Oh, good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for Transurban's 2022 Investor Day. I am really pleased to be able to hold this as a live event and to catch up with so many of you in person again, particularly in this venue, which is our information center for the West Gate Tunnel project here in Yarraville, in Melbourne, and in the inner west. Now, of course, we are webcasting this event this morning, so welcome to all of you who are attending online. I'd like to start today by formally acknowledging the many traditional owners of the country throughout Australia. The center where we are situated today is located next to the Maribyrnong River, which is of specific importance to the Wurundjeri and the Bunurong peoples, who are the traditional owners of the land we're here on today.
Melbourne's inner west is, has a rich indigenous culture, and the West Gate Tunnel project will feature some world-class architecture, urban and landscape designs, and they seek to celebrate the rich Aboriginal heritage and maritime history of Melbourne's west. The project actually passes through four waterways and resource-rich areas for Aboriginal people. There are some historical elements such as eels, canoes, netting, and rope, and you'll see these reflected in the project's structures, bridges, and piers. For example, in the tunnel portals, it's been inspired by the form of the nets and traps used to catch eels, which historically has been a very important indigenous food source. The forms of the ventilation structures also draw on the shapes of the Aboriginal canoes and also as well as modern boat hulls.
Moving to the agenda for today, this morning we'll cover a number of topics hopefully that you can see on the slide. There we go. Henry Byrne, our Victoria and Strategy Group Executive, will present our latest traffic insights. Michelle Jablko, our CFO, will take us through our approach to capital management. The session will conclude with Q&A with all members of the executive committee, and that'll finish up around 11:00 A.M., and people will be able to ask questions, obviously online, in the room, and I believe by phone as well. Those of us that are in this room will then proceed to a tour of the West Gate Tunnel project. In regards to the West Gate Tunnel project, I said it's great to be here in the information center.
To date, more than 3,500 community members have visited this center to learn about the project from our engineers and our community engagement staff. For those of you who know Melbourne, will understand just how significant this project is to the city, and in particular, the western suburbs, which are the fastest growing areas of the city and indeed parts of Australia. The West Gate Tunnel provides an alternative route to the West Gate Bridge to cross the Yarra River. The bridge is heavily congested and has carried more than 200,000 vehicles a day. I think everyone in Melbourne knows too well that when there's an incident, it has a major impact across the whole road network. Melbourne happens to be one of the few global cities without a motorway connecting directly into its port.
Our new estimated completion date, which we informed the market, is towards the end of 2025. Already the first tunnel boring machine, or TBM, has progressed some 550 meters on its 4 km outbound tunnel. I was just talking to the project director. I think the second TBM is about 187 meters in. We're doing very well. These two TBMs are the largest in the Southern Hemisphere at 15.6 meters in diameter and 90 meters long, and I think they're currently the second-largest in the world that are operating. They do operate 24/7 with two revolutions per minute. If you put that in perspective, it's the same as having a five-story building rotate around twice every minute.
Today, for those of you who see the TBMs, they've been slowed down to a very slow speed so that we can visit the site safely. The project also includes widening works on the West Gate Freeway, which is now more than 70% complete and more than 700 meters of the new elevated roadway above Footscray Road has been completed, which we'll visit today as well. Now, once this project is finished, it will deliver more than 70 km of new traffic lanes, and combined with CityLink will create an integrated network of safer, faster, and more reliable travel and make a substantial difference, particularly to freight. Now, unlike most recent road projects, particularly in Sydney, a substantial part of this project is not underground.
For those of you, again, on the tour, when you're on top of the launching gantry, you'll be amazed at the scale and the impact that this project will have on the city. You can almost think of it as a WestConnex above ground. Now, today, in the room as well, we have all of the executive team here with the exception of Pierce Coffe. Our president of North America will be joining us remotely from Northern Virginia on that screen over there, which I'm sure will work. I'm exceptionally proud of the diverse range of experience and expertise we have among our team who have now been well embedded in the business.
As you know, we realigned our leadership operating model in 2020 to ensure we are best positioned for growth and taking advantage of the emerging opportunities in technology and the customer space as well as our development pipeline. Now, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions of our team later today, but you also can hear from each of them by visiting our Investor Day hub on Transurban's website, which has been identified, I think, on our ASX or investor material, today. We are launching today our Transurban's Insight Hub, where we aim to showcase the data we source from our business and commission from third parties. This data will provide insights on mobility and trends relevant to our business. We have tools and information covering freight, road safety, travel, and some of our more futuristic insights as well.
I hope everyone in the room and watching understands that, as we've always said, data is central to everything we do at Transurban, and this new source, we believe, will help the community, governments, and our investors with some of the takeaways on the role of our roads and our operations play in relation to transport infrastructure in the cities in which we operate. Now moving to slide seven. Over the past decade, our success has been underpinned by a deliberate and consistent application of our strategy. Some of you may notice on our website and some of our materials that the wording of our strategy statement has been updated. I wanna make it perfectly clear that our strategy has remained unchanged.
We just recently refined how we actually articulate our approach, 'cause we wanted to succinctly capture for our employees, new and old, what will enable our continued success and the culture of who Transurban is. Now, the strategy statement that you see on the slide highlights the important role we all play in listening to our stakeholders and building and maintaining our very strong relationships. By executing on our strategy and creating our unique road transport solutions to deliver value to all our stakeholders, we believe we have proven over time Transurban's credentials as being a partner of choice. On the next slide, and the same as our strategy statement, this is a reminder of Transurban's investment proposition, again, which remains unchanged. Over the past 20 years, we've demonstrated our investment discipline, we believe, through the delivery of 17 greenfield and brownfield projects.
We've opened more than 330 km of road infrastructure to make us a leading global toll road developer and operator. Just over the past decade, our business has grown from eight assets to a portfolio of 21 in five markets, with a further multi-billion dollar pipeline of projects being targeted. All of our markets have quality structural growth drivers, including increasing populations and wage growth. As we know from the WestConnex transaction in New South Wales, for example, 40% of Sydney's population is expected to live within 5 km of WestConnex by the end of this decade. We have an average concession life of approximately 30 years, and WestConnex, for example, has close to 40 years remaining on its concession life, and our assets in the Greater Washington area have concessions until 2087.
We continue to progress the seven projects we have in development or delivery, including additional progress on the M7-M12 widening and the M7-M12 Interchange project, which is progressing well through the government's unsolicited proposal process. Again, though, all this growth's predicated on maintaining our relationships with our strategic partners to progress what government has laid out as their long-term infrastructure plans. We are confident that the core fundamentals of our assets will allow us to deliver on our investment proposition, again, which we've always said is creating long-term value, but balancing distribution payments to security holders in the short and medium term. We know that's very important, and we wanna focus a little bit on that now. The topics that we'll talk about today are all the key components that support our ongoing distribution growth. These are obviously the continued momentum in traffic growth.
We are seeing traffic numbers continue to strengthen as the economy recovers further, and again, airline travel picks up in particular markets. This trend reflects what we have seen in the past two years with traffic recovering quickly in line with government restrictions being lifted, and Henry will talk about this in a bit more detail in a few moments. In addition, we have substantial balance sheet capacity, which will allow us to internally fund existing and new asset enhancement opportunities that we'll talk about in a little bit, and Michelle will talk about the capital as well. Finally, and I know there's been a lot of discussion over the last few months, our inflation-linked tolls, which provide upside in a rising inflation environment, while our debt hedging profile provides near-term and medium-term protection in a rising interest rate environment.
This next slide shows a little bit more detail about what I've just discussed and supports our distributions. Over the past decade, our investment in additional lane kilometers provided new sources of revenue in combination with traffic growth on existing assets as they mature. We still hadn't seen the full ramp-up of NorthConnex, the M8, and then of course, we have new assets coming online over the next year, including the M4-M5 Link. I mentioned earlier, we have inbuilt inflation protection through our inflation-linked tolls and interest rate hedging. We outlined at the half-year results, the benefit of a 1% increase in CPI is likely to be greater than the cost impact of a 1% higher interest rate, again in the near to medium term.
