Williamstown Road from 24-hour truck bans in the City of Maribyrnong will undoubtedly funnel a huge increase in trucks rumbling past our homes.
Williamstown Road: the new Francis Street
The state government recognised that truck numbers on the infamously busy and polluted truck thoroughfare of Francis Street were unacceptable. After years of community pressure led by the Maribyrnong Truck Action Group, it introduced 24/7 truck bans to protect residents and school students. The official projections for truck numbers after the opening of the West Gate Tunnel confirm that Williamstown Road will become the new Francis Street, a toxic truck route. Why doesn’t Williamstown Road deserve the same protection?
How can billions be spent on the West Gate Tunnel, only to shuffle the truck problem around the corner?
Without truck bans, almost 5,000 trucks a day will soon be thundering their way down Williamstown Road daily, creating more noise and vibration for residents, making it more dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers and spewing out far greater amounts of toxic diesel exhaust into the air we breathe.
WE SUPPORT LOCAL INDUSTRY and welcome local truck deliveries
We acknowledge that some trucks are servicing our local community and these vehicles are always exempt from truck bans. Local businesses require access to their properties, however most trucks are darting down our roads towards non-local destinations. The constant ferrying of empty containers back and forth between the Port of Melbourne and storage yards in the West is not sustainable.
MARIBYRNONG, WHERE OLD DIRTY TRUCKS GO TO DIE
A 2021 study by AustRoads showed that modern, efficient and less polluting trucks are allocated to long and profitable journeys. The task of shuttling containers to and from the Port — with many of those journeys through local residential streets of the Inner West — are relegated to older, unsafe, noisy and heavily polluting trucks. The Truck Industry Council has noted that almost 42 percent of the nation’s truck fleet was manufactured before 2003 when little, or no exhaust emission regulation existed — and more than 25 percent of all trucks were manufactured before 1996 when no emission standards existed at all. The TIC says: “These trucks are polluting at rates 60 times that of trucks complying with the current Australian regulation.” Or expressed differently: “It would take SIXTY of today’s trucks to emit the PM emissions of ONE pre-1996 truck.” (Emphasis theirs) Sickening? Yet they will make up the bulk of the 5000 trucks the Andrews Government will be diverting to Williamstown Road.
