Great. Well, good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us for Transurban's Investor Day for 2023. Obviously, welcome to those of you who are online and on the webcast. We're broadcasting today here in Sydney, where we're meeting on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. One of the ways that we acknowledge and celebrate the continuing connection of First People to the land is artwork. We do this with local indigenous people on our newer assets and our assets under construction. I encourage you, when you drive on our assets, to look out for these artwork and also you can check it out on our website and see the local artists and the meaning behind the artwork. Okay, starting with the agenda. We're gonna cover a couple of topics, as you can see on the slide.
Michelle is going to provide an update on some of our recent traffic trends and a financial update. Hugh will give us some insights into what we're seeing happening in the construction sector and how we're tracking on our delivery pipeline. To round out for the first half of the day, Henry will present, who's head of Victoria and our Group Strategy Executive, will present some insights which I know you're all interested in on what's actually happening in Melbourne, what we're seeing in traffic, as well as some of our latest innovation initiatives. The first session will conclude with Q&A session with the whole executive team. Please prepare your questions. We're then gonna take a quick break, and then we're gonna have a separate ESG session.
Obviously, we incorporate safety, ESG into everything and all that we do in all aspects of our business. We know, and we know some of you are very interested in what we're doing, so we're gonna cover some of our key initiatives during that time. Just quickly, while I am obviously very excited to be here today. It's my 10th Investor Day for Transurban. I think it has grown a level in sophistication as well as the business. This will be my last Investor Day after 11 years with Transurban. I just wanna state up front to that end that the board succession process is going well, and we will keep you updated, Peter, but there is no announcements today. You'll be updated in due course. You know all of our executive team who are in the room today.
They will answer questions up on stage. To kick off the day on the results, I'm very pleased to announce that the board has agreed to upgrade our distribution guidance again for FY23 to the AUD 0.58 per security. This follows our upgraded guidance at the half year of AUD 0.57 per security and represents 41% growth on FY22. As many of you would have seen from our traffic results released last month, we had what was a record result for the third quarter, and we continue to have confidence in the ongoing traffic momentum, and we'll talk a little bit about that later in the day. We've also seen better than average results on financing costs than we had forecast.
In fact, the Euro bond issue we recently announced was 4 x oversubscribed, it was the most volume we've ever seen at a 10 years duration. When fully hedged back to Australian dollars, it was well under 6%. These factors have offset a higher investment in strategic development costs, which Michelle will talk to. I think most importantly, looking beyond FY23, we continue to benefit from what is a very supportive macro environment in all of our markets, including accelerated net migration. I think when even we started to write this or talk about this Investor Day a couple of months ago, we were looking at migration in around 300,000-350,000, obviously that number is gonna be closer to 400,000.
The recent higher inflation that will flow through over the next sort of 18 months and our operating costs returning to more normalized levels of growth in the near term gives us a lot of momentum going forward for distributions. Moving on, I'd like to spend some time talking about WestConnex. I know we've talked about WestConnex as an asset for a long time, and there have been many highlights for me at Transurban, but the process of acquiring WestConnex obviously was a huge milestone for the business, and this asset will continue to shape our company for decades to come.
I think what's important about WestConnex and what I want to convey today is that it's not just about this project or this asset, which we'll spend some time on, but it's how we operate, it's how we look at the insights, it's how we look at data, it's how we're patient and disciplined, and how we work closely with government and other stakeholders to create value over time. This is how we apply the approach across all our markets on transformative projects like WestConnex, as well as asset enhancements such as the M7-M12, or through some M&A like the potential EastLink opportunity in Melbourne, which we'll speak to. WestConnex, as anyone from Sydney will recognize, has transformed this city's network.
CityLink did the same in Melbourne in the 2000, and the TransApex toll roads did the same in Brisbane over the last decade. It also has transformed our business. From the time that the New South Wales Government announced the siege of this project in 2012, we recognized this would be a world-class asset with the potential to generate cash flow enhancement opportunities for decades. The transaction like this was never going to happen overnight. Again, a great example of our patient and disciplined approach that we take on every investment opportunity. It also demonstrated our competitive competencies and our very focused strategy. It highlighted the need to be responsive to changing priorities of government and being ready for solutions. Again, this was a decade in the making.
You may or may not know that at different times, we proposed three alternative unsolicited proposals for various components. When government first started this project, they were looking at three separate greenfield PBPs and all kinds of different funding structures. The government finalized their plans to deliver and own this network themselves. As I said, they looked at various funding and financial structures over the years, including an IPO, having initially excluded the private sector from ownership. Over the time, as the realities of delivery and funding became apparent, the government turned to the private sector. Obviously, we were ready and waiting, having already done the work on how to add value to this network.
After selling the first stake of 51% of WestConnex to ourselves and our partners, I don't know if you remember, but the government at the time said it had no plans to sell down the remaining stake. Clearly priorities change. Now, during different economic and political cycles, governments may have different priorities, prefer different structures, but ultimately, to deliver the infrastructure needs for our growing cities, they will continue to need the help of the private sector. I think that was played out today on the front page of the newspapers, where the federal government is talking about reviewing their infrastructure pipeline and going to need the private sector to supplement that because they don't have the budget to fulfill the obligations that they have forward in their forward pipeline.
We at Transurban and myself and at my career, I've seen this time and time again through these various economic and political cycles and from all colors of government. As 100 percent owner of WestConnex and with our partners, we have the privilege of operating this asset for the next 40 years. This is no different from the opportunities that we still see in places like Maryland, which will still produce investment options over time. EastLink, where we have waited a decade for potentially the right conditions for us before looking to make an acquisition. We remain a patient and responsive partner, continually offering solutions and creating value not only for our investors, excuse me, but our government partners, customers, and the communities where we operate.
I'm gonna outline again some more of the benefits of WestConnex and what we see over the next few years. First, I would like to acknowledge Andrew Head and his time and contribution to Transurban after almost 20 years, including delivering the WestConnex investment for Transurban and our partners. You may have seen in the presentation that Andrew will be finishing up with Transurban this year. Andrew has been an exceptional executive and colleague of mine since I joined Transurban, and we've been through some incredibly challenging times together with our teams, and most of them are in this room. I believe we've always delivered the right outcome for our stakeholders, including projects such as NorthConnex, the M2 upgrade, the M5 widening, and we've always actually had a lot of fun in doing it. Well, I've had a lot of fun.
I think at times Andrew's been stressed, but I've had a lot of fun. Thank you, Andrew, for your valued contribution and mostly thank you for your friendship and all the best with the next phase of your career. Well done. Just like it's impossible to imagine getting around Melbourne without CityLink, WestConnex has fundamentally changed the way people and freight move around Sydney. It is the largest single road project in Australia's history and one of the largest road infrastructure projects in the world. WestConnex has around close to 400 lane kilometers. That is twice the lane kilometers of CityLink, and as a single lane, it would run halfway from Melbourne to Canberra. Getting close to 300,000 people a day travel on WestConnex.
On the right of the slide, you can see what that means in terms of total trips on global scale, with WestConnex exceeding both our Queensland roads, all of them, as well as CityLink, as well as major international toll roads like the 407, Autopistas España, and far exceeding traffic volumes on, say, Chicago Skyways. With WestConnex now substantially completed as a business overall, we are managing approximately 60% more trips compared to 2018. In five years, we're managing 60% more trips than we used to. The importance of WestConnex is providing an efficient transport network to support livability and economic benefits is only gonna grow in Sydney. Western Sydney is the third largest economy in Australia behind the CBD of Sydney and Melbourne, and one of the largest growing urban populations in Australia.
Its population is projected to reach 3 million people by 2036 and absorb two-thirds of the population growth in the Sydney region. The new city of Bradfield or the city named Bradfield, which will be home to the new Western Sydney Airport, is planned to be the center of advanced innovation and industry for a region that will be home to now 2 million people by 2056, which is 5 x the size of Canberra. Together, the growth areas around Bradfield into the north around Marsden Park are expected to grow by more than 75% by 2042.
Again, the macroeconomics look good for Transurban in Sydney. WestConnex will also provide a central transport connection for a number of other government road projects, including its final element being the Rozelle Interchange, which Transport for New South Wales expects to be completed later this year.
We think it may go into the first half of the next calendar year, but hopefully completed later this year. Along with the Western Harbor Tunnel, the M6, and the Sydney Gateway, this represents an AUD 15 billion road infrastructure investment by the state of New South Wales, all connecting to WestConnex. They're all scheduled to open over the next five years. The chart on the bottom of the screen gives an indication of anticipated revenue impacts on those projects on WestConnex out to 2028, when the Western Harbor Tunnel is now due for completion.
Even after today, with the opening of the M4-M8 Link in January, which was early and on budget, motorists are saving up to 40 minutes and skipping more than 50 sets of traffic lights on a trip from Parramatta to Mascot. Those benefits in terms of safer, faster, and more reliable travel are going to keep on growing as additional infrastructure is completed and connecting into that asset.
As I mentioned earlier, WestConnex has been transformative for Sydney and for this business, and we expect it will continue to deliver results and create value for decades to come. With that, I would like to now hand over to Michelle for an overview on the business and how we're positioned to deliver what's always been our investment thesis on growing distributions, long-term growth, and creating value. Michelle.
Thanks, Scott, good morning, everyone. I love that story of WestConnex. It symbolizes to me everything that I love about Transurban. Being able to find a solution for the government and community. Watching the M4-M8 link as it came together, and now seeing the very real benefits being brought to Sydney. About one week ago, I was down at the West Gate Tunnel project in Melbourne, and I was up on the launching gantry that many of you saw last year. I was just watching the trucks drive in and out of the port. It was such a good reminder of how important that project will be for Melbourne when it opens in two years.