Pleasingly, on the back of very strong CPI numbers released last week, the quarterly rates for Sydney at 2.2% are above the in our fixed escalators, and the annualized Brisbane rates is over 6%, which will apply from the first of July. We can now state that the actual CPI numbers that have been observed for our portfolio will be higher than our assumptions for the analysis we completed at the half-year results, which is shown in this chart. In addition, we are confident that we have sufficient capacity to internally fund our development portfolio with excess liquidity remaining. Again, finally, we're on track to push our margins up to the early- to mid-70% range as our traffic continues to recover. All of these factors will continue to contribute to our outlook for distribution growth.
Now with that, I'd like to hand over to Henry Byrne, our Group Executive for Victoria and Strategy, who will provide an update on some of the trends we are seeing in traffic across the markets.
Thanks Scott and good morning to those in the room and online. I wanna start by looking at our current traffic data in more detail and share some of the insights that we have, particularly around the current trends that are driving the momentum in traffic growth. Then we'll take a look at some of the more forward-looking trends that we see playing out over the business, particularly over the longer term. If we begin with current traffic, as you can see from the charts here, the unsurprising observation is that conditions are recovering as we see the easing of government restrictions in these cities. The good news is almost all of the restrictions, including the isolation rules, have been lifted in Sydney and Melbourne from mid-April. That should really support the continued traffic recovery that we've been seeing.
The most recent data represented in the charts here also includes the Easter period, and it shows for the first time that each of our Australian markets have exceeded pre-pandemic levels of 2019. Indeed, our North American roads are less than 10% down on those levels. That's helped in part, obviously, by our continued investment into these networks, which includes the asset enhancements that we've undertaken and then also the new roads that we've opened, which you'd all be familiar with. When we look to some of the more specific themes at play that are contributing to the growth that we're now observing, one relates unambiguously to air travel. Obviously, the roads within our portfolio that provide connections to airports have been far more impacted over the past couple of years. This is the Western Link section of CityLink here in Melbourne.
It's the Eastern Distributor in Sydney, the AirportlinkM7 in Brisbane. We're now seeing signs of recovery in these corridors, which is really positive. Traffic on those routes did start to bounce back very significantly in March, and we expect that to continue as both domestic and international travel returns to more normalized levels. This recovery in airline travel was evident over the recent Easter period, with more than three-quarters of a million people moving through the domestic terminals of Sydney and Melbourne. We think that really is a fact that highlights that appetite for travel is slowly returning to the community more broadly. We're also seeing this trend confirmed in other data points as well. Many of you will be familiar with our Urban Mobility Trends survey.
We completed the most recent of those in January, and that showed that 67% of the people that we surveyed are expecting to travel either domestically or internationally in 2022, and that's up from 60% a year earlier. Certainly there's an expectation of travel that's bearing out in those numbers. Another theme that's been really important in supporting the volumes on our networks relates to commercial traffic. I'm sure you're all aware of the fact that it's proven very resilient throughout the pandemic, and that's supported obviously on the one hand by increased construction activity. Then there's this other theme we've seen playing out around a shift to a more online economy. This is where e-commerce operators are filling warehouses with product that then needs to be distributed to their customers.
It's interesting 'cause the shift in online shopping does look like it's gonna continue. In that January survey I was just mentioning a moment ago, it found 53% of people we surveyed in Australian cities are currently doing more shopping online than they were doing pre-pandemic, which probably isn't a huge surprise. Interestingly, they're doing more online shopping now than they were doing even during that early phase of the pandemic. It's a trend that clearly is continuing. The other theme around the resilience of heavy commercial vehicles is particularly evident through the COVID period, and that reflects, on the one hand, the role that government's played to keep major construction projects going. It also shows the role that the logistics providers played through the pandemic to keep the flow of goods through these cities as they locked down.
You can see on the chart here on the screen, it shows this theme playing out on CityLink, and what you can really see here is the consistency of commercial traffic volumes here in Melbourne during those periods when car traffic really declined significantly amid the lockdowns. I've touched on the data from the latest Urban Mobility Trends Report a couple of times now that we published in January. This is a survey that's given us some really valuable insights into the broader adjustments that people have been making throughout the COVID pandemic and ultimately how that could flow through to how they use our roads. These reports, we released the first one of these in August 2020, are based on the findings of surveys that we've done of 1,000 people in each of our markets.
The real focus of these surveys has been to test the impact of the pandemic on people's attitudes in a range of different areas. It's on how they travel. It's their preferred shopping methods, as I mentioned a moment ago, and then we're also looking at their working arrangements and how they're interacting with the office as well. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we've consistently seen a preference for private vehicle travel over public transport, and that's mainly due to health and safety concerns as you'd expect. The latest survey found that on average 16% more people in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne intend to use a private vehicle every day post-pandemic, and that compares to pre-pandemic use. In the greater Washington area, that figure's around 7%. We think it's also possible that the increasing prevalence of flexible work practices is playing a role here.
Hybrid working might be a factor where people are opting to drive into work rather than catch public transport if they're not coming into the office every day. Interestingly, despite most of the restrictions now being lifted, public transport is still very significantly down compared to private transport use. Then in terms of flexible working, again, we've seen really consistent results in the surveys we've done, and that suggests that work from the office or office space work is far from dead. In the most recent survey, 87% of people indicated that they expect to do most of their work back in the office once the risk of COVID-19 has passed, and that's something they've consistently been saying now throughout the pandemic when we've done these surveys.
Interestingly, the average number of days that people expect to work from home once the risk of COVID-19's passed has also come down significantly. In the latest survey, people signaled an intention to work less than two days a week from home, which has come down. I think it was closer to three when we did the survey previously. If we turn to the North American toll roads and look at them in a little more detail, we're seeing a similar traffic recovery story emerge there as well. In the greater Washington area, traffic on the 95 Express Lanes is nearing pre-pandemic levels, with March volumes the highest since the pandemic began, and that's really being driven by some discretionary travel, particularly around holiday travel, which has been a key driver there.
If we look to the 495 Express Lanes, which are obviously a main connector for traffic around the Washington, D.C. area, they're showing a steady recovery as well, as we return to more normalized conditions, I should say. The average dynamic toll there is very interesting. For the March quarter, that increased by around 30% compared to the prior period, so that really is an important reflection of the fact that we see demand returning to the asset there as well. If we look just briefly at Montreal, traffic has also progressively improved through the period. Overall traffic is slightly up for the quarter compared to pre-pandemic levels, and that's despite the fact that they had restrictions in place there through the January period as well.
Many of you will be aware Montreal's highways have consistently ranked as some of the most congested in Canada, so it remains a really attractive market for us and one where we see long-term opportunities to address that and enhance the network. As Scott said, we'll have Pierce Coffee online later who can talk to that in a little bit more detail. If we just turn to the next slide. While our markets are on a recovery trajectory, one of the things that we continue to monitor really closely are cost of living pressures. Fuel prices in particular are topical at present, although historically, we haven't really seen a strong correlation between fuel price fluctuations and traffic volumes. It's more macroeconomic factors like population and wage growth, employment levels, tourism levels that tend to exhibit a far stronger correlation.
when you're looking to put our business in context in the cost of living discussion, I do think there are a couple of factors worth considering. One is that the average spend in Australian households on tolls is relatively low when we compare it to other essential spend categories. That's very clear in the data that we've seen. I think the other is the fact that the vast majority of our customers are occasional users. You know, around 80% of our retail customers are spending on average less than AUD 10 a week on tolls. Having said that, it doesn't negate the opportunity for us to better support customers in hardship.
We were working on this well before the pandemic hit, but we've significantly strengthened our activities in this area over the past couple of years, and we've put in place targeted programs through the Linkt Assist service to support customers in hardship. I'm sure many of you are familiar with our activities there. More recently, governments have also been looking at ways to alleviate the pressure of rising fuel costs. As many of you will be aware, in the most recent budget, the Australian government halved the fuel excise to AUD 0.22 for just a six-month period. We saw something similar over in the United States with Maryland giving its drivers a 30-day gas tax reprieve. Both of those measures are gonna provide some short-term relief. Although we do think it shines a light on an area where longer term structural reform really is needed.
