Eastern Freeway (Victoria)

Eastern Freeway
Basic data
Operator:	VicRoads
Start of the street:	Alexandra Parade Collingwood ( Melbourne ) ( VIC ) ( 37 ° 48 ′  S , 144 ° 59 ′  E )
End of street:	M3 EastLink Donvale ( Melbourne ) ( VIC ) ( 37 ° 48 ′  S , 145 ° 11 ′  E )
Overall length:	18 km
States :	Victoria
Eastern Freeway into town from the Belford Road flyover at Kew

 Map with all coordinates: OSM | WikiMap

Hoddle Street from the east

The Eastern Freeway is an urban freeway in the eastern part of Melbourne in the south of the Australian state of Victoria . It connects Alexandra Parade in Collingwood with EastLink in Donvale . It is one of the most important routes for rush hour traffic in Melbourne and has six to ten lanes. The right-hand lanes are reserved for vehicles with two or more passengers at peak times.

history

During its construction in the early 1970s, the Eastern Freeway was reserved as Freeway Corridor F19 and was to be connected to the then new Tullamarine Freeway and the Maroondah Highway . Protests from local residents ensured that the freeway ended on Hoddle Street . Initially the new freeway was numbered as F83, later it was named State Road 83 (S83). Today he bears the number M3. The freeway was completed in four stages from 1977 to 2008:

• Level 1: From Hoddle Street to Bulleen Road; opened in December 1977
• Level 2: From Bulleen Road to Doncaster Road; opened on June 3, 1982
• Level 3: From Doncaster Road to Springvale Road; opened in December 1997
• Step 4: From Springvale Road to Frankston Freeway (= EastLink )

Originally, the freeway was supposed to end at the intersection of the Maroondah Highway and Mount Dandenong Road . It should create the connection to the originally planned Eastern Ring Road (see Ring Road (Melbourne) ) and the last step of this freeway was the EastLink including the Ringwood bypass , which was opened in July 2008.

The first step of the freeway ran from Hoddle Street to Bulleen Road met with a lot of resistance because it ran through the middle of Yarra Bend Park , which was then a national park. The first two stages should allow the construction of the railway line to Doncaster, which should run in the middle of Bulleen Road. The pillars for the bridges had to be placed outside the particularly wide central strip.

A strip of land was also reserved for the construction of the East Doncaster railroad, but that project was dropped in the 1980s and the land was sold. In recent years, increasing traffic jams and increasing awareness of the traffic problems in Melbourne have massively increased the pressure on the state government from the Local Councils of Melbourne, Yarra and Manningham and from the public to build this railway line after all. The final stage of the freeway, which was completed in 2008, connected the freeway to the Ringwood bypass (S62), the Monash Freeway (M1) and the Frankston Freeway (S11).

course

The Eastern Freeway begins at the intersection with Hoddle Street as the eastern continuation of Alexandra Parade ( referred to as the Eastern Highway in VicRoads documents ). There the carriageway to the east has five lanes, while the carriageway to the west has only two lanes. Three more lanes to the west come to the east of the intersection (you turn off towards Hoddle Street). At the Chandler Highway in Yarra Bend , the freeway narrows to eight lanes.

Shortly before he reaches Bulleen Road , the width of the freeway is reduced to six lanes and the median is just a concrete barrier. Between Tram Road and Blackburn Road , the freeway is again four lanes for a short stretch, then six lanes to Springvale Road . The EastLink (M3) connects there. Before this freeway was built in 2008, the Eastern Freeway was the only freeway in Melbourne that was not connected to any other freeway.

Expansion plans

There has been much speculation that the Eastern Freeway on Hoddle Street would be tunneled to the CityLink (Western Link) and the Western Ring Road .

On March 1, 2007 the Labor Government presented a study on the connection of the large freeways, which had been carried out by the expert Rod Eddington . However, this was heavily criticized because it did not contain enough information about traffic flows. The government announced that the plan would later be implemented in stages. So far, however, only the intention to build a small western section has been confirmed.

Speed ​​limits

There is a speed limit of 100 km / h on the entire freeway. There are no fixed radar systems for surveillance, but the police regularly patrol the entire freeway. VicRoads installed cameras to monitor the flow of traffic.

Crossings and junctions

Eastern Freeway
Connections to the west	Distance from Melbourne city center (km)	Distance to Frankston (km)	Connections to the east
At the end of the Eastern Freeway, continue as Alexandra Parade to Parkville / Footscray	4th	62	Start of the Eastern Freeway from Alexandra Parade
RAILWAY LINE TO SOUTH MORANG / RAILWAY LINE TO HURSTBRIDGE			RAILWAY LINE TO SOUTH MORANG / RAILWAY LINE TO HURSTBRIDGE LINE
Richmond , Clifton Hill Hoddle Street
Kew , Ivanhoe Chandler Highway	7th	59	Ivanhoe, Kew Chandler Highway
no exit	10	56	Heidelberg , Camberwell Burke Road
Kew , Bulleen Bulleen Road	12	54	Bulleen, Kew Bulleen Road
			Templestowe Thompsons Road
Balwyn North , Doncaster Doncaster Road	14th	52	Doncaster , Balwyn North Doncaster Road
no exit	16	50	Doncaster , Burwood Elgar Road
Box Hill, Doncaster Station Street / Tram Road	17th	49	no exit
Mount Waverley, Templestowe Middleborough Road / Wetherby Road	18th	48	Templestowe, Mount Waverley Wetherby Road / Middleborough Road
no exit	20th	46	Warrandyte , Blackburn Blackburn Road / Surrey Road
Start of the Eastern Freeway further from the EastLink	22nd	44	Donvale, Nunawading Springvale Road
			At the end of the Eastern Freeway, continue as EastLink to Ringwood / Frankston

map

swell

• Eastern Freeway . Google Maps .
• Steve Parish: Australian Touring Atlas . Steve Parish Publishing. Archerfield QLD 2007, ISBN 978-1-74193-232-4 , p. 41.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stephen Cauchi: Whatever Happened to the Proposed Railway to Doncaster East . Newsrail, Volume 26, Issue 2, pp. 40-44. Australian Railway Historical Society (Victorian Div.)
2. ↑ How to Fix Melbourne's Woes . NoTunnels.org ( Memento of the original from August 20, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ^ Eastern Link History . Ozroads