Both of these are perfect examples of what I want to talk about today, which is how our business is set up to create value over the short, medium, and long term. There are four key themes that I'll step through, as you can see on the screen. Naturally, for our business, it starts with traffic. Ongoing traffic growth in our cities is well supported by some very positive macro trends. Our assets actually follow the needs of our cities, and those cities are continuing to grow. For example, here in Sydney, as Scott touched on, more than 60% of the population lives within 5 kilometers of our roads. That population is forecast to grow by more than 20% by 2042. Brisbane and Melbourne are growing at even stronger rates, almost double.
There is anecdotal evidence recently that suggests that even this could be understating the growth. Scott touched on we're seeing this in the short term too, with reports of net migration into Australia of 400,000 people this year. That's significantly higher than the net migration in 2019, and most of it is going into Melbourne and Sydney. Population growth is strong, and that should support traffic growth. Traffic growth is also underpinned by the diversity of our assets and the broad range of reasons that our customers have for using our roads. For example, less than 20% of customers use our roads for commuting. You can see on the screen that CBD traffic while improving, still not quite back at historical levels.
That is being more than offset by exceptionally strong orbital traffic of people moving around the city and freight traffic growth. We're also seeing stronger traffic on weekends. Take NorthConnex, for example. At NorthConnex, weekend car traffic has grown at more than twice the rate of that during the week since 2019. Traffic actually peaks on a Friday, late on a Friday as people head out of the city for the weekend. In terms of freight, more than 80% of households shopped online last year. That's more than during the COVID peak.
If you step back and you look at the way in which we've followed the needs of our cities, including the population growth that I spoke about on the prior slide, and the different reasons that customers see value in our roads that we've set out here, all of this supports continuing traffic growth across our portfolio. Now, we've also been talking to you for a while about how we're positioned in a higher inflation and interest rate environment. So far, this has played out better than we expected. Starting at Transurban a couple of years ago, the cash rate was 10 basis points. It's hard to imagine. So we stress test the balance sheet for an increase in interest rates. I remember vividly talking to you about it at the 2021 Investor Day.
We knew then there would be some protection because we had inflation coming through the revenue line and also because of our long dated debt, which is almost all hedged. Since then, the inflation spike has been much more significant than we'd anticipated, up to 7.8% in December and still 7% last Wednesday. This will continue to adjust our revenue base and compound into future years. To date, our average cost of debt has only moved a fraction from 4% to 4.1%. That is better than we'd expected because in addition to our hedging and refinancing profile, we've had flexibility to choose our timing, and we've been able to execute well with exceptional support from our banks and investors. A great example here is the billion-dollar 10-year bond that we completed about a week ago that Scott touched on.
It was our biggest demand book ever, the outcome was probably around 100 basis points better than that we would have achieved if we'd done it a few months ago. Of course, our cost of debt will go up over time, it's happening slower than we'd anticipated, in the meantime, the revenue base will continue to grow. As you can see, our business is supported by strong fundamentals, that gives us a strong base to continue to grow and support the future needs of customers and communities. Here we focus on opportunities where we think we can add value, we take a long-term view. We definitely don't say yes to everything. This can be hard at times, like the recent decision not to continue with the Maryland Express Lanes project.
That was a hard decision, but ultimately it was the right decision for Maryland and for our investors. We're disciplined and patient through cycles. That includes financial cycles, changing government priorities, and construction cycles, as Hugh will talk to. We can be long-term in our thinking and patient and disciplined because of the strength of our balance sheet and also because we're constantly assessing the needs of our cities with a broad number of possible opportunities that we're thinking about at any one time. A good example here is the A25. We felt that the best way to enhance the value of that asset was to bring in the best possible partner we could in Montreal. We've brought in CDPQ. That released capital back into the business, about $400 million.
At the same time, we'd also been working for a number of years on the M7-M12 enhancement project here in Sydney. That's now moving to delivery. Being able to redeploy the capital we received from the A25 transaction to the M7-M12, giving us extra liquidity. That's a really good position to be in right now and makes room for future initiatives like EastLink. My point here is that we're constantly taking a portfolio view of how best to maximize value with all of these examples adding cash flow to the business over time. In the near term, there is natural growth in our existing portfolio. In the medium term, we have a pipeline of opportunities that fundamentally improve our cities and generate cash flows for years to come.
In the long term, we're more than the sum of our concessions. We know there'll be opportunity to deepen the value we provide to our 10 million customers and to the communities in which we operate. You'll hear about some of these over the course of the day. Whether you take a five -year , 10 -year , or 15-year view, we feel we're well-positioned to create value. Thank you. I'll now hand to Hugh.
Thanks, Michelle. Good morning, everyone. Great to see you all. I'm gonna, as Michelle mentioned, talk about the project delivery market today. Firstly, the macro market. Secondly, the Transurban portfolio view. Finally, a little bit of a deep dive into a couple of the major projects we've got going on at the moment. I think it's worth noting that core to the delivery of all these projects is one consistent theme, and that's safety. Safety for our employees, safety for our contractors, safety for our customers and the communities in which we operate. I'm really proud of the progress we're making thanks to the data-driven insights that come from all the teams around Transurban. A couple of key statistics here. Our contractor recordable injury frequency rate for this year is the lowest on record.
Citylink, congratulations to Henry and the team, has had its first ever two months of zero serious crashes. Some of those insights are really driving step changes in performance, and I think it's worth calling out as part of our project delivery. If we move to slide 17 and, particularly the chart on the right-hand side of the screen shows the current macro market conditions on the east coast of Australia.
What it tells us, consistent with the theme on the front of the paper today, is that there's an unprecedented level of road and rail projects happening from government. They're gonna need private sector involvement, and we see this as a really material opportunity to keep playing a great part in the infrastructure delivery pipeline in our existing markets. It also comes with challenges around cost escalation.
When combined with the recent geopolitical impacts on the supply chains, we have seen upward pressure on pricing and some push out of timing. If you look at the left-hand, sorry, the right-hand side of the slide, you can see that a couple of those key metrics are starting to move more favorably. Particularly iron ore and steel, we've seen drop through FY23, and it's forecast to stabilize in the next number of years. Thanks to the net migration that both Scott and Michelle have talked about, the RBA is now forecasting materially lower wage inflation. Both those should help drive more manageable escalations in the major project space. We move down to a Transurban portfolio view. What this chart shows you is that our committed capital has halved since FY2018.
Those projects that we've got on foot right now total less than half of what they did in 2018. As well as a volume benefit, we're seeing a mix benefit. We've got a much higher proportion of lower risk brownfield projects, a much lower proportion of the higher risk greenfield items. In that 1H23 column, the only greenfield project is in fact the West Gate Tunnel. Scott quite rightly stole my thunder, but in the next couple of days, we are gonna see Bella, our TBM number two, emerging from the ground at the end of its journey. That's really important because it represents one of the higher risk components of that greenfield project, and it's great to be through that. I'll come back to West Gate Tunnel a little bit in a minute.
From a portfolio perspective, we see the risk coming down, but we're also trying to manage risk at a project-by-project perspective. On the other side of the slide, you can actually see some of the risk mitigations we're taking up front in the early stages of our project. This isn't about materially increasing the risk we're taking on, and it's not about changing the contract structure. It's actually about listening to our market participants, about being flexible with key terms, and about augmenting the way in which we engage on a personal and corporate level. In recent projects, I'm gonna give some examples of what we've done. We've undertaken material early works on site so that we can both identify and quantify the risks that are sitting in the ground before we go to tender.
We've engaged with both tier one and tier two contractor markets pre-procurement phase to get their feedback on risk allocation and contract structure. We've established collaborative procurement processes where we aren't just handing documents out and asking for responses. We're actually augmenting them as we go through the process. That's really enabled more participation and a better environment with which to negotiate. There's no escaping the fact that the scale you saw on the previous slide, the complexity of projects and the size of projects is all creating additional pressure on a very small pool of tier one contractors in the Australian market. We've got three or four, depending how you define it, tier one contractors in the civil space. Recognizing this, we're really making additional efforts to bring tier two and tier three contractors into the mix. We're doing that in a few ways.
In particular, where it makes sense, looking where you can split large projects into multiple deliverable bundles with good interfaces. We actually provide that interactive support through the bidding process, and we have actually looked at partially reimbursing bid costs because they have been known to be a significant impediment to tier two and tier three participation in major processes. The benefits of these changes are really twofold. One, you actually gradually help tier twos and tier threes grow and be able to deliver bigger and better projects. But secondly, you reduce some of the pressure on the tier ones and enable them to do a better job on the projects they're doing for us today. If we move now to the West Gate Tunnel, as mentioned, Bella breaks through in the next couple of days.
I was gonna say tomorrow, but Zoe said the next couple of days, so you can ask her about that later. That's just the start of the story. In the coming months, what we'll see is the Sunbury facility at Hi-Quality, the spoil disposal site wrap up. Benalla, where we've done all our precasting construction, is now complete in the precasting and will close as soon as all the segments have been transported to site over the next couple of months. Steel production and delivery, which was a high-risk item for the key east zone construction is progressing really smoothly. Both our international and domestic suppliers are providing high-quality inputs with increasingly resilient supply chains. Over the coming months, as the TBMs finish their journey, we'll now see 250 workers enter the tunnel to do critical ITS mechanical and electrical works.
