Monash Freeway

Monash Freeway
Basic data
Operator:	VicRoads
Start of the street:	CityLink; Kooyong ( Melbourne ) ( VIC ); ( 37 ° 51 ′ S , 145 ° 2 ′ E )
End of street:	Princes Freeway; Berwick ( VIC ); ( 38 ° 2 ′ S , 145 ° 19 ′ E )
Overall length:	34 km
States :	Victoria

Map with all coordinates: OSM | WikiMap

The Monash Freeway is an urban freeway in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne in the south of the Australian state of Victoria . It connects the EastLink in Kooyong with the eastern part of the Princes Freeway in Berwick , and thus the inner city of Melbourne with the western Gippsland .

history

The Monash Freeway was created from the merger of two originally separate freeways, the F81 , which connected Warrigal Road in Chadstone with the Princes Highway in Eumemmerring , and the South Eastern Freeway (F80), which connected Punt Road in Richmond and Toorak Road in Hawthorne East linked.

Mulgrave Freeway

Construction of the Mulgrave Freeway began in 1970 and completed in 1973. It had intersections with Heatherton Road and Stud Road . Later in the 1970s and early 1980s it was gradually extended west to Forster Road and had additional junctions with Blackburn Road , Ferntree Gully Road , Wellington Road and Jacksons Road , and then at the beginning –Mid-1990s, Police Road . Eventually Huntingdale Road and Warrigal Road in Chadstone were also connected. At the Hallam end, the freeway was extended under an intersection with the Princes Highway south on the old route of the South Gippsland Highway (A440) to the junction with Dandenong Hastings Road . Today this is the Westernport Highway (M780) in Lyndhurst . This section of the route was originally called the Eumemmerring Freeway , but later became the South Gippsland Freeway (M420). The Mulgrave Highway's F81 designation was abandoned in 1988 when the South Eastern Arterial Road opened.

Interestingly, the Tullamarine Freeway was also numbered as F81 at the time. This was due to the Melbourne Transportation Plan of 1969, which provided for two interconnected freeways - the Mulgrave Freeway in East Malvern and the Tullamarine Freeway in Flemington - both through St. Kilda . The plan was never carried out, but the two freeways have since been linked by the extension of the West Gate Freeway and the CityLink project.

Monash Freeway (formerly South Eastern Arterial) as seen from the footbridge at East Malvern Station

Traffic jam on the Monash Freeway during peak hours

South Eastern Freeway

The first stretch of the South Eastern Freeway was completed in the mid-1960s and connected Burnley to the Olympic Park on Harcourt Parade , which directed traffic onto Punt Road at Hoddle Bridge . A flyover over the Punt Road soon followed and ended at Anderson Street and Morell Bridge with a feeder without median to Swan Street Bridge and Batman Avenue 800 m further. The freeway was later extended from Burnley to the east, under the McRobertson Bridge and along the Yarra River to Toorak Road . It had a slip road with no median that diverted too heavy traffic to Tooronga Road . Part of this street still exists today. This construction work was completed in 1971. Originally numbered as State Road 80 (S80) in the 1960s, later as F80 until 1988 when the South Eastern Arterial Road was completed.

South Eastern Arterial Link

The remaining gap between the end of the South Eastern Freeway on Tooruk Road and Burke Road and the start of the Mulgrave Freeway on Warrigal Road frustrated motorists for many years as they increasingly had to rely on feeders to bridge the gap. In the mid-1980s, the state government proposed a connecting road before finally agreeing to a motorway link between the two freeways. Construction was completed in 1988 and the new road - and later the entire connected freeway - was named 'South Eastern Arterial'. The new road section was given the number R1, with the old Princes Highway (Dandenong Road) being designated as ALT-1.

This project was already very controversial during the construction period and afterwards. In order to save costs, only one intersection was upgraded to freeway standard, under the High Street in Glen Iris . All other intersections were level traffic light intersections and because of the route through densely populated areas there were low speed limits. This led to frequent traffic jams, often for miles, which in turn fueled the anger and frustration of motorists. They also called the new street South Eastern Carpark (Eng .: southeastern parking lot).

After a change of government and a lot of self-portrayal by politicians, more money was put into the connecting road, so that an underpass for Toorak / Burke Road and Tooronga Road and an overpass for Warrigal Road were retrofitted. There was also noise protection and additional lanes and the entire freeway was again called the South Eastern Freeway until a new name change made it today's Monash Freeway (after Sir John Monash (1865-1931), an Australian civil engineer and commander of the Australian Army in World War I.) . The new freeway attracted a lot more traffic and the bottleneck at Swan Street Bridge made the queues only longer. Part of the Monash Freeway (from Tooruk Road to Punt Road) was integrated into the CityLink project at the end of the 1990s and connected to the West Gate Freeway with tunnels so that the city center can be crossed without crossing.