The fact is that the major source of funding for roads comes from fuel excise, and this is diminishing with the rise in electric vehicles and more fuel-efficient vehicles. For a while now, we, alongside many others, have been advocating for a more sustainable funding model that overcomes the shortfalls in the current model. Ultimately, we think that alternative models such as a road usage charge could provide a fairer and a more transparent way of funding roads. I think importantly as a business, we continue to explore opportunities for us to play a constructive role to support that. If we just turn to the next slide, let's take a look at some of the future trends in our industry that present opportunities for our business over the medium to longer term.
One particularly interesting dynamic is coming from the shift to electric vehicles and CAVs or connected and automated vehicles as they're known. Advances in computing and vehicle connectivity are really creating the vehicles of the future as we all know, and the emergence of this technology in vehicles has the potential to significantly improve not just safety but also efficiency across our networks. Advances in truck automation are particularly interesting at the moment, and we're exploring opportunities to partner with leading players in this space. Over time, this could enable us to more actively shape usage on our road. For example, shifting traffic, in this case trucks, into the off-peak period to unlock some capacity. The continued electrification of vehicle fleets will also accelerate the transition to vehicles with more advanced software and connectivity as well.
We see opportunities for the application of this data in our business that might support improved operational outcomes or even new customer offerings over time as well. Ultimately, one of the factors that's gonna determine the scale and the timing of this opportunity relates to the speed of change in the vehicle fleet. It's no secret that adoption rates for low and zero-emission vehicles in Australia are still relatively low. We do think that that's inevitably gonna shift. The Urban Mobility Trends report that I've referenced now a couple of times shows that more than 40% of people we've surveyed in the Australian market want to buy an electric vehicle. The main reasons they cite there, operational cost savings and environmental benefits, which again aren't particularly surprising.
It is the high purchase price that remains the number one barrier at the moment. Nearly three-quarters of people cite that as an issue, and we can all see how that's going to erode as more options enter the market here, which are happening as we speak. Concerns around availability of charging infrastructure and also the concern that an electric vehicle is gonna add too much to people's power bills are also factors that come up when people cite impediments. With nearly six million customers in the Australian market, we're looking to play a role to educate people on the benefit of electric vehicles, and perhaps more importantly, to address some of the misconceptions that are proving an impediment to people taking these vehicles up.
That's why we're developing a range of initiatives, including incentives such as vehicle giveaways, and we're about to launch a customer experience program where we can make vehicles available to people to document their experience, experiences for others to see. That hopefully will help address some of these impediments that I've referenced. I'm gonna leave it there, but thanks for your time today. For those in the room, I look forward to seeing you all on the West Gate Tunnel project tour that we're gonna do following the presentation. I'd now like to hand over to Michelle Jablko to cover capital management. Thanks.
Thanks Henry and good morning everyone. It's also great to be here with so many in person. As Henry just covered, with traffic now improving across all our markets, this will naturally be a key driver of distributions. This growth will be supported by our approach to capital management. In a higher inflation and likely higher interest rate world, we're well positioned. CPI-linked toll escalations benefit revenue, with last week's announced inflation outcomes starting to flow through from 1 July for many of our assets. At the same time, near-term financing costs are protected as we've hedged almost all of our interest rate exposure. We've also worked hard to build a strong balance sheet with significant liquidity. This will be supported by future capital releases and gives us the flexibility to internally fund our near-term projects under development.
We've taken a prudent and through-the-cycle approach, which will support both distributions and growth. I set out some of the detail over the next two slides. If you turn to slide 20, you can see here how we prepared ourselves for higher inflation and interest rates. We've been planning for this for some time. Given our 30-year weighted average concession life, we've prudently taken a view to longer-term trends and the cost of capital returning to long-term averages. This through-the-cycle view also applies to our investment decisions, where we take a disciplined and longer-term view on hurdle requirements. To call out a few key data points, 68% of our tolls are CPI-linked. 99% of our existing debt book is hedged. Our average debt tenor is seven years.
Our average cost of debt is 4%, and most of our upcoming debt maturities have a cost above this average. Actually, as of today, all of our debt financing activity this year has been at or below our average cost of debt. As Scott highlighted, all of this together means that if inflation and interest rates both increase, there is likely a near-term net benefit. Now, that sensitivity analysis assumed around 4% inflation across the period, which is lower than recent inflation outcomes. The way in which this flows through to toll pricing will vary. Our concessions have different arrangements based on their own specific metrics and different timing, with some quarterly and others annually. We put some data on slide 43 at the back of today's pack to help you understand this on an asset-by-asset basis.
Most will next increase on 1 July, with the exception of WestConnex and Airport Link, which escalate from 1 January. The combination of our CPI-linked toll escalations and prudent balance sheet management means we're really well placed. The next slide illustrates our capacity to internally fund near-term projects. These include committed CapEx as we complete WestConnex Stage 3, the West Gate Tunnel project, Fredericksburg Extension and Next, and is also expected to include projects under development. Phase 1 of the Maryland Express Lanes and the M7, M12 widening and interchange. You can see on this slide that corporate liquidity and expected capital releases around AUD 5.7 billion in total more than cover our share of these projects.
Before I hand back to Scott, I've set out over the next two slides some near-term financial considerations that I want to take a moment just to take you through. The first here is on slide 22 and relates to the timing of distributions from non-100% owned entities. Following recent transactions, these are a growing part of our group. Distributions from these assets form part of our free cash, but there can be some timing differences. For example, sometimes it can take a quarter or two before the free cash that has been generated at the asset level will flow through to distributions. What I've done here is set out on this slide the usual schedule with distribution decisions being made at the discretion of the relevant board.
We've also noted here on this slide that the Eastern Distributor has used all its available tax losses and has transitioned to paying cash tax. Moving to the next slide. Here we've repeated some comments on financial considerations that we made at the H1 result, particularly relating to cost drivers into the H2 of the year. We've reiterated our expectations around capital releases, which are unchanged as in excess of AUD 2.3 billion from this year to FY 2025. As part of this, WestConnex recently raised AUD 540 million in new finance, and we expect our 50% share of this as a capital release before the end of the year.
As I mentioned a minute ago, these capital releases provide funding capacity to support our growth pipeline with a small amount also available to minimize dilution in free cash per security over the next couple of years following the WestConnex acquisition and capital raising. In closing, our business is in good shape. Pleasingly, our March quarter results showed a clear trend of recovery on our roads, with multiple assets recording their highest traffic numbers in March since the start of the pandemic. Our cash-generating assets are on track to support distribution growth. We're well-positioned in a rising inflation and interest rate environment. We build a strong balance sheet with forecast capital releases providing further funding support, all creating capacity to internally fund near-term projects under development. We continue to take a disciplined and prudent approach to capital management and our investment decisions.
Thank you, and I'll now hand back to Scott.
Great. Thank you Michelle and thank you Henry. As I talked about in our strategy statement, creating as much value as possible for all our stakeholders means for us listening and understanding their needs so that we can respond in ways that matter to them. This, in turn, allows us to fulfill what is our purpose: to strengthen communities through transport. Now, before continuing and going into some of this in a little bit more detail, I'd like to play a short video that shows the way we create values for our stakeholders, and particularly our government partners and the community.
Coordination and cooperation across multiple government administrations has been critical to the growth of our networks in North America. In the Greater Washington Area, Transurban has worked with six governors from the introduction of the first dynamically tolled Express Lanes to now what is one of the largest public-private partnership toll networks in the United States. By aligning with government and communities, we successfully deliver project outcomes that meet their needs with a focus on shared policies and priorities. Both in North America and Australia, we're always looking ahead, whether working towards a sustainable net zero future, trialing new technologies such as connected and autonomous vehicles, investing in road safety research or sharing data and insights to assist policy development. At all times working to build trust in Transurban that further enhances and supports our social license to operate.