They'll all ultimately be operated out of the freeway control center, which is also under construction. You can see there's a lot of elements to this project, but we are getting to the pointy end of the delivery, and it's getting very exciting. Just to dwell very briefly on the commercial reset from early last year. As part of that reset, Transurban, the state, and the contractor all reset their senior project delivery teams, and we are seeing the benefit of that reset. We're seeing true collaboration. We're seeing key issues being escalated early and frequently. We're seeing a steering group that's not just managing downside risk. They're actually looking for upside and trying to seek ways to deliver this project earlier and better. The project overall is now ahead of our revised targets.
It's got wonderful momentum, the team is very focused on driving it towards completion. Many of you were out there last year, but for those of you who weren't, or for those of you who want the update, we've got a brief video now showing TBM 1 or Vida's breakthrough, as well as some drone footage of the site. Much like WestConnex in Sydney, you can see how much it's fundamentally gonna change the profile of how Melburnians move around their city. Over to the video. I don't know if you caught it there at the end, but I was there three weeks ago, and it was the 1st time I was able to walk from 1 bank of the Murrumbidgee to the other on one of our roads. Really exciting milestone as well. If we move now to the M7-M12 integration project.
Just a reminder, that's the widening of our existing M7 road and the connection from the M7 to the M12. The M12 is a government-delivered road, which will ultimately connect through to the Western Sydney International Airport when that opens in FY26. The need for the project was identified by our wonderful group of in-house traffic teams, thanks, Darren, somewhere in the room, a number of years ago and is now being delivered under the NSW Government's unsolicited proposal process. It's really providing that access to the extremely rapidly growing commercial and residential areas in Western Sydney. What the chart on the slide shows you, and particularly in the red highlighted area, is the Westlink M7 corridor represents some of the most congested roads in Sydney.
This means that upon opening, the project will deliver an immediate uplift in traffic, and it will deliver immediate congestion relief to our users. Given there was insight to this to create room in the medium for the M7 to be widened in the future upon initial construction, most of the work can be done without impacting our existing users and disrupting traffic throughout. I've already sought to de-risk this delivery project in line with the early-stage project strategies I mentioned earlier. Thanks to Andrew and the WestConnex team, we're also de-risking it from a staff perspective. We're taking some of our wonderful people from the WestConnex project with the M4/M8 being completed and moving them immediately onto the M7/M12 project to give us an accelerated start-up, with major project work to commence on-site later this calendar year.
I'm getting a thing that I'm over time here. It's flashing. I'm gonna move through the North America update very briefly before I hand over to Henry. I've been on the ground at these project sites many times in the last few months, and it was great to see that through the winter months we got extremely supportive weather and both the contractor and Transurban were able to quickly ramp up works and get more done than we expected over those winter months. The Fredericksburg Extension, which extends our 95 Express Lane 16 kilometers to the south, is due for completion now in August this year. That's some months ahead of the revised schedule that we set last year.
Project Next or Northern Extension, which extends our 495 Express Lanes towards the Maryland border, that's about 20% complete now and is progressing on schedule. As Michelle spoke about, we've embedded that A25 partnership with our wonderful local partner, CDPQ, extending the partnership we created in the second stage of the WestConnex acquisition, and we're really excited to work with them to enhance the Montreal network. With that, let me hand over to Henry for an update on what's happening in Melbourne. Thank you very much.
As Michelle mentioned earlier, we are seeing a more gradual return to pre-COVID traffic conditions on CityLink. Having said that, we do remain confident in the core fundamentals that are gonna support growth over the longer term, and I think that's a really important theme and recurrent through what we're talking about today. CityLink's arguably Melbourne's most significant transport corridor, it links three of the city's busiest freeways, which means it's exposed to a very broad range of trips. That's CBD-related travel, airport-related travel, obviously freight as well. It also links to all the major travel routes into and out of the city, which is playing through to some of the data points that we're observing. Right now we are seeing some short-term disruption on the network from some of the construction activities.
That's particularly the West Gate Tunnel, which you've spoken to there. Having said that, we do see that dissipating as that project moves towards completion. More positively, we are seeing some strong numbers, particularly for travel to the CBD on weekends and in the evenings. That stems in part from a number of major events. We're all aware of the Grand Prix. There've been some very well-attended AFL matches. I think also interestingly, we're seeing a resurgence in nightlife in the CBD as well, which is feeding through to some of the numbers. In particular, we're seeing high growth on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons, which have exceeded 2019 levels on multiple weekends this calendar year, and that's borne out in the numbers. Average weekend and public holiday traffic's up 11% for the March quarter year-over-year.
Another important trend that's playing out is workday PM travel peaks are returning, and that's particularly for Thursdays and Fridays, which have been strong. That's getting back to 2019 levels, and you can see evidence of that on the chart that we've got up here on the slide. If we look at some of the other factors that are supporting travel on CityLink, airline passenger numbers continue to grow. Having said that, they're still around 12% below what we saw pre-COVID. From that, we do see some potential upside there, particularly for that Western Link section of CityLink, which connects into the airport. Freight traffic's another element that we're watching closely.
It's been well documented that that held up well during the years of the COVID pandemic. I think importantly, as we emerge into a more normalized environment, we're still seeing growth in those heavy commercial vehicles and light commercial vehicles, which is really important. Population growth's also a supportive thematic for our Melbourne numbers. Michelle mentioned earlier, Melbourne's back on track to becoming Australia's most populous city. I'm sure most of you are aware of the current projections that have Greater Melbourne overtaking Greater Sydney as Australia's largest city over the next decade. That's gonna be driven by, I think, predominantly overseas arrivals, and that'll include things like international students as well. Just on population concentration, population around the CBD, I think Scott had a slide up on this. That's also gonna be a factor that plays out into the longer term growth numbers for CityLink.
20% of Melbourne's population is located within 5 kilometers of the CBD. If you think about the alignment of our asset to the CBD, it's very well-positioned to play a key role moving people in and around the city well into the future. That's all I wanna say on traffic. I now wanna touch on some of the innovation activity that we've been undertaking with a particular focus on what we've been doing in Melbourne. It's been a really active period for us. We've been trialing some technologies to drive both immediate benefits onto the network in the here and the now, but also to prepare for the future with some major shifts in vehicle technology that we all see coming.
We've operated CityLink, obviously for more than two decades, over that time we've invested really heavily into it remains one of the most technologically advanced roads in the world. That's given us the opportunity really to use it as a test bed for emerging technologies. A great example of this was actually late last year when we conducted what really was an Australian-first trial of an automated truck on CityLink in a live traffic environment.
That's really the next step for us in terms of testing connected and automated vehicles and how they're gonna operate with the road infrastructure and technology. The benefits of automated vehicles are obviously very well documented. That includes getting more out of the infrastructure that we've built. There are obvious safety benefits that hopefully we'll be able to get to longer term as well.
I think it's also becoming apparent that early real-world applications of this technology at scale are gonna happen around the movement of freight on defined high-value routes with highly instrumented infrastructure. It's not hard to think about how we play into that equation. This latest trial tested some of this in practice, so it included how CityLink's road sensors and other embedded road technology shares data with an automated truck. In this case, it was real-time data from CityLink systems fed directly into the truck, and that really gave it the ability to understand road and traffic conditions up to a kilometer in advance of its own sensors.
We're gonna release the report on the findings from that study in the coming weeks. I think in addition to building on some of the previous findings that we've had around how automated vehicles interact with the physical road infrastructure, there are a number of learnings around the infrastructure-to-vehicle communications, which is gonna be really important as we look to implement real-world solutions here. I think importantly, we're now investigating more broad-based applications of this technology on our networks. Another thing that we've been preparing for is how we develop the systems to effectively manage the increasing scale of our roads.
As West Gate moves towards completion, which Hugh's spoken to just a moment ago, we're preparing to integrate those operations with CityLink, and as a part of that, we're gonna be building a new freeway control centre at the northern portal of West Gate Tunnel. That's gonna give us a centralized facility for all of our Melbourne operations and maintenance and also the incident response. The facility is gonna have the ability to manage both CityLink and the West Gate Tunnel. I think importantly, it's gonna give us the ability to scale into the future as the need arises as well.
Another more recent operational initiative, which I think many of you have seen, in fact, I think we've adorned our investor presentation front cover with this today, is the Pacemaker Lighting in the Burnley Tunnel. That's obviously aimed at improving flow on one of the most congested aspects of our network. That tunnel's one of the busiest in the country. It had more than 20 million trips through it last year alone. Obviously the geometry doesn't help with flow. Those of you who have been through it will know it's much steeper and deeper than many drivers are aware. In fact, I think at its lowest point, it's 65 meters below the Yarra River. That causes very significant speed reductions as people move through it.
The Pacemaker Lighting really is just a nudge designed to give drivers a visual cue to maintain their speed, particularly as they head uphill and out of the tunnel. It's early days, we're gonna need to gather more data to get a complete picture, but we're already seeing real benefits in terms of speed and flow from this.
Speeds through the tunnel have been 10% faster on average during the day, but we're seeing much more significant speed increases through that interpeak period and on the weekends as well. That's translated through to volume increases of around 4% against the reference period, which was the six-week period prior to us turning this system on. Obviously some of that volume uplift's attributable to the natural recovery that we've been seeing on the network.
I think it's clear that part of the volume uplift has been driven by this Pacemaker Lighting. The speed increases support that hypothesis. The fact that the Domain Tunnel's only increased by about half that volume over the equivalent period is another data point that I think reinforces that. We're gonna show, I think, just a quick video to show the lighting in action. Just a couple of things to call out from that video. You might have noticed that as a part of the project, we've improved the visual amenity of the tunnel, so we painted the tunnel walls wide, and we've lit into the roofing cavity. That's giving the tunnel a much more open, expansive feel, which has been proven to reduce driver anxiety, which obviously plays through to some of the driving habits as well.
