City West Link

Road in Sydney, Australia

City West Link is a
Stage Four: (December 2000) Road extended from Catherine Street to Dobroyd Parade. A new bridge was constructed over Hawthorne Canal. City West Link became part of Metroad 4 (later A4), relieving a congested section of Parramatta Road. The project is in some ways very similar to the South Eastern Arterial link in Melbourne: that road was built between two freeways and ultimately had to be rebuilt to eliminate at grade intersections with traffic lights. The only difference between the two is that the available space for the Melbourne road allowed the conversion without any land resumption, whereas the City West Link road is surrounded by properties which are in places only a few feet from the road edge. Like so many other new road projects in Sydney, the available land space and cash resources available lead to either too few traffic lanes or at grade intersections. The passing of the Main Roads Act of 1924 through the Parliament of New South Wales provided for the declaration of Main Roads, roads partially funded by the State government through the Main Roads Board (later the Department of Main Roads, and eventually Transport for NSW). With the subsequent passing of the Main Roads (Amendment) Act of 1929 to provide for additional declarations of State Highways and Trunk Roads, the Department of Main Roads (having succeeded the MRB in 1932) declared Main Road 650 along the route, from the interchange with Victoria Road in Rozelle along The Crescent, City Link West Road, Brenan Street, Balmain Road, Lilyfield Road, Dobroyd Parade and Wattle Street to Parramatta Road at Haberfield (and continuing east along Frederick Street to meet with Hume Highway in Croydon), on 22 January 1993. updated road classifications and the way they could be declared within New South Wales. Under this act, City West Link retains its declaration as part of Main Road 650. Once the final upgrade was completed in 2000, the route was allocated Metroad 4, between Haberfield and Rozelle. With the conversion to the newer alphanumeric system in 2013, Metroad 4 was replaced by route A4. When the M4 East was opened in 2019, route A44 was extended from Paramatta Road and allocated along City West Link through Haberfield to the Ramsay Road interchange (where the ramps to the M4 East emerge), and extended a final time along its entire length to the interchange with Western Distributor when the Rozelle Interchange opened in 2023.

Motorists began complaining early in 2004 that the road had already become congested, less than four years after opening. The road ultimately feeds into Parramatta Road, thus congestion points on Parramatta Road have simply been moved to different areas rather than relieved altogether. In 2005, a major bottleneck at the eastern end was removed. Previously eastbound traffic on the link had to merge from two lanes into one, just before joining Victoria Road west of the Anzac Bridge. There are now two lanes from the west link merging with the three from Victoria Road, to make four lanes over the Anzac Bridge.

After the opening of City West Link, the Roads & Traffic Authority had plans to connect it to the M4 motorway, completely bypassing Parramatta Road. Included in the project was the removal of the at grade intersections on City West Link for through traffic. The plan was complicated, and involved building bridges for City West Link Road to pass over at grade intersections, some of which made provision for only one traffic lane in each direction. Residents and advocacy groups voiced fears that this would worsen current congestion problems. The whole project was cancelled in late 2004

In the 2010s, the project was revived as the WestConnex project that involved a tunnel being built instead. The first part of the tunnel, known as M4 East, opened to the western end of the City West Link in July 2019. An extension of this tunnel opened on 20 January 2023, but it was unable to replace City West Link until ramps at the Rozelle Interchange opened on 26 November 2023.

City West Link is entirely contained within the Inner West Council local government area.