PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Melbourne CityLink, in its entirety, is a six-lane 14-mile motorway. There are two links: the southern and western link, plus two tunnels, a bridge, and an elevated roadway. CityLink also provides seamless links to three existing freeways by connecting the Tullamarine Freeway, West Gate Freeway, and the South Eastern Arterial via two tunnels, a new 30-metre high bridge across the Yarra River, and 14 miles of new freeways. As part of building the link, parts of the Monash and Tullamarine freeways were upgraded and tolls imposed on them.

The CityLink project was constructed between 1996 and 2000. It is the largest build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) project in Australia.

Tolls are charged by distance traveled that are then used to finance debt and pay distributions to shareholders.  CityLink is Australia's first fully electronic toll road, with no toll booths and tolls collected either through transponders or license plate image recognition technology. This project was the second application of open road tolling, with the prototype installed along a major east-were bypass highway to the north of Toronto, Canada, with the development of the Express Toll Road (ETR 407) in the mid-1990s.

The project uses innovative overhead structures near residential areas instead of sound walls to significantly reduce the level of noise heard by residents of these nearby communities that is produced by users of the highway. An example of these overhead noise reduction structures are shown in Exhibit 4.5 below.

Exhibit 4.5 Melbourne CityLink Noise Reduction Structure