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WURUNDJERI WAY UPGRADE | Melbourne’s First New CBD Bypass in 25 Years

Project Highlight

When a project is described as Melbourne’s first new city bypass in a quarter of a century, you know it is something significant. The Wurundjeri Way extension and upgrade is exactly that, a landmark piece of urban road infrastructure that has fundamentally changed how motorists move between Melbourne’s inner west, Docklands, and the broader CBD fringe. Uniform Safety Signs is proud to have supplied the large green overhead guide signs and speed signs that now stand as permanent fixtures on this brand-new corridor.

The Problem: A City Road Network at Capacity

Wurundjeri Way has served as a key north-south arterial through the Docklands precinct since it was originally constructed in 1999 as part of the redevelopment of Melbourne’s former rail yards and docks. But as Docklands grew into one of Melbourne’s most significant commercial and residential precincts, now home to more than 73,000 workers and 17,500 residents, the original road configuration was increasingly unable to cope. The northern end of Wurundjeri Way terminated at Dudley Street, leaving a critical gap between the Docklands road network and Dynon Road to the north. Motorists travelling between Melbourne’s inner west and the city had no choice but to use Spencer Street or King Street, adding to chronic congestion on both corridors.

The solution was to extend and widen Wurundjeri Way in its entirety, and to do it as an integral part of one of Victoria’s most ambitious infrastructure programs ever undertaken.

The Project: Extension, Widening and Integration

The Wurundjeri Way works were delivered as a key surface component of the West Gate Tunnel Project, a transformative piece of infrastructure with a total project cost that, after significant scope expansion and cost revisions, reached approximately $10.2 billion, jointly funded by the Victorian Government and Transurban.

The Wurundjeri Way works involved two distinct but interconnected scopes: a major extension of the road northward to Dynon Road, and a widening of the existing carriageway through the Docklands section.

The Extension: Dudley Street to Dynon Road

The northern extension involved constructing a brand-new 1.5-kilometre, four-lane road connection between Wurundjeri Way and Dynon Road. The engineering centrepiece of this extension was a new bridge over the Dudley Street intersection, a complex piece of work in a highly constrained urban environment. The new bridge was made up of 17 steel beams weighing 80 tonnes each, which were prefabricated in the rail yard area near North Melbourne before being lifted and installed over an eight-week programme.

During the construction blitz, workers lifted 11 huge steel spans into place and installed close to a kilometre of new bridges and ramps, adding 3,000 square metres of road deck and 118 bridge parapets. The bridge works required full closure of the Wurundjeri Way and Dudley Street intersection in both directions for the duration of the steel installation programme, a significant traffic management undertaking in one of Melbourne’s busiest inner-city precincts.

By mid-2024, the Dudley Street to Dynon Road section had progressed to 1.6 kilometres of new bridges and ramps built, with 581 bridge parapets installed and asphalting well advanced.

The Widening: Flinders Street to Dudley Street

Simultaneously, the existing Wurundjeri Way carriageway through Docklands was upgraded. Works widened Wurundjeri Way by one lane in each direction between Flinders Street and Dudley Street, increasing capacity along the full length of the corridor. This involved pavement resurfacing, electrical system installation and asphalting, with works staged across multiple night-shift closures to minimise disruption to daytime traffic. The finished result is an upgrade of Wurundjeri Way to six lanes between Dudley Street and Flinders Street.

The final phase of works across the corridor included the installation of street lighting, precast wall panels, gantry structures, and permanent signage, the phase where Uniform Safety Signs played its most direct role.

Government Spend and Strategic Context

The Wurundjeri Way extension is far more than a standalone road project. It is the city-end surface connection for the broader West Gate Tunnel Project, designed to feed traffic seamlessly between Dynon Road, the new twin tunnels under Yarraville, and the elevated road above Footscray Road. Once the full tunnel network opened, more than 15,000 vehicles per day were expected to use the new extension, fundamentally reshaping traffic patterns across Melbourne’s inner west.

The new road delivers Melbourne’s first CBD bypass in 25 years, creating a direct and toll-free connection into Docklands and the Marvel Stadium precinct, and providing a smoother route between the inner west and the south-east. Drivers can now avoid the CBD grid when travelling from suburbs such as Footscray through to Flinders Street. At peak times, the extension eases congestion during major events in and around Docklands, providing another entry and exit point and reducing bottlenecks on surrounding roads. Once fully operational, the network is projected to take up to 5,000 cars off Spencer and King streets every day, representing a generational shift in how Melbourne’s inner road network functions.

Our Role: Large Guide Signs and Speed Signs

On a new urban motorway corridor of this scale, the permanent signage package is substantial and technically demanding. Large overhead guide signs, the type that direct motorists to destinations, confirm route numbers, and indicate exits, are among the most complex sign types in the road signage hierarchy. They must be engineered to withstand wind loading and long-term environmental exposure, designed and laid out in strict accordance with Austroads guide sign design principles and VicRoads specifications, and installed with precision to ensure legibility at highway speeds from the required preview distances.

Speed signs on a corridor like this similarly require full compliance with the relevant Australian Standards and must integrate correctly with the surrounding speed zone environment, particularly important on a new road with a configuration that motorists are encountering for the first time.

Uniform Safety Signs was engaged to supply the large overhead guide signs and speed signs for the Wurundjeri Way upgrade. Supplying guide signs for a project of this profile is a responsibility we take seriously. These are the signs that a motorist sees the moment they enter a new piece of road, the signs that tell them where they are, where they are going, and how fast they should be travelling. Getting them right, on time, and to the exact specification required by the project team is non-negotiable.

Working within the construction programme of a major Victoria’s Big Build project, with phased road closures, live traffic management requirements, and a fixed opening date, demands a supplier that can coordinate production, delivery, and documentation without creating delays on site. That is exactly what our team delivered.

The Result

The Wurundjeri Way extension opened to traffic on 27 October 2025, giving drivers a quicker and more reliable journey across the city and a direct and toll-free connection into Docklands and the Marvel Stadium precinct. When the West Gate Tunnel itself opened in December 2025, the full network came to life, connecting Melbourne’s western suburbs, the port, Docklands, and the broader CBD in ways the city’s road network had never previously allowed.

The guide signs and speed signs supplied by Uniform Safety Signs are now a permanent part of that network, guiding tens of thousands of motorists every day through Melbourne’s newest and most significant inner-city road connection.

Uniform Safety Signs: Supplying the signs that guide Melbourne forward.