Hallam bypass

Before the construction of this bypass, the gentle curve of the freeway at the Hallam end, which became the Gippsland Freeway, reduced the lane width from six to just four lanes. This was a notorious bottleneck at peak times, especially for out-of-town traffic at the junction with the Princes Highway outside of Dandenong . The bypass eventually bypassed this point and with it the problem.

When the Hallam bypass went into operation at the end of 2003, after 3 years of construction, the freeway was extended by 7.5 km and now connected the Monash Freeway in Hallam with the Princes Freeway in Berwick. The road section was opened to traffic 6 months before the planned completion date and cost AU- $ 80 million less than calculated because an important connection, that of the South Gippsland Freeway to the Hallam bypass in Eumemmerring , was omitted. This renunciation, however, caused avoidable in neighboring streets.

expansion

In 2007 the government announced a major upgrade of the Monash Freeway by widening the lanes from Glenferrie Road to Heatherson Road . Up to 160,000 vehicles use the highway every day, which led to traffic jams at peak times. The expansion began in late 2007 and was completed in late 2009.

Course and road conditions

The Monash Freeway begins at the south end of the CityLink (M1) on Toorak Road . Here it has eight lanes, with the directional lanes being very close to each other and separated by concrete barriers. This section has street lighting. It runs through the suburbs of Malvern, Glen Iris and Malvern East .

After Warrigal Road , the route of the freeway widens, which now has a wide, green median strip and guard rails. The street lighting has been omitted. The freeway runs through the suburbs of Chadstone, Mount Waverley, Mulgrave , Dandenong , Hallam, and Narre Warren . There it turns into the Princes Freeway. The Hallam bypass, the newest part of the freeway, has four lanes.

Important junctions and junctions

Monash Freeway
Connections to the north	Exit No. Distance to Melbourne	Connections to the south
At the end of the Monash Freeway, continue as CityLink to Melbourne	- (9 km)	Start of the Monash Freeway from CityLink
Toorak , Burwood Toorak Road	E4 (9 km)	Start of the Monash Freeway from CityLink
Caulfield, Camberwell Burke Road	E5 (11 km)	Camberwell, Caulfield Burke Road
no exit	E6 (12 km)	Glen Waverley, Glen Iris High Street
RAILWAY LINE TO GLEN WAVERLEY	- (16 km)	RAILWAY LINE TO GLEN WAVERLEY
Oakleigh, Chadstone Warrigal Road	E7 (17 km)	Chadstone, Oakleigh Warrigal Road
Huntingdale, Burwood Huntingdale Road	8 (18 km)	no exit
Clayton, Mount Waverley Forster Road	9 (20 km)	Mount Waverley, Clayton Forster Road
Edithvale, Blackburn Blackburn Road	10 (21 km)	Blackburn , Edithvale Blackburn Road
no exit	11 (22 km)	Ferntree Gully, Mount Dandenong Ferntree Gully Road
Springvale, Glen Waverley Springvale Road	12 (23 km)	no exit
Oakleigh, Ormond Wellington Road	13 (25 km)	Rowville, Emerald Wellington Road
no exit	14 (27 km)	Mulgrave, Noble Park Jacksons Road
Springvale, Dandenong North Police Road	15 (28 km)	no exit
TOM WILLS JUNCTION Ringwood EastLink	16 (29 km)	TOM WILLS JUNCTION Ringwood, Frankston EastLink
Dandenong , Rowville Stud Road	17 (31 km)	Rowville, Dandenong Stud Road
Dandenong North, Endeavor Hills Heatherton Road	18 (33 km)	Endeavor Hills, Dandenong North Heatherton Road
Cranbourne, Hastings South Gippsland Freeway	19 (36 km)	Cranbourne, Hastings South Gippsland Freeway
Hallam, Endeavor Hills Belgrave-Hallam Road	20 (38 km)	Endeavor Hills, Hallam Belgrave-Hallam Road
no exit	21 (39 km)	Ernst Wanke Road
Cranbourne, Belgrave Narre Warren North Road	22 (42 km)	Belgrave , Cranbourne Narre Warren North Road
Start of Monash Freeway on from Princes Freeway East	23 (44 km)	Berwick , Dandenong Princes Highway
	- (44 km)	At the end of Monash Freeway, continue as Princes Freeway East to Warragul / Traralgon