At Transurban, we take pride in always striving to be a partner of choice for governments. That means working with all political stakeholders to develop and maintain transport solutions that improve the prosperity and livability of our cities. We have a proven track record of success, partnering with more than 15 governments to deliver 14 major projects in our four markets. Working with more than 25 tier one and tier two contractor partners, investing around AUD 30 billion in greenfields and enhancement projects, and we've taken ownership of existing assets alongside our investment partners.
When we develop our motorway projects, our legacy goes well beyond just asphalt and steel. We aim to strengthen the communities around these city-shaping projects. WestConnex is a great example. Over the next 12-18 months, 18 hectares of open space will come online. 23 km of cycleway and walkway will become available. Over one million trees and shrubs will be planted, and many thousands of AUD dollars' worth of community grants will be handed out to the community. Our aim is to take the community on the journey with us as we deliver these projects by being transparent and empathetic, working with them to explain the benefits that will come when the project is over. Our view is if we can get that bit right up front, we'll develop a prosperous long-term relationship with our communities over the life of the concession.
Great, and thanks for that. There's a lot of vital talent there. Most of it in the front row, and you'll be able to ask them questions in a little bit. Now with our first stakeholder groups, government, it's critical to us to deliver on what matters to them, otherwise they always have the choice to do it themselves. Specifically, we believe we can help bring forward projects by providing capital which will position cities for future growth and increased economic activity. With that, we also believe we have specific expertise in devising innovative road solutions and operating assets at a very high standard. We keep striving in these areas to prove our continued value to our government partners.
Now with our community stakeholders, it is critical that we are there in the early days of design and construction and of course also through the life of the concession. For example, from the outset, stakeholder engagement played a very important role in the development of the West Gate Tunnel project. The design was developed in consultation with a wide range of experts, advisors, and of course, the community, and the objectives focused on meeting Melbourne's alignment with its long-term transport policy for integrated rail, public, and active transport options. Consultation resulted in a range of enhancements to the project design. If people remember, we have a longer tunnel because we moved the westbound exit further away from existing homes, and while this may have had some cost impacts, it minimized the impact to the local community.
We're adding more than 14 kilometers of new and upgraded cycleways and walking paths, and we've included a 2.5 km veloway above Footscray Road, which some of you will see where that will be placed today. The project is creating about nine hectares of new community open space, including parkland and wetlands, planting more than 17,000 trees, and I think over one million plants. We are reducing noise, protecting privacy, and allowing natural light for residents by introducing, at the time which was something new, project-specific noise standard and high quality and noise walls. The 9 kilometers of these walls along the West Gate Freeway are now more than 80% complete, and if you haven't seen them already, they're very impressive structures.
Another example of government stakeholder engagement and something that Henry talked about and something that we've been advocating for for a very long time is to look at the opportunities for a fair and more efficient operation of the road networks. Now, the road pricing system has, for a long time, been an opportunity for major policy reform, which we appreciate is very hard. The New South Wales government has last week released a document outlining some early ideas they may have for this space. We're encouraged by this progress and ready and willing to work with the government partners to find a more efficient and transparent approach to road pricing. This is not just New South Wales, whether it be Queensland, Victoria or the U.S. as well.
Turning to our customers and our workforce over the past decade, our customer base has more than quadrupled to nine million customers under our different brands, including Linkt, Express Lanes and GoToll, and the A25 in Canada. Just like with our government and community stakeholders groups, it's vital that we're listening and responding to our customer needs. Customers tell us again that what matters to them most is the reliability, travel time savings, and the safety benefits that they see on our roads. We use this feedback to enhance our products and services, and we recently launched road and incident notifications on our Linkt app. This was one of the most requested features to be included in our app, which allows them more power in their decision-making process for transport.
We also extended specific support to our customers suffering vulnerabilities, most recently through our partnership with Good Shepherd here in Australia. To create value for our employees, it is critical that we acknowledge the changes that have occurred to our workforce over the last decade, with around half of our direct workforce now comprises roles focused on technology, customers, and innovation. These changes are vital to our ongoing success and ability to innovate in a digital future. Our final two stakeholder groups are our suppliers and our investment partners. We have more than 1,600 direct suppliers, from big multinational contractors to small local businesses and social enterprises who work closely with us to ensure we have leading industry innovation and best practice in every aspect of our business, with such initiatives around sustainable procurement, carbon emissions, and the prevention of modern slavery.
Our sustainable procurement program also aims to direct our purchasing power to support small and underrepresented business, businesses such as those that are owned by or supporting women, people with disabilities, the long-term unemployed and other social enterprises. To date, the West Gate Tunnel project has so far spent over AUD 12 million on social enterprises and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses. As far as our major contractors go, the sector is under pressure with unprecedented pipeline of large-scale construction projects. Current constraints on tier one contractors mean we continue to work with our business partners to evolve our approach to project delivery. Opportunities exist to split projects to attract a broader pool of participants, particularly for what we're seeing as our new enhancement projects of more moderate scale.
Of course, our investment partners, who are among the world's leading pension funds and infrastructure investors. They're providing direct funding support, which allows us to continue to pursue growth opportunities with less reliance, specifically and solely on our own balance sheet. By understanding their needs, we've been able to attract quality investment partners who give back to us as well. We now have seven investment partners across 14 assets, and between them, they own and operate assets in more than 50 countries and manage collectively more than $1.5 trillion of funds. Finally today, as I mentioned already, we have grown our business through disciplined investment to a position where we have both significant opportunities ahead of us and a market-leading weighted average concession life of around 30 years.
Our assets go through various stages as we take them from an initial concept, refined through consultation with our government and community stakeholders through construction, to eventually becoming a fully mature asset. Our assets become integrated into the way our customers move around the cities, or as they do, they provide ongoing growth and free cash for distribution. As congestion builds over time, we have the opportunity to further improve our assets through enhancements. As Henry outlined, some of the advancements in technology that will occur over the next decade. Our current portfolio is centered around a core group of mature assets with further uplift to come from our pipeline of recently opened assets and the new opportunities currently in development, providing long-term growth and free cash flow and distributions. In slide 33, you'll see a focused list of the opportunities in some of our markets.
Again, this won't be new to anyone. As we know in our industry, things don't happen all that quick. Pleasingly, a number of the opportunities on this list relate to the assets that we already own and operate, including the Gateway Motorway and Logan Motorway widenings and the Capital Beltway Accord. The pipeline is largely focused on asset enhancements, and we continue to work on progressing these projects with each of our stakeholders in the region. I'm pleased to provide some detail or an update on some of the opportunities we previously flagged, which includes the widening of the M7 and the M7-M12 interchange. I think on the next slide, we've given some a little bit of detail, and we continue to flesh that out.
Our proposal, as we know, integrates the widening of the M7, basically from the north, from the turn with the M12 motorway interchange, and that will lead to the Western Sydney Airport forecast to open in 2026. We actually opened the M7 in 2005, and we originally designed it with the capacity to cater for future growth and development in the corridor, which allows us to continue to deliver safe and efficient journeys for our customers during the widening. Our traffic analysis already shows congestion building, particularly for freight, but it shows by 2026, without the proposed widening of the M7, there'll be significant capacity constraints, and the M7 will not be able to effectively cater for the additional traffic demands for the M12.
In summary, let me just sort of wrap it up in this room before we get to Q&A. The business is probably in the best shape that I've seen it since I joined the organization. We have a fantastic network of projects right across our markets. Traffic is growing, and we expect that momentum to continue. We've reinforced the balance sheet, and we have the capacity to internally fund our near-term growth opportunities. We do have the benefit of inflation-linked tolls against a hedged debt portfolio. Management is very much focused on our core fundamentals of our business and executing on what has been a consistent and long-term strategy. All these factors, again, go back to supporting our investment proposition of building value over the long term, while, as we understand, very importantly, delivering distribution growth to our security holders.
Now with that, we are going to take a short break, and I'll ask my Exco colleagues to join me on stage for Q&A. Thank you.
