{"id":372651,"date":"2026-02-20T12:37:44","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T02:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=372651"},"modified":"2026-02-20T12:37:47","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T02:37:47","slug":"the-ghost-town-that-is-the-west-gate-tunnel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=372651","title":{"rendered":"The Ghost Town that is the West Gate Tunnel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Traffic data from the $10 billion West Gate Tunnel has been released, showing it has taken one-fifth of commuters off the bridge. Transurban says it would be concerned if there was already congestion in the tunnel, but some commuters have described it as a ghost town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video aligncenter\"><video height=\"270\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 480 \/ 270;\" width=\"480\" controls src=\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Wn-rcU8sLBzQzWbr.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This is amounting now to putting lipstick on a pig.  Only 20% of those using the tunnel which is only 20% of the total traffic volume are trucks.  That is to say only 5% of truck journeys are using the West Gate Tunnel.  How could this be described as anything a complete disaster for a project that was &#8220;allegedly designed&#8221; as a new route for trucks?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In what could only be described as a con how is it cheaper for trucks to use the West Gate tunnel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Additionally, it is not much of a tunnel with 1\/2 of the road above ground being described as &#8220;a blight&#8221; on the skyline of Melbourne.  Traffic planning experts advised against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=331436\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Tim Pallas and the West Gate Tunnel \u2013 Already a failure?\">commencing this project<\/a> and were ignored. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Transurban&#8217;s assessment of success for this project is amounting now to putting lipstick on a pig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":331437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[993,14757,8,11623],"class_list":["post-372651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","tag-melbourne","tag-transurban","tag-victoria","tag-west-gate-tunnel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=372651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":372690,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372651\/revisions\/372690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/331437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=372651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=372651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=372651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}