We've also taken the opportunity to install LED lighting, which is obviously more energy efficient, helping us meet our energy reduction targets as well. If I turn just finally to other opportunities in Melbourne, you'd be aware we've indicated our interest in the potential acquisition of EastLink, which is Melbourne's other toll road.
At this stage, indications are that a majority interest is going to be put up for sale, and the formal sale process is set to begin in the middle of this calendar year. The ACCC have also begun their review of our potential involvement in this, and that's consistent with similar processes that we've been involved with in the past. Melbourne's obviously a market we know and understand really well. That's from operations to traffic forecasting to customer expectations.
I think we've shown how we can bring value for a range of stakeholders when we've made equivalent acquisitions in our other markets. So we'd expect that if we're successful here, this will be no different. That includes things like the experience that customers have through personalized traffic notifications. We obviously have a very well-developed program to support customers experiencing hardship. I think importantly also, we've got a track record of working with government agencies to improve the performance of the broader network. We think there are opportunities in that space here as well. We have a team looking at this opportunity in detail at the moment, and we'll continue to keep the market updated as that process unfolds. Having said that, I'm gonna hand back to Scott.
Thank you, Henry, Michelle, and Hugh. I think we should hold our investor day later in the afternoon. We certainly have a nightclub vibe on the music, so well done on the music. It keeps everyone awake. I did note Hugh's comment about me stealing his thunder in relation to the West Gate Tunnel. Just to say, I don't remember how much you've actually dug yourself. All credit to Zoe and the team that's actually done the work and most of the other executives in the room who actually do the work. We appreciate you being here. Please, if you get a chance, speak to the people who actually deliver, and then we get to take all the credit. Thank you for making us look so good.
To recap the business, it's performing extremely well. We have some of the best road assets in the world. More importantly, through good investment or good luck, we are located in urban centers that have some incredibly strong growth demographics. Not only growth, but low unemployment. We continue to gain significant traffic momentum in all of our markets. This is our second upgrade in distribution in the past three months. As Michelle talked about, we have a strong balance sheet capacity to support our near-term development pipeline, which has the lowest risk profile that I've seen with the group over the last 10 years. Our mid to long-term pipeline still represents a decade of growth in our core markets.
With that now, I'm going to invite the rest of the executive team to join me, and we're gonna open up some questions. That's gonna be led by head of Investor Relations. Hannah's gonna lead this. I'm not sure how the logistics are gonna work from here. We're just gonna wing it. Yep.
Yep.
Okay, let's go. Everyone come up. Where are the chairs?
Investor relations here at Transurban. We'll be taking questions from the audience today as well as from online. For those of you online, please submit your question via the box on your screen. For those in the room, we will have Stu and Justine from my team. They have some roving mics. Stu, do you wanna give us a wave? Thank you. Justine is over here. We do ask that you wait for the mics before asking a question, otherwise those on the webcast won't be able to hear. Shall we get started? Who has a question? Shall we start in the room? Reinhardt?
Thanks, Justine. Thanks, Hannah. Reinhardt van der Walt here from Bank of America. Just a quick question on WestConnex, maybe for Michelle. At the half year result, you mentioned that M4-M8 is most likely gonna be cash flow neutral for some time, that obviously being contingent on the M6 and maybe Gateway opening to traffic.
Rozelle too.
Yeah, Rozelle as well being a contributor. I'm conscious that at the time of that comment, you probably had just about a week of data on that link, maybe a little bit more. It looks like from the quarterly, the traffic numbers were pretty strong. Has your thinking on cash flow neutrality changed at all or the pace of that maybe?
No, it's about the same. It is about the same. Yeah, it is performing a little bit better, but there are some impact costs around the network and, you know, it's about the same. I'll let Michelle give you more detail.
Yeah, no. Got it. Thank you.
It's the mic's not on. Sorry. Can you hear me?
Yeah. I've got you. Yeah, it's all right. We can wing it. Maybe just one quick follow-up question. Just obviously you've had to sort of tango with the ACCC before in the Sydney market. Understand that, you know, if there are any issues it might be surmountable in Victoria with EastLink. What are you thinking some of the pinch points are gonna be with the ACCC if you do actually move forward with that bid for EastLink?
If you look at the issue statement for a determination , you'll see ACCC put on the website maybe a few more of the WestConnex safety issue around completing new roads, development, what do you do with your customers? We think we're dealing with the same issue and the same process that we did in WestConnex. We're very comfortable that, you know, we're using the same expert, but it's the same expert process. You know, we're able to see the same process and we're working collaboratively with them. You know, we will release this one in time. But as long as...
Got it. Thanks. Thank you all.
Question from Ian? Justine, question from Ian?
You might need the other microphone, Stu.
Shoving in a microphone.
Couple of questions. Firstly, just on change of government in New South Wales and their policy around tolling. You made the call that WestConnex has been very successful. Already the government's trying to sort of think about that tolling rate and feeling it's not successful. I guess, how do you go about that negotiation of sort of getting a win-win for both parties?
Well, I'll let Michelle talk about it as well, but I think government by any one means would say WestConnex has been successful, including the current government, who, I think there was recently some discussions about comments that were made in opposition by the Roads Minister that now in government suggests that they really support WestConnex and think it's a great project. I think actually WestConnex and to some extent the M7, when you look at flag falls, distance-based cap-type regimes is something that the New South Wales government would like to entertain, obviously, you know, in a wider context. I mean, Michelle has had as many interactions with John and Daniel and others as I have. You may wanna make some comments.
Sure. If we look at the network in Sydney of motorways that have been built over the last 30 plus years, that's been done in partnership and collaboration with politicians and stakeholders from both sides of politics, Coalition and Labor as well. We don't see a change to how we're going to continue to build those relationships. As Scott mentioned, during the election campaign earlier this year, the now Labor government has signaled their interest in looking at an entire reform of the network. That's also similar to some of the former Coalition government perspectives on that.
From a Transurban's perspective, any opportunity for us to look at improving the way that we can better serve our customers, improving equity, fairness, we've committed to and we continue to commit to having those dialogues with the governments. We don't go into this, thinking that this is a simple and easy topic.
We support the government in thinking about this in a multi-year journey. I think it's for those of you that have been following the Sydney market, you'll be familiar. The incoming government has announced some short-term subsidies and toll caps that will help relieve and address some of the current cost of living pressures for city-siders and travelers, with a view that over the next few years, they will continue to work with the industry to find a longer term reform set of solutions.
The other thing that the Labor government has also announced is not just looking at the tolling regime, which is, as Scott mentioned, the distance-based and some of the other levers around tolling regime, but also some of the other points around administration processes, toll notices that will actually make a big difference to customer experience as well. We continue to have those conversations, in fact with both sides of politics and look forward to doing that. It's not just a Transurban issue. All of our concessions have different types of ownership structures, a lot of them in partnership with active and also more passive shareholders. We need to make sure that those also have their interests all taken into account.
I think largely, Ian, we still see this as an opportunity to make the network perform more efficiently, provide benefit to customers. There is, as Michelle said, there are subsidies being provided, there is cash flow from other assets that government owns. There's, there is a way we think through this over the medium to long term. It's gonna be complicated, but in the short term, there's a lot of things we can do to help the customers just through information, digitization, other initiatives, even little things like both parties took into government, increasing the speed on WestConnex to 90 K. It's a simple solution, something we've proposed for a long time. Hopefully we can get some quick wins and then build to the longer-term reform.
More, just a minor one on M2. I got to ride it yesterday, and I think it's truly the most bumpy road in Sydney. Actually wondering, are you in compliance with the construction requirements of the original contract? What do you have to do to actually possibly make it right?
I will answer the first part. I will get the person responsible for delivering the second part. Yes, we are in compliance. Unfortunately, I'll let Michelle talk about how we're gonna fix it. I'll talk about what the problem is. It was the way the road was constructed at the time and is not different from how a lot of roads were constructed around New South Wales at the time, which instead of having one continuous pavement, is in effect, there are concrete slabs with gaps in between them. The road base underneath moves over time and causes that deflection and those gaps in which we then have to treat. Unfortunately, that is the nature of the base of the road.
To change that would mean completely taking up the road, which would be much more disruptive to Sydney than fixing the road. We've been trialing a lot of interesting products and other things, but I'll let Michelle talk about how she's gonna fix it.
Thank you for the engineering intro.
I'll give you the problem. Your job is to come up with a solution.
We have a great team to do just that. As Scott mentioned, safety continues to be the top priority for us in everything that we do. The road remains compliant with the obligations that we have. Given the situation that we have and keeping in mind we don't want to rip up the road from a disruption perspective, that would be a very significant impact on our customers. We're finding ways to actually bring forward some of the remediation, some of the rebuild in very localized areas where we need to, we need to continue to work on upgrading, so that we can actually keep operating and using the road, but at the same time address some of the experience and ride issues, Ian, that you've mentioned.
We're trialing some new materials. We're working with overseas and local experts on doing some stuff so that as we replace the asphalt, we can minimize the deflection. There is always gonna be some level of deflection. I think for full disclosure, we should let everyone know that Ian bikes on the M2. This is specific interest.
We have a question from Anthony here.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. Anthony Walker, JP Morgan. Just a quick one on capital allocation. You brought in partners for the American assets and, you know, ultimately, you've sought to redeploy capital across the network. I mean, how are you thinking about the Australian opportunities set just in light of that development pipeline that we've got on offer now and potentially looking at sort of crystallizing or releasing capital for some of those projects?
