Warringah Freeway Upgrade / WHT / Beaches Link (Australia)

[Peter Freeman]

Introducing three major new road projects in Sydney, Australia:

Warringah Freeway Upgrade (WFU), Western Harbour Tunnel (WHT), and Beaches Link (BL).

1. The Warringah Freeway lies just north of the harbour, and is part of the M1 and the Sydney Orbital. Northbound, it receives traffic from both the Harbour Bridge and the existing Harbour Tunnel, and feeds traffic onto the M2 Hills Motorway and the A1 Pacific Highway. It is wide (16 lanes max), complicatedly braided, and has an AADT of 250,000 (AU's highest flow). The upgrade's purpose is to accommodate the WHT and BL tunnels, providing three new twin portals, so it must be the first of the three projects. It will simplify the braiding too, making the freeway easier to use. The design includes a DDI at its Falcon Street interchange. The upgrade is underway now.

2. Sydney Harbour Bridge opened in 1932. The Harbour Tunnel joined it in 1992. 2022 brings a third crossing: the WHT. Its southern end will connect, via the underground 'Rozelle Interchange', with the M4 and M8. Its northern end will merge with the northbound Warringah Freeway. It will relieve City West Link, the Western Distributor, the Harbour Bridge, the Harbour Tunnel, and the Eastern Distributor. That's most of inner Sydney's motorways, so it's the most widely beneficial of the three projects. The under-water part will be, like the existing Harbour Tunnel, a prefabricated immersed tube. Edit: now changed to using a TBM. Other parts will be excavated by roadheader. Southern approach works have already begun.

3. The BL will bypass current inadequate roads leading to Sydney's Northern Beaches suburbs. It will branch eastwards from both northbound and southbound directions of the Warringah Freeway. Start of works on this third and final component might be some years away.

Web sites -

WFU: https://caportal.com.au/rms/wfu
WHT: https://caportal.com.au/rms/wht
BL: https://caportal.com.au/rms/bl
Warringah Freeway (existing): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warringah_Freeway

[Peter Freeman]

In June 2023, after the Australian Labor Party (ALP) won NSW state government from the Liberal Party, Sydney's Beaches Link (BL) Motorway project was, for budgetary reasons, "shelved indefinitely". This is not quite the same as 'scrapped', but ... . The WFU and WHT projects, already underway, continue, and will still incorporate provision for the BL connections.
EDIT: In August 2023, the NSW Labor governmount further announced that the Beaches Link Motorway project would be scrapped. I hope that a future revival will not be deliberately sabotaged.

Sydney's other in-construction motorway tunnel projects, Rozelle Interchange and M6, also continue. Rozelle, including its important Iron Cove Link, is projected to open late this year.