B4 you go-go: Melways Map 43
Look Me Up B4 You Go-Go: Tales from the B4 grid square of maps
Today I visited a friend and her gorgeous new baby son in a part of town I’m not overly familiar with.
So what is one to do when faced with such a dilemma?
I consulted my trusty Melways, of course. The map I needed was Map 43, and passing straight through the B4 grid-square is Citylink.
CityLink is a 22-kilometre tollway with two sections, the Southern and Western Links. It connects the Tullamarine Freeway, the West Gate Freeway and the Monash Freeway (which I still call the South-Eastern).
I think Citylink has been open around eight years, but I remember the bad old days well, when a trip to the airport from the South-Eastern suburbs involved driving straight through the CBD via King Street, and when the South-Eastern ‘arterial’ was better known as the South-Eastern carpark.
That’s not to say Citylink doesn’t have its bad days. You can still be reduced to a crawl at times, but on the whole travel times have reduced dramatically.
The downside is that as a tollway (and an automated one at that – users have an e-tag, mounted on the windscreen) the tolls can really add up. And visitors to Melbourne need to arrange their payment before using the tollway – either through a pass or by using a compatible tag. See the Citylink website for details.