I'm gonna answer the first half, and then I'll let Michelle answer the second half on the capital. Bringing in partners both for the A25 and for the American business was first about strategy. We wanna grow the business in North America, having partners, looking at bigger opportunities and the same in the A25, looking at the opportunity we wanted to take forward, having a local partner we think can accelerate that. First they were looking through the strategic lens, but they do satisfy some of the issues we have around capital, which Michelle may wanna comment on.
Yeah. I think, I mean, I think you've covered it, Scott. The reason we went into those transactions, whether it was the Chesapeake transaction or the A25, was because strategically we thought it enhanced our ability to grow those assets and maximize value. The benefit from that was that they released capital. The timing was with Chesapeake, we're able to redeploy capital towards the WestConnex acquisition and then with the A25 and the M7. That wasn't why we did them for reasons that they, you know, they were the right partners to maximize the value of the assets. And it freed up capital at the same time. As we sit here today, we feel, you know, we sort of got $2+ billion of liquidity over and above the committed pipeline.
We feel from a balance sheet perspective, we've got flexibility and it will just depend on particular opportunities.
Okay, great. Understood. I guess, back on the Americas as well, I mean, thinking about, take your point on Maryland and then what's ultimately happened there. Just wanna a bit of a primer as to how you're still seeing the opportunity set within that market and, potentially, you know, maybe with the slowing consumer in the US, I mean, is there more pressure on some of those municipalities to get some of those things done? Is there still an appetite for that public-private partnership funding in that area?
Yeah. Look, Mike's not here, he may wanna make some comments as well. As I said, through the political cycles, we've been through the economic and political cycles, we've been through cycles in New South Wales where nothing is happening for one or even two terms of government. The reality set in of needing the private sector, needing things to happen, creating opportunities.
We have in the U.S. some public, some un-public, looking at opportunities that exceed $4 billion in those two markets. Whether they come off or not depends on all those issues that you talk about. We're always sitting there prepared with opportunities. In any one market, we'll have three or four things that we think will add value to the network.
Now whether government choices pursue them at that time or they want, they wait, anyway, we're always sitting there ready to help increase the network. There certainly still is a lot of opportunities right now with the changes and the economic conditions, we're very focused on delivering for Transurban Chesapeake, those Fredericksburg next. There's a few other things happening as well. He's been spending a lot of time in the U.S. over the last sort of few months. I don't know if you wanna make a comment.
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Scott. The only thing I'd add is with Maryland, there's an inevitability about the requirement to fix the American Legion Bridge, which is in particular the connection between Virginia and Maryland. The project hasn't been dropped. We have dropped out of this process, the benefit to the wider toll road network around the Greater Washington area has been preserved by that government. It's more of a timing issue.
I think some of the opportunities, as Scott mentioned, that we see within our existing market of Virginia are fantastic, both brownfield and private to private, we'll continue to pursue those. The team is really right now focused on about the $1.3 billion of NEXT in FredEx, which is getting towards the pointy end. Lots of excitement over there.
Montreal is now a big piece of that puzzle as well with our new partner.
Anthony, our next question.
Hi, it's Paul Butler, still at Credit Suisse.
That's a new, is that a new mustache? Is that because of-
That is a new mustache.
Well done.
Thank you. In the presentation, there was a comment about government investment plans in both road and rail. I just wonder if you could sort of comment about how you would see investing in rail infrastructure as different to toll roads, and whether that could ever be an area of interest for Transurban.
I think we can take this one pretty short. I don't think there's an interest, certainly while I'm CEO, and that's not very long, so. I think the board, there is no change in the board and the strategy, and there's a tremendous amount of opportunity in the road space. I mean, there's the adjacencies around mobility as a service and the things that we do with our customers and adding value, which I know there's a panel later, and Simon can talk about the rewards programs that we're doing and stuff, but it's all gonna be based around roads.
Okay, thanks. Just one other question on WestConnex. In the chart you've showed us in, on page eight around the revenue impact from the opening of additional sections, it seems to indicate that the Rozelle Interchange is gonna have a more positive impact on revenue than the opening of the M4-M8 link.
That's true.
Is that's what that's intended to show?
Yeah.
I'll let Andrew answer the question 'cause he's the expert. I would suggest, again, it's a graphical representation, so don't get out your ruler and try to calculate the exact number. It's not a forecast. Just wanna give an indication, there's AUD 15 billion of new government assets gonna add value. Andrew, you might wanna talk about the consequences of the new assets.
Yeah. Stage three represents two parts, Rozelle Interchange being the second. The M4-M8 is doing a fabulous job, and as I think has already been mentioned, it's performing ahead of forecast. Certainly ahead of my own personal expectations. The real power of WestConnex and also the M4-M8 is unleashed by Rozelle Interchange in particular. If you use the assets as they're currently configured, and you imagine what Rozelle Interchange is going to do, the impact it's gonna have on the value proposition for the customer, not to mention when the local area is returned to the community and that fabulous park is put in place, the last part of WestConnex is really gonna be a very exciting unveil.
I think you'll find as well, 'cause the people that are using the M4 and the M5 or the M8 now hit the cap on the M4-M8 Link. When Rozelle, there is a lot of traffic then starts doing the north-south movement, which will not hit the cap. That's why it's a bigger revenue contribution.
Thanks very much.
Thanks, Paul. We have a question from Simon in the front here, Jess.
Hi, Owen Birrell from RBC Capital. The one asset that sort of hasn't really had a huge amount of exposure in this investor day is Brisbane. I'm just wondering to get a bit of an update on what's happening there. We're sort of hearing in the press that the Queensland government's kinda dragging its heels ahead of the, you know, the upcoming Olympics. Just wanting to get a sense on what interactions you've had and whether there's any opportunities that are arising.
Sure. Well, we have Brisbane, but it's the best performing traffic market, so it's performing well ahead of the, of the market. Yeah, there's some fabulous opportunities, which how much do you wanna go into detail, Michelle?
I'm happy to thank you for the question. Definitely getting the house in order ahead of the decade to come. It's a pretty exciting place to be, whether you're there today or planning to be there for what's coming ahead. From our perspective, always talking to states or looking at what congestion is occurring and what's going to come our way as the population continues to grow. We've had a great year. Obviously, everybody's watched the traffic grow on our assets.
The foundation of Logan Enhancement Project, which we delivered a few years ago, is really coming to the fore. I think that the proof is there to say there are things that we can do to help a growing city. I would suggest we've got lots of levels of government looking at what is needed for the decade ahead with both population growth and then obviously the pinnacle being that 2032 Olympic City status. Always looking to find opportunities to help with congestion.
I think, Owen, that's like they're always very careful because of the government partners, but CEO prerogative. We hope over the short to near term there's some real opportunities to do around the enhancements. If you look at Logan was always gonna need widening parts of Gateway. You just had the Pacific Motorway connected. There is some opportunities, but it's up to government whether they wanna take those opportunities or not.
Thanks, Owen. We might go to a question from the webcast. We'll then go to Rob and then to Andre. From the webcast, with lower wage growth forecast, especially in Western Sydney, are you concerned about impacted individuals opting not to use toll roads? How would this affect shareholders?
Well, I'm not sure I'll do it overall. I mean, the value proposition is obviously very strong and continues, and we see it every day. Again, the average toll road user in New South Wales is spending around AUD 10, AUD 11 a week or whatever the number is at currently the time. It's around that number. Again, there's some perception that there is, you know, quite a large number of people that use the toll roads both directions, either way, every day is not the average user. True, there are users and cost of living is an issue, but that's why we're trying to do other things which Simon can talk about with reward programs and others to mitigate that cost or for those vulnerable customers we provide financial assistance.
We still think there's a big value in the proposition to continue to use our toll roads. I'm not sure who is the best to throw to 'cause we all deal with it every day, either through the customer side of the business, the operations side of the business. I don't know, Simon, if you wanna talk about some of the things that you're doing in the customer side.
Yeah, sure.
Maybe get there.
Can you hear me? Mic on? We have a rewards program through our Linkt app. Anyone we've given them basically provided or enabled AUD 5 million worth of fuel savings for that, for our customers. Later this month, with the 1st of May now, we're gonna be launching two more rewards partners that you'll be able to redeem value through our app.
It all goes to this concept of building upon the value that customers are receiving, not only through the travel time savings or offsetting your carbon footprint 'cause our roads are more effective in that regard. Now you're also gonna get more value through being a Transurban customer or a Linkt customer through our mobility services and reward system. It's an exciting time for our customers, I think, going forward.
Thanks. Rob?
Good day. Thank you very much for this morning. It's Rob Koh from Morgan Stanley here. I just wanna draw together a couple of different threads, things like toll caps and the high CPI prints that are still coming through. Is there an opportunity for Transurban to wrap those variables into concession renegotiations? Is there win-wins that can be had with smoothing the costs for your customers and obviously increasing the value of the assets?
I think, look, with any transaction that we do or any investment that we make, there's always those discussions with government. You know, on the M7, M12, there was an extension to the concession, there was no uplift in the toll in that case. There is immediate uplift in traffic, which will mean an immediate uplift in distribution from those, from those assets. We are open to any of those issues and discussions with government. It depends on what their priorities are and what they want to achieve rather than levels of toll and where. I think the main thing when we always look at it is always, as we've said, balancing creating long-term value, but obviously understanding how important the distribution is.
We're never gonna say, "Okay, we'll have a concession life of 100 years, and by the way, that means our distribution is gonna be flat for 100 years or 30 years," or whatever the number is. We're always gonna balance those out, and that's how our portfolio is set up. All those discussions are on the table, and it's important that we continue to invest in the business to create long-term value. We're not trying to. We could very much not look at the long term and just drive it in the short term for distribution, which I know there are probably a few shareholders that would like that.
