July 2026

Before the West Gate Tunnel opened, Victorians were told it would solve one of Melbourne’s most persistent transport headaches. The promise was simple: take heavy trucks off suburban streets, improve safety for local communities and create a faster freight route to the Port of Melbourne.

Instead, we’ve ended up with the opposite outcome – because the tolls are unaffordably high.

According to a Herald Sun report by Grace Frost and Brendan Kearns on 21 July 2026, the number of heavy trucks using key residential streets in Melbourne’s inner north has tripled since the tunnel opened. Rather than using the new infrastructure, many truck operators are choosing suburban roads to avoid exorbitant toll charges.

It raises an obvious question: what was the point of spending billions of dollars on a tunnel designed to remove trucks from local streets if the pricing model simply drives them straight back onto those same streets?

This is another example of governments failing to understand one of the most basic principles of economics. People respond to incentives.

Melbourne’s West Gate Tunnel opened to traffic in December 2025 after facing multiple delays. The final construction cost reached approximately $10.2 billion, nearly double its original $5.5 billion budget.

The tunnel was supposed to become the preferred freight corridor because it offered a quicker and more efficient connection to the port. But governments and Transurban decided to add a pricing structure that effectively punishes operators for using it.

Heavy vehicles face tolls of more than $20 for a single trip or over $50 for a 24-hour pass. For transport businesses operating on tight margins, those costs add up quickly. It’s hardly surprising that many drivers have looked for alternative routes.

The Victorian Transport Association has made precisely that point. Chief executive Peter Anderson says transport companies are under significant financial pressure and constantly looking to minimise operating costs because every additional expense eventually flows through to higher prices for consumers.

That’s not truck drivers behaving irresponsibly. That’s businesses reacting exactly as any business would.

Meanwhile, the consequences are being felt by residents.

The City of Melbourne says almost three times as many six-axle trucks are now travelling along Kensington Road and Epsom Road, with massive articulated vehicles passing schools, childcare centres, parks and residential neighbourhoods every day.

Residents are understandably unhappy. More than 1,000 people have signed petitions demanding action, and the council is now seeking 24-hour truck bans, turning restrictions and lower speed limits.

But those measures are treating the symptom rather than the disease.

The disease is a pricing model that has completely undermined the original purpose of the project.

If you make the intended freight route significantly more expensive than the alternatives, you shouldn’t be surprised when freight companies avoid it.

Governments love announcing multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects, but too often they undermine their own investments through poor policy decisions afterwards.

The West Gate Tunnel itself has hardly been a model of competent project management. It opened three years late and more than $4 billion over budget following years of disputes over contaminated soil and escalating construction costs.

After all those delays and cost blowouts, Victorians were entitled to expect the finished project would at least deliver its central promise.

Instead, we’re debating why more trucks are using suburban streets than before.

Even more remarkably, there appears to be disagreement between the City of Melbourne and the Department of Transport over truck routing, with arguments about mapping directions and approved freight routes. While bureaucracies argue over who is responsible, residents continue living with increased truck traffic.

This is what happens when governments focus on building infrastructure but fail to think through how people will actually use it.

Road users don’t make decisions based on glossy government brochures. They make decisions based on travel times and costs.

If tolls make the designated freight route uneconomic, truck operators will naturally seek cheaper alternatives wherever regulations allow.

The solution isn’t endless new bans, lower speed limits or blaming truck drivers. Those measures simply push the problem from one suburb to another.

The obvious solution is to fix the pricing structure.

If governments genuinely want heavy vehicles using the West Gate Tunnel, they need to make it the most attractive option, not the most expensive one.

The West Gate Tunnel was sold as a project that would remove trucks from residential streets. The latest traffic figures suggest it has achieved precisely the reverse.

That’s not a failure of truck drivers.

It’s a failure of policy.