Drivers in Melbourne's south-east will get home faster and spend less time stuck in traffic when the brand-new Mordialloc Freeway opens on Sunday.
The new nine-kilometre freeway will link the Mornington Peninsula Freeway at Springvale Road in Aspendale Gardens to the Dingley Bypass in Dingley Village, creating a non-stop connection from Frankston and the first completely new freeway since Peninsula Link.
From Sunday, travel times will be slashed in the morning and evening peak between Dingley Bypass and Springvale Road, with the freeway taking more than 13,000 trucks off nearby arterial roads, giving local roads back to residents.
Five bridges have been built over Springvale, Governor, Lower Dandenong, Centre Dandenong, and Old Dandenong Roads, with a sixth twin bridge over the Waterways wetlands to ensure rainfall and natural light reaches vegetation below.
A shared user path spans the entire length of the freeway, offering a safer route for cyclists and pedestrians.
Since construction began in 2019, more than a million hours of work has been completed on the project, creating 400 jobs and supporting thousands more through supply and manufacturing.
The Mordialloc Freeway has used around 800,000 tonnes of recycled and reused materials.
It includes the world's first recycled plastic noise walls, which has also bolstered the projects reputation as Australia's greenest freeway.
A total of 10,000 noise wall panels have been made with 570 tonnes of plastic waste sourced from a mix of hard plastics, such as milk and shampoo bottles, from kerbside recycling, as well as soft plastics like food packaging.
Recycled plastic has also been used in drainage pipes and to reinforce concrete on the shared walking and cycling path, as well as recycled glass in asphalt, recycled concrete in road base, reclaimed asphalt pavement and landscaping mulch made of pine pallets.
One of the state's biggest employers of Victorians living with a disability - Yarra View Nursery - has also supplied more than one million plant for the alignment, growing their workforce by almost 10 per cent.
The new freeway will open progressively to traffic from 11am on Sunday 21 November. The $523 million Mordialloc Freeway has been funded by the Victorian Government and delivered by Major Road Projects Victoria.