We need a sustainable business to create value over time and create more than just the concession, as Michelle said, through our customers, through the other things that Henry and the guys are doing and, or the team is doing in innovation, how we can create value for the security holders that is above and beyond the concession life. We're always balancing creating long-term value and distribution growth.
Okay. Thank you. I thought I'd ask a question partly to make sure that everyone gets a chance to answer a question on stage. I think the only person who might not have had an opportunity yet is Ms. Kaur. I note that there's a couple of transitions within the leadership, not just Mr. Charlton, but WestConnex and looks like North America as well. If we could get your thoughts on people and culture at this point, Ms. Kaur.
Sorry, Rob, I missed that. Thank you for the question. I just missed what the end of the question was.
Well, I guess I'm not trying to suggest there's a pattern or anything going on there. If you could just give us your current thoughts on where you're at with people and culture.
With people and culture. I think if I think about what we've been through, Rob, over the last few years with COVID, we're definitely coming through that exit, and that's a really good thing. We're seeing things like turnover more broadly, engagement is stabilizing, and that's a very, very good thing for our business. We've spent a lot of time as an executive thinking about the leadership of the organization.
There are natural points of change that emerge, we think we're really well prepared. You'll see today here, not just the executive that you'll meet, but the broader group of senior managers. There's some very, very talented people in our organization. I think we're coming through that very well.
I think Rob as well, I mean, we've just had our voice survey come back, which is one of the strongest it's ever been coming through a very difficult time and with a lot of leadership transition that they know are happening internally, which is really positive to see. I think that goes to the stability and the strength of the group. I mean, when I joined the group and we reset ExCo, and Andrew was a big part of that. It was all left to ExCo to lead the group. The leadership team now is in this room and the level below that. The leadership, the culture, the way we work, that is embedded right across Transurban. I'm very comfortable that won't change after I leave.
I always think of the Jerry Maguire movie when he walks out of the office and the elevator will close, and everyone will forget about me. Don't, you know, I mean, there is a mass of leadership, talent, and capability within this group. Not only that, you'll hear from our new Head of Sustainability, Amy's in the room. You'll hear about later. If I think back to when I started Transurban, it was hard to get talent, city executives to come to Transurban because what's this toll road business? That looks pretty boring. You see some of the stuff that Henry and the innovation team and T&T and others are doing. It's a place that, you know, we get things done, we do things, we make things happen, we create value, create opportunity, make a difference to people.
It's attracted a lot of talent and developed a lot of talent. I'm very, very proud of everyone on the stage and everyone in the room. The company's in very good shape. There is just a natural rhythm that it's time to go, whether it's me or others, that, you know, there's a time to make room and go on and so the next generation could create additional value.
Andre.
Thank you. Andre Fromyhr from UBS. There's been a lot of talk about project pipeline, Scott, I take your point about having to invest in network growth and thinking about the long term. There's also a chart in Hugh's section about a declining development intensity, the amount of work that you've got in your pipeline relative to the value of the company. I wonder, is that a bit of a signal about what the next era for Transurban will be, the post-Charlton era of focusing more on extracting the value out of the network that you have as opposed to growing it, or is it more about where we are in the cycle and high cost of construction, high cost of capital?
I don't think it's in the high cost of construction or high cost of capital. I think partly it's where we're in the cycle. We were in extraordinary cycle sort of five years ago. You know, when you go back to those charts that Hugh had, I mean, roads were... everything was being built in roads and maybe a bit of rail. Now we're in a cycle where a lot of stuff's gonna happen in the energy transition phase, and a lot of that focus is gonna get moved to energy. It's extraordinary that you had Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and North America all doing deals, all doing mega billion-dollar deals at the same time, which normally, again, the politics, economic run and cycle.
I think the different thing that will occur now is we had a lot of greenfields projects like NorthConnex and West Gate and, you know, WestConnex once we got involved. I think what you'll see in the cycle, and Queensland should produce some opportunities. North America still will. Long-term, Melbourne, I think you just see more that the network that we currently own or the assets we currently own will generate the opportunities 'cause the size of the assets that we own. I think more of it will come from internally generated projects because of the position that we currently hold.
I think the strategy hasn't changed at all from the, from the board when they, when they look forward, and we just had strategy day not too long ago, which Michelle and Henry and Hugh and others were leading. I don't... that's not gonna change. I think the other thing is coming back to WestConnex, one thing we know is when the time, when the, when the opportunity presents itself, you just have to be ready. We don't pick the timing with government. We don't pick the timing with people who wanna sell assets that meet our strategy. Again, all these things are sitting there.
We could say that, I don't know, if I look at the pipeline of opportunities that we have in our pocket would be AUD 20 billion of things that we could go to governments right now and say, boom, boom, boom. There's a timing and a place for all that, and it tends to roll out sequentially 'cause there's only so much they can handle, and there's only so much the market can handle. I don't think there's a lack of opportunity. It's just that extraordinary cycle we had five years ago for investment.
We might take another question from online.
Sorry. Just some point, Anthony's had his hand up every time. I don't know if you don't want to see him back there.
No problem. Anthony, we'll come to you straight away after this.
Hmm.
Michelle, what should the market expect on cost growth in the second half of the year?
Probably the way I'd think about it. We've been working really hard on our costs, and we spoke about that at the first half and sort of making quite good inroads into being as efficient as we can across our operations. When we're at the first half result, probably the best thing to do is take that result, double it for the second half, so you've got a full year picture, then there'll be some natural volume growth that comes through, including from the opening of Stage 3A of WestConnex. Then on top of that, we'd also said we're gonna invest a bit more in strategic development, particularly around Maryland. You know, add AUD 30 million for strategic development costs and a little bit for volume growth.
Sort of how I'd think about it. The operations, actually, we're running pretty efficiently half on half.
Morning. It's Anthony Moulder from Jefferies. I wanted to ask about concessions or the next wave of concessions that you expect or hope to sign with state governments. If you look here in New South Wales, we've moved from a user pays model to more of a subsidized model. I appreciate that's been more recent, how do you, when looking at that, think about how state governments are gonna react to another wave of concessions? Does it mean that the 4% CPI kind of idea with C-CPI or 4% is in the bygone era? State governments are gonna be more conditioned to a lower rate of CPI increases, a smaller price for concessions, et cetera. How are you thinking about how this model changes looking forward?
Yeah, look, the model's constantly changing, and we're always looking at it. I mean, a lot of times, which this group knows, we try to stop government from doing. I mean, sometimes government says, "Let's do, like, a 10% a year increase in tolls," or, you know, vice versa, "Let's do like a 100-year concession life." And we're like, "Well, you know, we can't really value the last half of that much." So, there's parameters that we can play in, and we're happy to do whatever government wants to do. We know the current government in New South Wales has talked about if they do tolls, that they would wanna do inflation only. That had been their policy pre-election.
I don't know if they talk about concessions going forward, or they just want to do linked to inflation, which is what the M7 is. You know, we're happy to value whatever they want to value. A lot of times when we have these discussions, and Andrew and I have had many discussions in New South Wales, where you're talking to different government officials and bureaucracies, and you just line up all the value drivers on one side for financial and all the tolls and the outcomes on the other side, and you match which ones work from a political point of view and also from an economic point of view.
It's a little bit of an artwork in working to satisfy every stakeholder's objective, which is why it's so important to listen to our customers, community, to make sure that we can thread that needle of satisfying everyone's objective. I don't think the concessions necessarily will change that much. They may not have fixed escalators, maybe based to CBI, CPI. If we talk to, you know, Victoria, is very different because we just recently did that not too long ago, obviously on West Gate with the fixed escalator. Queensland has its own nuances. It's just horses for courses, and that's, I think, the skill set of this group is just threading the needle to make sure we satisfy each of the stakeholders because Australia is not one market.
Each market has its own particular issues that we have to deal with.
Thanks, Anthony. Justin.
Hi, guys. Thanks for your time today. It's Justin Barratt from CLSA. Maybe for my first question, might be best for Hugh. Hugh, you spoke about, I guess, the potential for project splitting to access some of the lower tier constructors in the space. I was just wondering if you would believe that that actually increases the requirement for Transurban's oversight or management of projects and the pros and cons of that. Then I guess the potential for, I guess, your next big greenfield project to actually look at importing or including this kind of structure in the, in the construction.
Yeah, sure. Thank you. The interface risk is the key consideration when looking at splitting the project. Absolutely requires additional consideration, additional oversight, additional management. The satisfaction that we would have to give ourselves is that the incremental benefit of having spread the risk between different contractors drove both a price and a delivery improvement on a net basis.
We're always looking at it on the net basis, I guess is the summary. To date, as you well know, we haven't gone down the path of splitting any of the projects we've done. It's still on the agenda. When you talk future greenfield or brownfield, I don't think it's any different. It could easily be done in a brownfield environment as well.
What we tend to look for are pieces of projects that are geographically separable, don't necessarily have physical interfaces, and that potentially have different stakeholders impacted from the different geographical sections. That's the sort of thing we're looking for. We achieved a single contractor on the M7, M12 interface, Sorry, M7, M12 tender. Most of the contractors didn't want to partner in that. That further pushed us towards having to generate competition and generate partnerships potentially in the future. Again, brownfield, greenfield, I wouldn't see that as a differentiation. It's the size and the separability of the elements of the project.
