The Domain Tunnel is a road tunnel located in

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

, Australia, which carries traffic westbound from the

Monash Freeway The Monash Freeway is a major urban freeway in Victoria, Australia, linking Melbourne's CBD to its south-eastern suburbs and beyond to the Gippsland region. It carries up to 180,000 vehicles per day and is one of Australia's busiest freeways ...

to the

West Gate Freeway The West Gate Freeway is a major freeway in Melbourne, the busiest urban freeway and the busiest road in Australia, carrying upwards of 200,000 vehicles per day. It links Geelong (via the Princes Freeway) and Melbourne's western suburbs to ...

, running under the

Yarra River The Yarra River or historically, the Yarra Yarra River, ( Kulin languages: ''Berrern'', ''Birr-arrung'', ''Bay-ray-rung'', ''Birarang'', ''Birrarung'', and ''Wongete'') is a perennial river in south-central Victoria, Australia. The lower s ...

and

Kings Domain Kings Domain is an area of parklands in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It surrounds Government House Reserve, the home of the governors of Victoria, the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, and the Shrine Reserve incorporating the Shrine of Remembrance. T ...

. The tunnel is part of the

CityLink CityLink is a network of tollways in Melbourne, Australia, linking the Tullamarine, West Gate and Monash Freeways and incorporating Bolte Bridge, Burnley Tunnel and other works. In 1996, Transurban was awarded the contract to augment two ex ...

Tollway operated by

Transurban Transurban is a road operator company that manages and develops urban toll road networks in Australia, Canada and the United States. It is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). Transurban is the full owner of CityLink in Melbour ...

and provides a bypass of the central business district.

History

The tunnel was constructed between 1996 and 1999 by Transfield-Obayashi Joint Venture. It was officially opened to traffic on 16 April 2000 with a temporary 60 km/h speed limit, and was free to use until 26 April. On 23 March 2007 just before 10am, three trucks and four cars collided in the Burnley Tunnel. The crash resulted in multiple explosions and a subsequent fire. This forced the evacuation of motorists from the Burnley Tunnel. The Domain Tunnel was closed and any drivers in the Domain Tunnel at the time drove out normally. Cross passage tunnels between the Domain and Burnley Tunnels were used by evacuees to exit from the Burnley Tunnel into the Domain Tunnel. In May 2007 a dramatic incident involving a truck and a sedan was caught by an '' A Current Affair'' film crew investigating the safety of the tunnel in light of previous events. Authorities are currently investigating if the crew, who were driving vehicles in the tunnel, may have contributed in instigating the crash.

Design

The Domain Tunnel is 1.6 km long and comprises 460 metres of

cut and cover A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

tunnel at the west end, 680 metres of driven tunnel and 500m of cut and cover which includes a shallow river crossing. The western portal is shared with the longer Burnley Tunnel that carries traffic in the other direction.

Roadheader A roadheader, also called a boom-type roadheader, road header machine, road header or just header machine, is a piece of excavating equipment consisting of a boom-mounted cutting head, a loading device usually involving a conveyor, and a crawler t ...

s were used to dig the bored section of tunnel, while at the eastern end the 170-metre final section of cut and cover was built under the

, with a

cofferdam A cofferdam is an enclosure built within a body of water to allow the enclosed area to be pumped out. This pumping creates a dry working environment so that the work can be carried out safely. Cofferdams are commonly used for construction or re ...

being moved as construction continued, permitting the river to keep flowing. The tunnel carries three 3.5-metre wide traffic lanes with 0.5-metre wide shoulders, and has two cross tunnels to the Domain Tunnel. The road level is a maximum depth of 40 metres, and has a

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gr ...

of less than 2%. Regular radio transmission cannot be received while in the tunnel. Commercial stations have installed their own transmitters. A variable speed limit applies in the tunnel. In normal circumstances, the speed limit is 80 km/h. During maintenance, a 40 km/h speed limit applies and normal radio broadcast is regularly interrupted by announcements.

References

External links

CityLink

Transurban

Australian Underground Construction and Tunnelling Association Project Page
{{Yarra River Crossings Tunnels in Victoria (Australia) Toll tunnels in Australia Crossings of the Yarra River Tunnels completed in 2000 2000 establishments in Australia Buildings and structures in the City of Melbourne (LGA) Southbank, Victoria Transport in the City of Melbourne (LGA)

History

Design

See also

References

External links