Good morning everyone. I'm Hannah Higgins, Transurban's Acting Head of Investor Relations, and I'm very pleased to welcome those in the room and online to our live question and answer session. Here on stage we have Scott, Michelle, and Henry, who you've heard from already this morning, and they're joined by the other members of our Transurban executive team, including our President of the North American business, Pierce Coffee, who is joining us via web link. We'll be taking questions from the floor today as well as via the teleconference. If you're here today and would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. We have Justine and Stuart from our Transurban Investor Relations team who will bring you a microphone. For the benefit of those joining online, please do wait for the microphone before asking your question.
We also ask that you state your name before you ask your question. For those on the teleconference, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your keypad and we'll direct a question to you. We'll try to get through as many questions as we can in the time that we have. I do ask that we start with just one question per person, and we will try and come back to you if you have a second question. We'll now take our first question from the room. Got a question from Ian. Justine. Thank you.
Thanks, Ian Myles from Macquarie. Just as you pointed out in your presentation, AUD 2.3 billion of refinancing capacity in the business. We're in a rising interest rate sort of environment. I guess, how do you think about when you sort of re-refinance those assets, that you're not putting yourself in future stress as rates actually increase? Are we seeing that amount shrink?
Do you want me to take that? We've taken that into account, Ian, in that analysis. We didn't assume rates would stay at close to zero when we did that analysis. We've baked in a fair amount of uplift, and we put that through our stress testing. Now clearly we have to determine it at the time. As I sit here today, I think we've taken into account a rising rate environment.
Thanks, Michelle. Got a question from Rob. Stu?
Yes.
Good morning. Rob Koh from Morgan Stanley. Thank you very much for the presentation this morning. Maybe I can ask a question, going around each geography, if you could give us an update on the construction contracting conditions. You know, here in Melbourne, the Vic government's done an alliance pricing deal. We'd be interested in North America, how conditions are there, and, you know, if there's labor shortages, which are impacting everybody, and just, if you can give us some color along those kinds of fronts, please.
Well, I might start there. Thanks, Rob. I think your one question actually would then be five questions, wouldn't it? Good try. What I will do is go to, maybe I'll go to Hugh and because, I mean, the construction issues that we're dealing with are very global. I might just ask Hugh, given he's dealing in all the markets, to maybe comment at a high level. Hugh?
Thanks Scott and thanks Rob. Yeah, very consistent themes across all the markets, so I wouldn't need to narrow them down market by market to Scott's point, one answer rather than five. I think the different styles of contractual engagement that we're seeing across the three states in Australia is having varying levels of success. We're certainly still seeing an attraction of the PPP model, and a real focus on early and collaborative addressing of risks, as part of that model. That's probably the biggest change we're seeing there. Scott touched on it, but looking at the ability to bring in other market participants, so not just the traditional tier one, but in those projects that can be naturally split or are smaller because they're expansion projects looking at the tier two optionality.
Look, it's worth saying that in the recent times, we've actually entered new contracts in North America, Project NEXT, with Lane Construction Corporation, and we've resolved our two big disputes. It certainly challenges supply chain playing into that, but our PPP model is standing the test, and we're really focused on addressing those risks early and collaboratively with both the state and the contractor.
Thanks very much, Hugh. Further questions, Andre?
Thanks. Andre from UBS. Question for Michelle. The AUD 270 million that you expect to receive from WestConnex.
Yeah.
In this period, can you talk through the proposed uses of that? Is it all in the bucket of offsetting dilution, or is some of it gonna be retained for the growth investment?
I mean, it's all in the bucket of capital, so the AUD 5.7 I spoke about. The board will make a decision when we get to June in terms of the [decks] , you know, how much of it they use to offset dilution. It's in the whole scheme of things of the AUD 5.7 or the AUD 2.3 of capital releases, the offsetting dilution's a small component.
Yeah. I think to follow up, the dilution component would be smaller, much smaller than that amount. That would be smaller than that amount.
Got a question from Owen in the front row.
Yeah. It's Owen Birrell from RBC. Just a question for Henry Byrne. Just drawing on some of the comments you made about the average user on the road network and the impact of I guess some of the inflationary cost pressures on household budgets. You mentioned that most users are casual. 80% of your retail customers spend less than AUD 10 a week, and 16% are actually commuters. It sounds like an incredibly discretionary cost for most of the users. Do you expect the traffic volumes to become a little bit more volatile as we start to see more of those sort of cost pressure shocks coming into the system? How confident are you that you'll be able to, I guess, retain these sort of pre-COVID levels of traffic volumes as the household budgets get strained?
Yeah. Thanks, Owen. Look, there's a few ways we can answer that. We do see very low sort of elasticity in terms of reaction to price increases, which I think is one way you might think about how people might then react to broader pressures that come in. Generally, you know, I mean, particularly for commercial traffic, we see very low shifts or we see very inelastic demand, and then it's actually not a very significant step up when you get to cars. You're talking the order of - 0.1 and then - 0.25 for those who understand how that works. We're very confident in terms of where we sit in this cost of living discussion.
Before I go down that path, I wanna emphasize it doesn't negate the fact that this business has a task to do around how we manage hardship. You've heard Scott speak about it, you've heard me speak about it. We're very focused on that. We understand that notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of customers might not fall into this bracket, there can still be some very significant instances that we do need to address, and we've strengthened that up very significantly in recent years through that Linkt Assist program. Coming back to the idea of where do we sit, the actual data suggests that it's less than 1% of household expenditure that goes towards tolls.
If you overlay that with the idea that you're talking about the vast majority of customers spending, you know, in that order of less than AUD 10, AUD 10 a week, you sort of see that it sort of further bolsters our confidence. Coming back to sort of summarize, I'd say there's two components. We're not a high percentage of household spend, and all the data suggests that we have relatively inelastic demand around the product.
I think, Owen, following through that, to Henry's point, we're very aware of the issue, and cost of living is very important. But I also have more gray hair than everyone in the room. If you go back to the history of the seventies and the eighties and the nineties, this cost of living is not, it's always been an issue. And at different cycles and different times, you know, whether there was the oil crisis or whether there was the GFC or whether, you know, or cost of living has always been an issue through the different cycles. We're investing for, you know, on average concession life for 30 years. We're investing, as Michelle said, whether it's interest rates, inflation, cost of living, we're investing through the cycle.
We will do what we can to manage, particularly our customers that are vulnerable, and it is an issue, and we're not trying to say it's not. It is not a new issue. It is something that has been around for a very long time.
Question from Paul.
Hi, it's Paul Butler from Credit Suisse. I was just wondering if I could ask about the New South Wales tolling reform. Now, obviously in Sydney, you've got, you know, a number of assets, some with direct CPI linkages, some with, you know, the higher of 4% and CPI. So it strikes me this is an opportunity to sort of, you know, rethink what makes sense there. I was just wondering if you could talk about what structure of tolling sort of makes sense, you know, obviously with CPI maybe being high, that's only gonna be for a short period of time.
Sure.
I just wanna understand how you think about it. Do we end up with something that's uniform across the whole network, and it's sort of, you know, higher of 3% or CPI or, you know, something along those lines?
Yeah. No, thanks, Paul. Look, you know, something again, we've been advocating for a very long time. You can take policy reform, you know, to the nth degree to make the network perform most efficiently as possible, or you can take policy reform to do with maybe community and more user-based issues around fairness, equitability, where people live, how the government wants to affect their transport policy. What we need is for government, and they're going through the work out in New South Wales, to give us a direction on which way they want to head and how they wanna balance all those issues. I'm not trying to be evasive to your question.
For us, everything is on the table as long as it leads to, you know, better outcomes, either both a combination of for the users and for the efficiency of the network. Obviously, we're not gonna go backwards for either parties. Obviously we have to protect all our stakeholders, including our investors. I guess we are open to, but we really need to be led by government. The problem is us putting out our ideas out there without the government first advocating for what they really want and how they wanna deal with it is probably not helping the debate. We're open to trying to marry what is the best, most efficient thing for the network performance and congestion, so it gives our users the best road experience.
