Pennant Hills Road has been labelled the most congested traffic corridor in Australia and it is now a step closer to being unclogged, with excavation work starting on the first NorthConnex tunnel shaft.
The shaft will provide access for workers and machinery to start construction of a nine-kilometre underground road tunnel, which will remove traffic from the heavily congested Pennant Hills Road.
NorthConnex will link the M1 Pacific Motorway at Wahroonga to the Hills M2 Motorway at West Pennant Hills via twin tunnels (with capacity for three lanes in each direction), providing a continuous free flowing motorway bypassing 21 surface traffic lights.
Tunnel shafts will be excavated to a depth of up to 93 metres (at Wilson Road) below ground surface, providing a launch point for road headers which will tunnel to the north and south.
Federal Assistant Infrastructure Minister Jamie Briggs said in a statement that NorthConnex is yet another example of the Australian and NSW Governments building critical road infrastructure for Sydney.
“An Infrastructure Australia national audit revealed Pennant Hills Road as the most expensive road in the country, based on cost of delays caused by congestion. NorthConnex will fix this,” he said.
“With traffic congestion currently costing Sydney over $6 billion per year, a figure set to grow to $28 billion a year by 2031 under a do nothing scenario, we are building the vital game changing projects the state needs.
“The project will save motorists 15 minutes travel time compared to Pennant Hills Road, support 8,700 jobs, and inject around $4 billion dollars into the NSW economy.”
Major tunnelling work is expected to commence later this year, with full project completion expected in 2019.