Monash Freeway

The initial section of the Mulgrave Freeway was opened to traffic in 1972,[4] with bi-directional interchanges with Heatherton and Stud Roads. Later in the 1970s and in the early 1980s it was progressively extended Eastward to Forster Road - with additional interchanges at Blackburn, Ferntree Gully, Wellington and Jacksons Roads (and eventually Police Road during the early to mid 1990s) - then to Huntingdale Road, and finally to Warrigal Road in Chadstone. Construction at the Hallam end extended underneath an interchange at the Princes Highway and southwards along the old alignment of the South Gippsland Highway to the interchange with Dandenong-Hastings Road, now the Westernport Highway at Lyndhurst; this section was initially named the Eumemmerring Freeway, but later named the South Gippsland Freeway.[4] The Freeway Route 81 designation was dropped in 1988, coinciding with the opening of the South Eastern Arterial.

At this time the Tullamarine Freeway also carried the Freeway Route 81 route shield. This was due to the 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan having the two freeways linked to each other from around East Malvern (at the Mulgrave Freeway end) and at Flemington (at the Tullamarine Freeway end), sweeping through the St Kilda area. The plan never came to fruition, but the two freeways have since been linked by the West Gate Freeway extension and the CityLink project.

Monash Freeway (former South Eastern Arterial) viewed from the footbridge at East Malvern Station

• 1972 - Mulgrave and Eumemmerring (South Gippsland) Freeways - 5.6 km from the Princes Highway, Hallam to Stud Road, Dandenong North, opened 21 November 1972.[4]
• 1974 - 7.5 km opened 1974 from Springvale Road to Stud Road $9.3 million.[5]
• 1976 - Opened from Springvale Road to Blackburn Road, 15 December 1976.[6]
• 1977 - Opened from Blackburn to Forster Road, 5 April 1977, by the Hon J A Rafferty, Minister for Transport. This section along with the previous section opened in 1976 cost a total of $13m.[6]
• 1979 - 2.1 km from Huntingdale Road to Forster Road, with three lanes each direction, plus emergency stopping lanes, opened 12 December 1979, by Minister for Transport, the Hon Robert Maclellan MLA, at a cost of $8.7m.[7]
• 1981 - 1.6 km from Huntingdale Road to Warrigal Road, with two lanes each direction, plus emergency stopping lanes — opened 24 June 1981, by Minister for Transport, the Hon Robert Maclellan MLA, at a cost of $11m. ‘Opened one week after the 20th anniversary of the opening of Victoria's first freeway, the Maltby Bypass Road near Werribee, on 16 June 1961'.[8]

Initial construction of the South Eastern Freeway had been completed by the mid-1960s, connecting Burnley to Olympic Park at Harcourt Parade, which fed traffic to Punt Road at the Hoddle Bridge: an overpass across Punt Road quickly followed to end at Anderson Street and the Morell Bridge, with a single-carriageway feeder road to the Swan Street Bridge (and Batman Avenue) 800 metres beyond. The freeway was eventually further extended east from Burnley under the MacRobertson Bridge along the Yarra, to Toorak Road, with a single-carriageway feeder road taking excess traffic to Tooronga Road. (Part of the road still exists along the Home Hardware store which can be seen from the Tooronga road overpass of the Monash Freeway.) The Punt Road overpass and elevated section of road over the Yarra River and Gardiners Creek were designed by Melbourne engineer Bruce Day. The first and second stages were completed in 1971. Initially designated State Route 80 in the 1960s, it was later signed as Freeway Route 80 until 1988, when the South Eastern Arterial was completed.

Traffic slowed to a crawl on the Monash Freeway in peak hour traffic

The resulting gap between the Toorak / Burke Road end of the South Eastern Freeway and the Warrigal Road end of the Mulgrave Freeway frustrated drivers for many years. Motorists had to rely on inadequate feeder roads to connect between the two freeways. Construction on a dual-carriageway at-grade road link between the two freeways began in the mid-1980s. The link opened to traffic on 21 December 1988 at a cost of A$152 million, originally with two lanes in each direction.[9] Soon after opening, the link, as well as the South Eastern Freeway and the Mulgrave Freeway, were renamed the South Eastern Arterial. This road assumed the National Route 1 route number from the Princes Highway, which became an alternative route.

The project attracted a great deal of controversy just before it opened and well afterwards: in order to save costs, only one freeway-style interchange had been constructed (underneath High Street in Glen Iris). Every other interchange with major roads along the route (Toorak, Burke, Tooronga and Warrigal Roads) was an at-grade intersection controlled by traffic-lights, and because the road was constructed through residential areas, reduced speed limits were also enforced. This led to heavy congestion, frequently kilometres long, on the freeway, fuelling anger and frustration, and even attracting a rather-apt moniker of "the South-Eastern Carpark".

With a change of government several years later and a lot of political showmanship, more money was poured into the link road, constructing underpass interchanges at Toorak and Burke Roads (and just an underpass at Tooronga Road). A new overpass across Warrigal Road was opened in June 1994, at a cost of $15m.[10] In 1997 the name changed from ‘South Eastern Arterial’ to ‘South Eastern Freeway’ after upgrade works, including noise reduction measures, new landscaping and improvements to the adjacent cycle path. The works cost a total of $112m. The official ‘opening’ was held on 20 March 1997.[11] The name later changed again to the now-current Monash Freeway, so named by Premier Kennett after General Sir John Monash, a renowned Australian soldier, engineer, scholar and nation builder. The improved road dramatically improved the rate of outbound traffic, however the bottleneck at the Swan Street Bridge still remained and the queues only got longer. A portion of the Monash Freeway at the city end (from Toorak to Punt Roads) was eventually incorporated into the CityLink (Toll road) project in the late 1990s by way of tunnels underneath the city to link to the eastern-end of the West Gate Freeway, allowing for an uninterrupted voyage past the CBD. Tolls were introduced to this section of the Monash Freeway between Toorak Road and Punt Road.

Before this bypass was constructed, the sweeping curve of the freeway at the Hallam end that became the South Gippsland Freeway had its capacity reduced from three lanes to two, resulting in a notorious bottle-neck at peak hours, especially for outbound traffic exiting at the Princes Highway interchange outside Dandenong; the extension finally bypassed the entire problem.

The Monash Freeway was extended by 7.5 km in July 2003 when the Hallam Bypass was completed after 3 years of construction, linking the Monash Freeway to the Princes Freeway in Berwick. It opened 17 months ahead of schedule and A$10 million under budget (total cost A$165 million).[12] This was due to the omission of one key interchange that should have linked the South Gippsland Freeway with the Hallam Bypass at Eummemmering. This omission causes unnecessary congestion on neighbouring roads as northbound South Gippsland Freeway traffic must exit the freeway at Princes Highway only to join the same freeway again from Belgrave-Hallam Road eastbound.

The Monash Freeway allows travel from Morwell in the central Latrobe Valley, to Winchelsea south-west of Geelong - via CityLink, the West Gate, the Geelong Ring Road and Princes Freeways. Motorists can cover over 260 km and only encounter traffic lights at Yarragon and Trafalgar, which are yet to be bypassed. The construction of the bypass also included the Hallam Bypass Trail shared path.

In 2007, the state government announced a major upgrade widening the lanes from Glenferrie Road through to Heatherton Road. Prior to this, over 160,000 vehicles per day used this freeway resulting in congestion during peak hours. The upgrade started in late 2007 and was completed in 2010. The entire project was known as the Monash-CityLink-West Gate upgrade, and was being carried out by VicRoads and Transurban.[13]