We're also very conscious that we've gotta deal with community and the vulnerable in society and how that may work out. If it's a 3% escalator, or it's just CPI, or it's 4%, or it's network-wide tolling, or it's distance, you know, we're open for all the discussions, but we really need government to set the parameters as they have set all the parameters in the concession, and then we just need to marry that with to make sure that all the stakeholders are protected.
Thanks, Scott. We haven't had any questions come through via the conference call yet. Just a reminder to those on the conference call, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star one. We can continue to take questions from the room. We've got one at the back from Justin.
Hi, guys. It's Justin Barratt from CLSA. I just wanted to ask if you can make any comments about how we should think about distributions longer term and the potential support from capital releases. Obviously, pre-COVID, capital releases were being used to support your distributions, but you obviously have a significant development and opportunity pipeline as we look at it right now. Can you make any comments there about how we should think about those distributions longer term?
Well, I may start, then Michelle can add the color. I think. One, distributions is again something the board makes a decision on, something not management. I think right now where the board is obviously distributing free cash flow, and we've got a good balance between capital releases and our development pipeline where we can pay for that internally. Over time, if for whatever reason, the development pipeline were to slow, we're going to be generating you know a lot of cash and a lot of capability in the balance sheet. As we know, as we all go through the cycles, at some point the analysts will tell us we have a lazy balance sheet. At other points, they'll say we have a too aggressive balance sheet, and you know you guys swing whatever.
We just look at the long term and head for the long term. I think the answer is it's certainly for the near to medium term. It's free cash flow. Again, we have a lot of assets coming online. It just depends on how the development platform plays out. I don't know, Michelle, if you wanna add anything.
No, I think you've covered it. Right now it makes absolute sense to say capital releases goes into the pipeline, and, you know, we apply very disciplined criteria to make sure the returns on that are better than returns of that capital being in the hands of our investors.
Peter.
Hi, I'm Peter Meany. Given Pierce dialed in from North America.
Thanks, Peter.
Deserves a question. Just an update on the Maryland project that I guess the relationship with Maryland and talk of Macquarie looking to exit part of their position, does that change in any way the partnership there?
Thanks for the North American question, Peter. I think broadly speaking, we're in the pre-development agreement phase with Maryland, so working across multiple stakeholders within the Maryland government as well as the local community and the stakeholders and the businesses to work to develop the best possible project for all of our stakeholders. That's a lot of work, but going well, working through all of those things, and we'll remain disciplined to be able to develop and deliver a project that's really gonna meet the needs of all of our stakeholders. Then to your second question on Macquarie, I can't speak on behalf of Macquarie, but certainly we are talking to them every day about this project focused on getting to commercial and financial close.
That said, happy to have discussions with them on what the best structure is for the partnership to ensure the most successful outcome for the Maryland project and our stakeholders.
I think maybe look, I mean, a bit more color. I mean, we have the option to bring in our Transurban Chesapeake partners, and they have the option to bring in family and friends and other funds as well as we continue to talk to support that project.
Thanks, Scott.
Thanks. Matt Spence. Scott, I'm pretty sure you said we had till 11:15, so I'm gonna push my luck.
Oh, okay.
Henry, one for you. Just think the Liberal opposition in Victoria's talked about bringing back East West Link or whatever it's called, so just if you could say what they're thinking there. Maybe just whether the recent Atlantia offer and bid going back a bit further, Sydney Airport, just does that give cause for Exco or the board to think about those sort of transactions, and maybe defensive takeover strategies, or just what sort of discussions are you having around those transactions?
Yeah.
Talk about.
I'll start with East West Link. Yeah, look, you're right, Matt. The opposition here, the Liberal Party for some time have championed that project, and they've signaled an intent if they win office to make that one of their infrastructure priorities. I don't think it'd be any surprise to anyone if they did win office that we see that back on the agenda. In terms of our views on that project, look, there will be a need for that in Melbourne at a point in time. You know, if we do find ourselves in a situation where there's a change of government and it's back on an agenda, it can certainly be. I think you can make sense and you can make a case for it.
In terms of where we would be around it and whether we would play a role, that's gonna be a matter for the government of the day. It'll be a matter for the delivery model that they pick, 'cause we've seen governments choose models that don't always work for us as well, like availability payments. In terms of the overall sense of the infrastructure project itself, yes, there is some sense to it.
Yeah, in relation to the bigger question, I mean, that's Matt, it's you know, for us, we internally believe we know the value of the business. We've got all the data we can run and be prepared if anyone were to approach the company. That's really up to the board obviously to decide, but we feel that the data, the things that we would need to run a process are certainly in train.
I think what we see with Atlantia and Sydney Airport and others is when the differentiation between the private sector and the public sector becomes too large, the private sector steps in and realizes the long-term value of the assets, as I guess the people approaching Atlantia have as well, that there are a lot of value in these assets, and sometimes the public markets, for whatever reason, the differential becomes too great, the private gotta step in. You know, for us, we just execute the strategy. Again, we have to deliver the best outcome for the security holders, taking in mind, you know, all the stakeholders and the longevity and sustainability of the business.
We don't worry about that on a daily basis, but we have all the tools and information in place that if something were to happen, we can very quickly react. It's not something we think about on a regular basis. I do agree that in this current world, there's almost nothing that's too big. I mean, we're no Twitter. We don't expect Elon to be making a. I don't know, maybe he'll. I don't know. You know, maybe he will. I don't know. He likes. He does like. You know, I don't know, maybe some integration there. I don't know. But that's not something we worry about. We just deliver it on a strategy.
I think, as I said, sort of on a wrap up, you know, it's been an interesting process as we kinda talked about when people were raising doubts about capital releases, and we've gone through this period of a high development program to actually now as a percentage of portfolio under construction is about the lowest it's been since I've been at Transurban when you look at the construction levels. We've gone this high development delivery phase that as we're coming out the end, got interrupted by COVID, picked up a couple of unbelievable, fantastic assets coming through the other phase. Management's very much focused on the core business, getting back to that distribution growth and take advantage of the pipeline, which is largely just sitting inside our network, which is a great place to be.
Thanks, Scott. We do have a question that's come through online in relation to funding. You've flagged AUD 5.7 billion of funding sources, AUD 4.5 billion-AUD 5 billion in uses. You pay out 100% of available cash for distributions. This leaves only AUD 700 million-AUD 1.3 billion of headroom. Is this enough given the size of your business?
I think that's a great question, and certainly, you know, when we've talked about our numbers, we've talked about in excess of AUD 2.3 billion, so we know, and we've talked about the funding out to the end of 2025, which will, you know, clearly continue to increase beyond that as, you know, as our cash flows continue to increase and support further liquidity. Yeah, we're comfortable with that.
Thanks, Michelle. Further questions from the room?
Good morning. Alex Whitney, ATLAS Infrastructure. Just a quick one back on the tolling reform. Depending on what, I guess, the government, you'll obviously be in discussions with the government all through this and not gonna do it in a bubble without you guys. What sort of contractual protections do you have in the various sort of New South Wales frameworks existing? Is it just through a change of law, or is there kind of other specific regimes just if something is, I guess, rolled out that is potentially, you know, optional for Transurban?
Well, thanks. I'll also let Michelle or Andrew, particularly in relation to New South Wales, talk before. Obviously we have contractual protections in the concession agreements around everything. Then on top of that is the change of law and the other protections that you would expect. I think the history of New South Wales, you know, even going back to the Bob Carr days or whatever it may be, the history of New South Wales, it's all been done in discussion, and it's all been done commercially. Andrew, you might wanna talk about when we were doing the M2, that we froze the tolls for a period of time at the request of the New South Wales government, but then we caught up and got back to the long line so that we were in NPV no different.
Those are purely our discussions. I think, you know, it's not as if we're in a position that we want the same outcome as the New South Wales government. We want a more efficient network. We want a better experience for customers, and we want a fair system. We just need to make sure that that's fair for our stakeholders as well. I think it will be in very productive and commercial discussions that we've always had with all of our government partners. I don't know, but we do have the contract to rely on. We've never had to, and hopefully in the case we won't, and I don't expect to. I don't know if Andrew, you want to make. You've been dealing with New South Wales for a long time.