Fantastic. Thanks for that. Maybe for Henry, really appreciate your further detail on the CityLink traffic, and by hour. I think you gave a couple of examples as to why, I guess, the recovery in traffic and PM
Has been okay, but or largely back to COVID. The morning still looks a little bit weak. I was just wondering if you could sort of differentiate or provide any further examples as to why the PM's looking pretty good but the morning a little bit weaker, please.
Look, it's difficult to isolate sort of specific variables when you're getting down to that level of detail. We spend quite a lot of time going through CityLink's numbers and all the various inputs that go into it to try and isolate if there is a particular sort of segment that's driving the kind of underperformance on the network. At a headline level at the moment, I'm sure you're all aware we're sort of low single digit % below pre-COVID numbers across the entirety of the network. Things have configured a little differently. The PM peak numbers might in some way be tied to that activity we're seeing coming to the city as well. That's a hypothesis at this point.
It's difficult for me to give you any more detail in terms of why that might be playing out the way it is. I think the broader observation, if I come back to the points I was making earlier, is that we are, for whatever reason, seeing activity on the weekends higher, and we're seeing activity in those more discretionary periods during the week higher as well. That's an unambiguous shift that we've seen on the network. You'd all be across office occupancy numbers in the same way I am. They're not back to where they were, so that's in some way playing through to the numbers we see sort of weekday as a whole, and then that sort of plays out a little bit in terms of morning peaks as well, I think.
Fantastic. Thank you.
Thanks, Justin. We have a question from Nathan at the back.
G'day. Nathan Lead from Morgans. Just two questions if I could please. One for Scott and one for Michelle. Scott, first up, now you led the development of this asset portfolio to the point now where it's quite significant in each of its different markets. Has Transurban done the work in terms of looking at where there's further value uplift if that portfolio was to be split apart than keeping it as it is?
Yeah. I mean, look, we've always said that the I mean, everything's for sale. Every asset's for sale. If you look at the ability to, you know, I guess, get value out of the assets, the assets standing alone when we think about the customer base or what we might be able to do in working with our partners, we think it makes more sense the way the portfolio sits. Nothing is, no asset is sacred. It would be hard to see how splitting up the assets in the individual geographies would make sense.
I mean, if you wanted to spin off a whole geography and there's someone who has said, "Look, I'll, you know, I'll buy Queensland for whatever the number is," and it's more than we think it's worth, then of course anything is for sale. You know, having the relationship with the partners and our government clients and understanding the market, has its benefits, we believe, and I think we've shown that over the last, certainly over the last decade. Everything is, everything is for sale if it's more value than we think it is to ourselves. I think it'd be hard to just pick one asset out of a market. That probably wouldn't make much sense to us.
Yeah, I was thinking whole of markets. Michelle, question to you. Could you just talk through how much borrowing capacity you think the balance sheet has now? Noting that the key credit metrics are well above-.
Yeah.
where the downgrade triggers are and the portfolio's got through a pretty tough credit test. I suppose answering that in the context of the EastLink bid and whether you'll need new capital for that.
It's, it's a very good question, and we continue to watch it. As I said earlier, it's probably gone a bit better than we thought. If you sort of go back, we talked about, we had existing liquidity, and then we had, you know, AUD 1.9 billion of capital releases. The corporate bond is sort of AUD 1 billion is sort of in addition to that, you would think would replace some of those capital releases. As I look at it today, you'd still have the ability to generate, you know, close to that AUD 1.9. You know, maybe it's AUD 1.5+ of capital releases. There is still there is definitely more capacity than we thought.
How and when we choose to use it depends partly on our partners and working through it with our partners, and also the specific opportunity, because different assets have different profiles as well. If you go to your more specific question around EastLink, we don't know yet how much is for sale or how big it is. It is possible there's an amount of equity that's needed, particularly if it's a bigger amount, but we just don't know enough yet. Yeah.
We might take a final question from online, and then we'll come back to Owen, before we break for morning tea. You've given a great presentation on the physical assets of Transurban. One of your strengths is also the relationships with the funding partners. Can you give a discussion on the management of these relationships and how you manage any changes in the priorities of your partners that could impact the management or future funding of your physical assets?
I think at a high level, and particularly over the last few years, we've been working very hard to strengthen the relationships. It doesn't apply just for Our financial partners, but all of our partners across all different levels of the working groups and the company. One of the reasons why we brought in Hugh was to lead up partnerships as well, so that those relationships didn't just sit at the geography levels or sit with me or whatever it might be. We've worked very hard to deepen and strengthen the relationships and everyone in here from Transurban will have relationship with their counterparts at our investment partners or with our financial partners, including our political partners.
I think that is one of the strengths of Transurban is we understand the importance and the long-term nature of the relationships that we've been in, and that's why we pick partners like AustralianSuper and CDPQ and CPPIB and ADIA and others, because on the other side for us is they understand the importance of partnerships and long-term. One of the things I'm very proud about and we speak about is in the 10 years of having these partnerships, we've never had to pull out the shareholders' agreement and talk about what actually the shareholders' agreement says. We've always been aligned. We're here for the long term. We work really well. Those partnerships are spread deep and wide across the organization.
I can remember the first time when Jason Peasley, who was with AustralianSuper when we bought QML. One of the first things we said after we bought QML is he said to me, "We won't be here, you know, in 10 years, and we certainly won't be here at the end of these concessions. We have to make sure these relationships hold, that we keep aligned." One of the things that the late John Massey, who was our first independent chair at QML, used to say, which I was always very proud of, is he would always say at the board meeting, "Let's remember why we're here. Let's remember why this partnership started. Let's remember what we try to achieve." That's, I think, embedded right across our relationships and our partnerships. I don't know.
I mean, Hugh, you spend a lot of time with all the there's challenges, there's always challenges, but, yeah.
I think you've covered it well, Scott, and I think we've seen strategies change and we've seen, you know, the WestConnex consortium for the second phase be different to the first phase. We managed to work through that with both the existing partner and the incoming partner. When our strategy changed in Montreal, we quickly sought to capitalize on the new partner that we had in WestConnex. I think being pretty dynamic about it as well and realistic. We to Scott's point, we don't just engage with existing partners, we engage with possible future partners as well. We keep available, flexible. That point that Scott made about not referring to the shareholders' agreement couldn't be reinforced more often at every level of both our organization and the ones we work with.
It's a great dynamic to be working within.
Owen?
Yeah. Hi, Owen Birrell from RBC Capital. Just one final follow-up question from me. You talk about the portfolio approach to the business, but I do note that the portfolio is skewing fairly mature and fairly low risk. Is there any appetite from board to look at greenfield opportunities, particularly in new markets that you're not currently in?
Look, we're in the risk-taking business, so it's always a risk-reward occasion. If we go back to, and I think it's not on the slides, but we talk about it from an executive point of view or we talk about the leadership. Again, the things that I always look through is it on strategy? First of all, do we have the right people to do it? If it's not on strategy, obviously it doesn't make sense. If we don't have the people to do it, doesn't really matter if you can fund it. We look at do we have any competitive advantages? Because if we don't have competitive advantages, we're just wasting our time. Can we fund it? What does it do to the distribution?
If there was a greenfield project that would fit that criteria, we certainly would look at it. It's hard to see a greenfield project sometimes that would meet that criteria. We recently, or 1 year ago, didn't participate in some express lanes that were being developed around Atlanta in Georgia. Some of our team wanted to do it. We looked at it and said, "Well, this is the second time Atlanta's tried to do it." It was really being construction-led. There's five sections, PPP sections, really construction-led. We couldn't see then if you had 5 different sections, how you make the express lanes work kind of as a network. We had no competitive advantages, so we walked away.
Now, you know, if one of our partners said, "Hey, CPPIB's got a concession to develop a toll road in Vancouver, it looks like a great asset. They want us to come in and help them. It's a greenfield asset." Sure, we would look at something like that, but it has to really meet that criteria. It's pretty tough criteria, but obviously our networks are gonna produce quite a lot of opportunities in themselves. When you say we have a lot of mature assets, and we go back to Michelle's slide, the thing about mature assets, unless they're tunnels, is the mature assets then lead to widenings. Eventually the M4 is gonna need widening again. The M5 West is gonna need widening again. Parts, we're only widening 3/4 of the M7. It's gonna need widening, Gateway Logan.
You know, the mature assets lead to congestion growth, which leads to widening, which again, growth covers a lot or creates a lot of opportunities, maybe covers a lot of sins. We've got the, some of the best growth markets in the, in the world.
Thanks, Scott. Unfortunately, that's all the questions we have time for, but some great questions. We'll now have a short break before we kick off our ESG session at around 11:25.
Great. Good morning again to everyone, and welcome to the next part of our Investor Day for 2023. We're now gonna move to the ESG presentation, which will take us through to launch. I'm going to quickly run through the agenda, which the session will run for about 45 minutes. The topics you'll hear about today give a small snapshot of where we currently are on our ongoing ESG journey, and obviously if you've got our corporate report, there's some fantastic analysis of all the work if you get a chance to review that. The needs of all our stakeholders, including our customers and communities, are going to continue to evolve as they have over the last decade. We will continue to strive to take a considered discipline and responsive approach to those needs.
Now, today, we'll hear from Jessica O'Brien, who has the longest title in Transurban, who is General Manager of Corporate Affairs, Investor Relations, and Sustainability. She's going to talk about Transurban from a trust and a reputation perspective, which I know we had some discussions actually during the break of what's happening there with our customers, and I think you'll find it very interesting where we are on that journey, and why, of course, that's very important to us and to you, our investors. Our new Head of Sustainability, Amy Hogan, who is one of those great talented individuals who's chosen to join Transurban very recently, will take you through a detailed look at our commitment to net zero and the progress we're making to reach our targets.
