By Peter Lowndes
The West Gate tunnel project commenced in 2018 as a solution to the traffic woes in Melbourne’s west. The goal was to ease the increased congestion and unburden the West Gate Bridge. The bridge had become a sole beast of burden, straining under the weight of the vehicles that use it.
We were told the West Gate tunnel would be completed by 2022. But 2022 came and went, as did 2023 and 2024. There were delays and dramas, plus Covid lockdowns, which all escalated the traffic trauma and prolonged the tunnel’s completion.
Even the elderly gents who linger about staring at construction sites gave up watching this one progress.
Having lived at the coalface in Spotswood throughout the tunnel construction I can say that it has been a journey. It’s been a long journey, an epic journey, a never-ending journey that has so far brought nothing but grievances to those in the west.
So I have processed this West Gate tunnel ordeal using the Five Stages of Grief model, immortalised by Elisabeth Kubler Ross. Through this non-linear grievance process, I have been able to reach some closure after the opening of the West Gate tunnel.
The first stage was denial. The denial kicked in after reading something about the tunnel taking 9000 trucks off the inner west roads. Try as I may, I just could not visualise those 9000 trucks all disappearing down this tunnel.
Then the Covid lockdowns came to town and the roads of the inner west roads miraculously emptied. Covid gave me a glimpse of the west without traffic and I liked what I saw.
The lockdowns came and went. The traffic returned as the West Gate tunnel construction project was in full swing, and it seemed as if every registered Victorian vehicle had descended upon the area.
Acceptance was next; we were told that there would be a little bit of pain for a lot of gain. This acceptance lasted a year before it dawned that there was a lot more pain than gain in this equation. The pain was piqued by the endless traffic disruptions crippling the west. With streets gridlocked in all directions came actual acceptance that this big build was a really big pain in the arse.
After accepting my fate, the depression stage followed. It started each morning after I opened the blinds and saw the conga line of stagnant cars in my street all trying to get on to the Westgate bridge.
This melancholia manifested itself in the form of not wanting to leave the house. For beyond the front door, the heavy burden of traffic loomed large. A drive to the shops was now a gambit requiring counsel with my Google Maps crystal ball.
Next up was anger. Anger that this was going to go on longer than we were originally told. For some, the anger began in 2018 and has yet to subside. For me, it peaked one day around 2020 when the area was gridlocked again and I was late for an interview.
Want to know how angry I got? I was so angry that I almost posted a comment on the West Gate Tunnel Project Facebook page. I was going to ball them out over their incompetency, the endless disruptions and the all-round mess created by this vexatious tunnel.
But when I hopped on the Tunnel Project Facebook page, I saw that others had posted my exact thoughts already. The page was a go-to hub for venting your anger to fellow commuters.
The final stage for me was bargaining, the stage where we apply alternative ‘what ifs’ or ‘if only’s’ to the situation. What if I elected to live in the north instead of the west, was one. What if the state had elected Liberal rather than Labour, was another. And what if Melbourne had been built some place that wasn’t on a river, like Cranbourne or Gisbourne. Some big what ifs indeed.
After working through the five stages of grief I now find myself at the end. It remains to be seen whether the West Gate tunnel will bring an end to traffic congestion in the west. I am hopeful that a light is to be found at the end of this tunnel and that this light can change the colours in the west from red to green.