I think everything you've said is spot on. We've always aimed to have a productive, open and transparent dialogue with government. Well, I can't recall a situation where we've had to rely on the contract. Hopefully that remains the case. As Scott very clearly points out that there are those contractual protections that sit in the background. Michelle and I have had the opportunity to participate in the tolling inquiry recently, which has allowed us to articulate all the benefits of the existing business, but also to have conversations and explore opportunities for further improvement. Michelle might wanna buy in here. I mean, I just see it as a great opportunity for us to continue to have that dialogue with both sides of government. I think the business and the understanding of our business in the community is better for those sorts of discussions.
I think with all these things that, you know, both sides of government, they're not saying toll roads are a problem or bad, but they just think, "How do we make it work better for parts of the community?" We would agree with that, but we just need to sit down and I do have a lot of sympathy for policy reform with politicians, 'cause particularly in these types of areas, it's very difficult for them. We're happy to have those discussions when they're ready.
Thanks, Scott. I think we had a question from Nathan at the back.
Hello. Nathan Lead from Morgans. Just wanted to ask a question in terms of medium- to long-term traffic growth compared to what we're seeing pre-COVID, particularly as we've got these forecasts of slowing population growth and changing demographics too, where we've got a lot less additions to that sort of workforce age, that 15- to 64-year age sort of coming into the population going forward. Yeah, how are you guys thinking about your longer term traffic growth in that context?
All right. Henry, you wanna comment or?
Yeah. I mean, Nathan, it very much depends on where you look, network to network and what the characteristics are. Where we tend to think in terms of maturity of roads. Where roads are less mature, you're gonna see more of a ramp-up profile, you're gonna see higher levels of growth. Whereas when roads move into that more mature phase where there are established corridors, there are established usage patterns, you'll generally start to see the growth rates come down into those low single digit percentage ranges. The reason I say that is you need to look at the specific corridors to understand the growth dynamics at play. You can't take a rule of thumb for a city and say, "We will see this growth rate on all of these roads," because some corridors will have very different dynamics.
You can go to any one of our networks and see that at play. The other factor is then how we're investing into them. You saw me refer to the fact that one of the things that's supporting the growth in the numbers that we're seeing at the moment where we've hit pre-pandemic levels across all of our networks for the first time, one of the factors that's driving that is the fact we've invested into them. We've enhanced assets in Brisbane. We've opened new assets in Sydney. That obviously augments the growth at a headline level for the business in an obvious way. What it will also do is over time, it'll give us that elevated growth rate out of those mature levels because we've effectively unlocked growth, and we've created more reason for people to come into these corridors because there's more of a value proposition there.
Thanks, Henry. I think Andre had a question.
Andre from here. Scott, in the updated strategy statement that you pointed out at the beginning, how broad is your definition of solutions? You know, you could have said concessions or toll roads, but are you sort of giving yourself the space, depending on those future mobility trends, to play a different role?
Yeah, no, it's a good question. We're very specific on saying road transport solutions, so it's very much road-based. But when we're delivering road transport solutions, if you look at West Gate, you know, it's the cycleways. It's when we're in the US, it's public transport that we're supporting and facilitating. Yes, it's all based around road transport, but that could include road user charging and all the stuff that we're doing with the database. I mean, Simon's got and his team on the technology side and customer side an amazing amount of data.
Some of the stuff that we're doing around our apps and what we can do going forward with our technology can really help, I think. Potentially more long term, as Henry was looking at some of those trends could be different business models and different business opportunities for Transurban. We'll get to that, and timing is everything. It's a bit early for that. Still always based on roads though. You won't see us buying an airport or going into rail or doing something. I mean, we have, we think, a unique set of skills and capability, particularly in this sector, where we bring everything together. Again, from planning, getting the data to say what does the city need to delivering it and working with the customer on the other side.
It's quite a diverse set of capabilities when you go through the whole spectrum, which I think is one of the interesting things about working at Transurban every day. Every day is quite different. It's a lot of fun. I think we specifically left that broad because there's so much in delivering road transport solutions now that's not just about concrete and steel.
Thanks, Scott. We do have another question from online. Could you comment on the budgeted CapEx of AUD 4.5 billion-AUD 5 billion in the presentation? This seems higher than the budgeted CapEx at the H1 2022.
I think the difference will be what the committed CapEx is, which is the CapEx that's always in the investor presentation. That would have included, you know, finishing WestConnex, West Gate, et cetera, and some of the pipelines. I think that's the difference. Yeah.
Thanks.
I think the committed CapEx was about $3.5-$3.9 now that Project NEXT has reached financial close.
It's putting Project NEXT.
Yeah.
Which is a $500 or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you, Scott. You touched on fuel excise and road charging. Maybe if you could give us some insights into policy reform there, and the acceleration of how they're thinking about that in terms of that solution of funding into the future.
Yeah, no, it's interesting. I mean, for those, when I started at Transurban 10 years ago, I remember I talked about road user charging, and I was quickly told not to talk about it because it's a very difficult subject for politicians and the wider market to address. It was very much this is gonna take some time. I think at least it's something that's being discussed now. You see it through the electric vehicle charges in Victoria and New South Wales, ACT, South Australia, where it's progressing and understanding that, you know, that everyone needs to pay for their fair share of the roads. I drive electric vehicles. It does seem a bit strange that I don't have to pay for the road.
That is coming in, and that is part of, I think, the discussion. Interesting that the fuel excise tax discussion and what has happened has actually educated more people on what actually is being paid. Because up until then, when we do all our surveys, people, you'd ask them what the fuel excise tax was, and they'd say $0.10 Or $0.05 , or I'm not really sure. Now everyone, because of what's happened, understands and maybe better understands how the system's working, and it's not fair for those people who drive older vehicles or potentially longer distances and how the system works. I think it's coming. As I said to a lot of people, hopefully we can do it in a methodical and planned approach to a transition.
I mean, unfortunately, a lot of times it takes a crisis, and then it moves very quickly. It is something now that everyone's openly discussing. It is something that's being, I guess, put through the electric vehicles. You can see it starting to come in. There is a heavy vehicle road-user charging system that the federal government is trying to implement. I think it's happening. A lot of work in the U.S. that peers can talk about across a variety of states. It will be slow, but it is something that I believe will come in over time because there's not really a real alternative.
Thanks, Scott. We will take further questions from the room shortly, but in the meantime, we do have a question that's come through on the teleconference. Our question on the teleconference comes from Ben Brayshaw from Barrenjoey. Go ahead, Ben.
Oh, hi. Good morning. Thanks, Hannah. I was wondering if you could just comment on traffic across the network that is associated with people traveling to and from a CBD workplace. Just insofar as your comments in the presentation go, you know, you're highlighting that there is low workplace attendance, but at the same time, there's aversion to public transport, you know, and a greater propensity to travel via, you know, by private transport. Just interested in your thoughts as to, you know, how you think about the composition of traffic and the percentage of traffic traveling to and from a CBD workplace.
Yeah. Thanks, Ben. Good, we've tested all the different technologies, and they all work. Well done, Hannah. We're all here on Saturday, and not a whole lot of them work, so well done. Thanks, Ben. Look, I might get Sue ready because she hasn't spoken to make a comment maybe on Brisbane. I think in general, remembering that largely our toll roads are delivering people around the city, not to the city. I know of everyone because everyone largely in this room would work in an office that thinks that everyone's doing exactly what they're doing. Largely, our toll roads are moving people around the city.
You do see those roads more directly into the city, whether it's sort of AirportlinkM7 or the Eastern Distributor or the maybe the western side of CityLink being more affected by office occupancy. We have the opposite, as you said, with public transport being down, with those people who are not commuting as much, but then choose to drive because they have less on their transport budget because of the commute. There are other benefits there. I don't know, Sue, if you wanna specifically talk about the CBD traffic in Brisbane.
Yeah.
