Transurban’s finance team now acknowledges it underestimated the pace of the traffic recovery in Melbourne, where volumes on the high-margin CityLink motorway remain below 2019 levels. At the Macquarie Australia Conference in Sydney, the company outlined how its modelling coming out of the pandemic did not match actual driver behaviour on the ground.
Management is also watching the ramp-up on the new $10.2 billion West Gate Tunnel, which opened in December and is a major bet on long-term demand. Early use patterns on that road are adding another layer of complexity to its traffic forecasts.
CityLink’s slower rebound sits alongside a noticeable split between vehicle types on the West Gate Tunnel. Passenger cars are taking longer to adopt the new route while trucks are using it more heavily from the outset.
Transurban points to weak growth on Melbourne’s wider road network as a key reason for the lag in car volumes. That softer backdrop is weighing on near-term numbers even though the asset is designed to accommodate much higher long-term demand.
Traffic data for the tunnel underpins Transurban’s ongoing investment thesis. Average daily volumes sit at about 40,000 vehicles now, well short of where analysts expected the ramp-up to be.
The operator still forecasts daily traffic climbing to as many as 67,000 vehicles by 2031 as travel patterns stabilise and the network adjusts. Nearly two-thirds of vehicles using the tunnel so far are trucks, underlining its role as a freight corridor and revenue driver even during the early phase.