How it works as an example.
We would say we've had the most normality, although not that normal because we had a flood recently off the back of the changes with COVID. The slide, I think, showed April, and we've seen a great return from a traffic perspective. We do see the other markets mirroring that as we go through and come back to normality. From our perspective, and Henry talked about it earlier, when you combine all of the trends that we're seeing, we're actually seeing positive growth overall, certainly in the Brisbane market. The one that we're still waiting on is that last piece of the puzzle, which is airport traffic. That is the last piece certainly that I see.
Again, you can look at all of our assets and how they're performing individually, but they're all going really well now when we see some normality, and just that last piece being the airport. I think from a CBD perspective, as you say, certainly from a Brisbane market, we're around the CBD. We've actually been not seeing great impact from that. Where we do assist there, again, we're seeing it bounce back really strong. We're in a really strong position. Thanks, Sue. Peter?
Sorry, Peter. Technology, can we go a bit deeper and kinda put Simon on the spot? Can you give us a couple of practical examples? How much did you spend on a technology project, and what was the benefit of that?
Rather than go into the specifics of individual project spends, the benefits that we see, we're upgrading currently our customer and billing platforms today. What we expect to see there is just an improved experience for our customers. You know, more frictionless billing process. The ability then to advance our digital app usage and extend our products and services there. Also, through these upgrades, hopefully simplify some of our products to make it, again, a little bit easier for our customers to interact with us, which just overall provides a nice, cleaner, frictionless experience. Yeah.
There's a link to customer, I agree.
Yeah.
Yeah, we're still working. I mean, there's always more to do on customer, but again, you have to come back to what is our core business. I mean, we're, you know, people just want a frictionless and easy service, and that's what we're trying to provide. We think we do a pretty good job, but there's always room to improve. I don't know, Sue, do you wanna talk about a specific-
Yeah. I was talking, I think to Ian earlier or some of the audience. Certainly in Brisbane, we're consolidating our control rooms, and so that's a big investment and a big change, and hopefully seamless to everybody here and on the call. It is a massive change for us, so we're moving from four different locations, four different systems as well, to one. That transition is underway. We now have three of our control rooms on one site, and we've got our fourth one coming by the end of this financial year. With that, we're at the end of lifecycle for the technology, which is great for us. So smart to actually reassess and say, "How can we do this better?" We'll now be able to run it as a full network.
We've also brought in future capabilities, so being ready for connected autonomous vehicles now. Also to look at machine learning, artificial intelligence, so that we can respond faster and smarter to things that happen on the road. Pretty excited about that and I think there's a video, and then also very happy with some more show and tell as we finalize that project. It'll be wrapped by the end of the year. Big investment, but certainly the benefits are extraordinary.
The ability to do wider things as well, I think that's one of the things we've always invested in technology, and sometimes there's not a cost savings in the short term. Peter Meany, I know when I got here, and we put our first asset onto our GLIDe on the tolling system, it took like almost nine months or a year to put it on. Then the last asset took, I think, 40 days or something. You know, the ability then to put in systems to integrate to marginal cost, and as Sue Johnson said, now the ability to use that center to run much more than even just our network creates some big opportunities 'cause that was a three or four-year process and investment.
Four years. Mm-hmm.
You can't then say, if someone comes along, "We'd like you to do this." Go, "Okay, wait, just wait 5 years till we do this." Now we're in a position, and we're using those learnings to integrate CityLink into West Gate, working with the North American team with the next sort of billing platform on how we look at tolling. It's always. I think we've talked about it before. A lot of infrastructure companies in the past have run their systems for a period of time until they basically are end of life or falling apart, and then they'll invest a lot, then they'll run that for 8-10 years, invest a lot. We're constantly trying to. We look at it on an NPV basis. It's the same outcome 'cause you end up spending a lot when you replace a system.
We're just constantly trying to innovate, integrate, so that as the new systems, new assets, new opportunities come along, we're immediately ready rather than having to wait. We think it's gonna create potentially more opportunities for us going forward.
Thanks, Scott. We have a final question online. You've said that you will achieve net zero by 2050. What are some of the tangible actions today you're taking to achieve this?
Well, almost everyone on the stage can talk about what they're doing. I might let some of the team talk about what they're doing in the short term in relation to scope one and two. Scope three is the more difficult one for us, which is dealing with the contractors. We're dealing with a lot of different suppliers. We're dealing with Boral and looking at low emissions cement. We're dealing with some other parties looking at green steel. The biggest issue on our scope three emissions is our journey, and we're doing specific things to get to zero emissions, particularly on our suppliers. Now, we all know. Maybe you don't know that our customers, under the definition, don't actually fit into our scope three emissions. They fit with the vehicle manufacturers.
That's just the way the science has determined that it'd be calculated. With that as well, as Henry talked about, we are big advocates for zero-emission vehicles. We're doing things to support moving to much more fuel-efficient vehicles. There are a tremendous amount of things being done, particularly Scope 1 and 2, which we think will hit well below zero, below before 2030. I might let maybe just like quick-fire let everyone in the markets talk about a couple things they're doing. Michelle, I don't think you've spoken, so do you wanna talk about some of the stuff in New South Wales?
Sure. New South Wales a little while ago announced a power purchase agreement that we've put in place. I think it's the same in Queensland as well as in Victoria about to be. That effectively, depending on asset, will see from 80%-100% of the asset's existing energy consumption from renewable resources. That will be a huge impact on the renewable and the net zero progress that we have. Then for all of the existing assets, we're going through a pretty significant program of looking at how we retrofit the existing energy consumers such as lighting, ventilation to reduce the amount of energy that we consume as well as move to more sustainable sources.
Henry, I just approved the LED program for you, so I know how much it costs.
Yeah, well, there's a couple of things. We, on the Scope 1 and 2, we've just joined a club that IFM put together to sign a PPA, so we're gonna effectively move to, I think, 80% renewable by 2024, and then it'll go up. I think as Michelle just said a moment ago, that helps the group get to basically our Scope 1 and 2 targets five years early. We are doing other interesting things. Some of you might have been in the Burnley Tunnel recently, and you'll have seen we've painted part of one of the tunnel walls white.
That's a very first step towards some quite significant changes we're gonna make to the infrastructure there, where we've actually taken some ideas that have come out of Japan, where they've used some really interesting technology to put pacemaker lighting in to effectively prompt driver behavior to maintain speed limits. 'Cause anyone who's been in the Burnley knows that there's a significant problem with speed reduction, which reduces throughput and capacity. We'll invest in the tunnel. We're gonna change the whole visual amenity of the tunnel, so it'll look a lot more open. We're gonna have lighting technology which effectively give drivers a line to follow as they drive through it. All the data that we've done in pre-testing, including quite a bit of data on VR simulators, says that we're gonna get a capacity uplift and speed uplift in the tunnel on that.
That's something which, as a part of it, Scott says, is an ancillary benefit where we'll use very, you know, LED lighting, which effectively will help reduce the scope 1 and 2, as a part of that as well.
I know you've only had one question. I don't know if you wanna make any comment.
Yeah, I think just if you think about Montreal, we've been working with our government partners there to increase electric vehicles. We're actually up to almost 10% of the traffic on the A25 being done by electric vehicles. Then here in the U.S., we're working both in our operations and in our delivery to look at working with partners on our operations to actually look at how we can reduce our energy consumption and reduce emissions as well.
Thanks, Pierce. That's all the questions we have time for today, unfortunately. Some really great discussion. I'll now hand back to Scott Charlton, our CEO, for some closing remarks.
That was very, very official, Hannah. Thank you for that, and thanks for everyone who's watched online and appreciate your time. Thanks for everyone who's joined us in the room. You're gonna see a fantastic project this afternoon. I wanna particularly thank Hannah and the investor relations team for putting this all together. Again, encourage you to go to our website and look at our investment, our insight hub, and a lot of the data where we use that to make our decisions and provide feedback to our clients. Thank the whole Exco team for showing up on the day, and we look forward to the tour, and hopefully we'll see some of you online shortly. Thank you.