After that, we'll have a panel discussion which will be led by Michelle, and she'll be speaking to some of the senior leaders within the business about the issues that are facing our customers and communities and some of the initiatives and strategies that we're implementing to assist them. Then there'll be some time for questions from you and the whole team will be available to take some answers. Just a quick reflection in relation to my time at Transurban and our ESG journey. One of the things that we have done during that time is it has been a very disciplined and data-driven approach, and we've done that in a way that reduces risk. It brings greater stability and longevity to the business, and most importantly, without sacrificing returns.
I think you'll see almost every initiative that we've done has added value to the community, to the customers, more importantly, it's actually added value to returns as well. Some of those examples you'll hear about are our vulnerable customers. A lot of energy efficiency, which I know the time when we made our investment in renewable energy and made some big commitments like five years ago, it was on the cusp of, is this gonna add value or not? With the current spikes in pricing last year, I think Michelle, wherever Michelle is, we made a little bit of money on the renewable side, which is nice, and continue to do the right thing both on returns and our journey to net zero.
Obviously, promoting road safety, which provides a lot of benefit to our customers. Another reason to use our roads, makes our roads perform more efficiently as well. We think these are all the right decisions for our business. They help continue to generate opportunities. They continue to deliver great returns. With that, I would like to invite Jess to the stage. I think they have to move a lectern, we'll hear from Jess. Thanks.
Thanks, Scott. Good morning, everyone. That was very restrained of you about my title. When we were looking at potential discussion points for this ESG session, we had a lot of interest from our investors in social license to operate. If I was to ask everyone in this room, what does social license to operate mean?
I'd probably get 100 different views. It's fast becoming one of those corporate buzz phrases that means different things to different people. At Transurban, it's about building trust and reputation with our stakeholders. When I say stakeholders, it's really just shorthand for the six groups that are critical to our business. Our investors, the government, our customers, the community, our employees, and our business partners. We approach this area from both a risk mitigation perspective and from a value creation perspective.
Today I'm gonna talk to you about why this is such an important area for our investors. What I really want to impart on you today is that this is not a fringe exercise to Transurban. It's right at the center of our business. As you'll be able to see from our company purpose, to strengthen communities through transport. Incidentally, this is not new either. Scott led the development of this purpose back at the start of his term over 10 years ago. You can see it in our strategy statement too. By understanding what matters to our stakeholders, we create road transport solutions that make us a partner of choice. Over the past 10 years, the views of these 6 groups have become embedded in our thinking as an organization. As I just said, this is not a new space for Transurban.
2016 was when we really began to augment our efforts in this space. Back then, Transurban's position in the community was changing. As an organization, we'd long flown below the radar, but we were growing fast. We'd launched Linkt, a national customer brand, and this was all at a time when the public was expecting more from business. As you know, we love data at Transurban, so as an organization, we sought to understand our stakeholders' view via an independent survey. On a scale of 1 - 100, our baseline score was in the mid-30s, with anything below 50 indicating that you're not trusted. To understand the issues, we conducted an extensive listening program, and I know a number of you in the audience participated in that.
One of the key findings was that we needed to grow our relationship with our customers. In response, we developed initiatives like our Trip Compare app and our Decision Point Signage pilot. One of the responses that we're most proud of is Linkt Assist, our customer hardship support service, which has helped tens of thousands of customers. Pleasingly, on the back of these initiatives, we did start to see some early signs of trust-building in 2018 and 2019. COVID hit and everything changed. We had next to zero cars on our roads, but our customers needed our support. I remember it clearly. Rather than reacting to the situation, we took a step back and really tried to consider how we could be most impactful while keeping our investors front of mind.
We implemented a number of new initiatives that were designed for the times to support our customers. A toll credit program, which would help those who'd been financially impacted by COVID, and also our essential workers who were keeping our community safe. This was as well as incentives to help get the public vaccinated so we could get our cities moving again. This time, we saw trust in Transurban rising significantly, and you can see the step change that occurred pre-2020 and post-2020. The pandemic taught us a lot about how to build trust in Transurban, and that score is now consistently sitting above 50. From 2016 to where we are today, we've seen an increase of almost 60%. As someone who watches this score closely, I understand that we only get trust credit for initiatives that are authentic to our business.
Because we're a toll road company, we have to work harder than a lot of others, even just to maintain these scores. We know as we seek to continue to grow the value of our business, our government partners will be watching closely what their constituents think of us. We're encouraged that as part of our research, around 40% of respondents think that Transurban makes a net positive contribution to the communities in which we operate. Almost half of the respondents are undecided. To me, that actually represents a significant opportunity if we remain focused on what matters. At any particular point in time, there are stakeholder issues that we need to respond to. Currently, as we all know, cost of living is number one.
Research indicates that when it comes to concerns in this space, tolls are actually a fair way down the list, well below food, housing, utilities, et cetera. When every dollar counts, our customers expect our help. We've been doing things like Simon mentioned earlier, ramping up our rewards program to make sure that we've got fuel discounts available for all of our customers. We've been adding resources and upskilling the team at Linkt Assist should we see an increase in demands from customer hardship.
We've been engaging with governments on toll reform too, but I'll come back to that shortly. In addition, as we continue to own our public profile, no longer flying under the radar, we're developing our community brand, you will have hopefully have noticed us doing more to show our support for customers and the value that we offer.
This includes a new competition that we'll be launching in the coming days. We've all had those text messages that pretends that there's an unclaimed package or there's some kind of problem with the ATO, or in our case, that there's unpaid tolls. To respond to this issue, we've been encouraging customers to report these scam texts, and we're trying to educate people on what to look out for. In addition, we thought we'd try something a little bit different. We're launching a competition called Dob in a Scammer, where literally you dob in a scammer and you go in the draw to win an electric vehicle, thereby incentivizing people to report the scams so the telcos can shut them down faster.
With traffic strongly back on our roads, we've launched ad campaigns such as The Choice Is Yours to show the benefits of using our roads. Whether that be making it home in time from the airport to see the kids before bed, or making it to a footy game before the first bounce. To ensure that we keep building our standing with customers and the community, we know the biggest thing that we can do is to keep listening and keep responding to those issues of the day. When it comes to working with our government stakeholders, our business is built on long-term, non-partisan relationships that last beyond the political cycle. This reflects the fact that the delivery of motorways often spans multiple governments. In all, we've partnered with more than 15 governments on over 16 projects. Our engagement isn't just limited to projects.
Our customer initiatives, our mobility trends research, and our road safety data all provide government and local MPs with valuable and unique insights that can assist in policy development. That cooperation continues at the moment as the New South Wales Government begins its work on toll reform. This is something that we have long advocated for, including during the 2021 parliamentary inquiry into tolling. In our submission, in the media, directly with the government and the opposition, we made our position clear. We want to remove inconsistencies while making the system more efficient, and we wanna make sure that we're part of the reform process. At the New South Wales election in March this year, the Coalition and Labor both promised that they would work with the private sector on toll reform while honoring existing contracts.
We're committed to finding a solution to this important area that meets the needs of all of our stakeholders. To summarize, to continue to grow the value of our business for you, our investors, it's critical that we remain a partner of choice for government. If you follow the linkages, then this means we need to continue to deliver for customers and the community. I'd like to finish by just showing you a short video with some examples of things we're doing to try and better serve our stakeholders as we prepare for our next speaker, Amy Hogan, our Head of Sustainability, who's going to take you through our pathway to net zero. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Sustainability is something Transurban have been thinking about and acting upon for many years, going back to the company's first sustainability report in 2006. This ambition demonstrated leadership and ability to walk the talk is what it has attracted me to this business. What has already struck me over the last two months is the sheer scale
Capability and opportunity that we have to drive positive environmental and social change. While our sustainability strategy covers many aspects of the business, today I will focus on our pathway to net zero. Committing to net zero emissions by 2050 is vitally important, and having a pathway to achieving those net zero commitments is critical. In 2020, we became the first ASX 20 company to have our net zero 2030 targets validated by SBTi. These interim targets covering scope one, two, and three are critical in the milestones in our pathway to achieving net zero. Our emissions footprint is defined by the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Protocol, which is recognized as the international standard for greenhouse accounting and reporting. Our scope one emissions relate mostly to fuel use and make up just 1% of our total emissions profile.
Our scope two emissions account for around 20% of our footprint and relate to electricity use in our roads, tunnels, and operations. These are the emissions we have control over. Scope three, on the other hand, are the emissions we influence, and not surprisingly, are the most significant. They mostly include emissions associated with materials used in our major projects and along the supply chain. Then there are our customer emissions, the people who travel on the roads. These fall outside of our scope three reporting boundary. Reducing these emissions is a really important part of our strategy, and I will talk to that shortly. Let's take a closer look at scope one and two. For scope one, our focus is on fuel efficiency and switching our and our contractors' fleets to electric vehicles.
For scope two, we're focused on reducing energy use through optimizing ventilation systems, upgrading lighting, and transitioning to renewable energy. Last year, our scope one and two emissions were 13% below 2019 levels, even following a period of significant business growth. The graph shows that we are on track to meet our 2030 target well ahead of schedule. Let's take a look at how we're reducing scope two with some real-world examples. The first is our transition to renewable energy, which has been supported through a series of power purchase agreements with a number of wind farms across the country. In the first half of FY23, 80% of our entire electricity consumption was generated by these projects. Not only have these PPAs delivered significant environmental benefits, they've also acted as an important financial hedge for our regular electricity contracts during periods of high energy pricing.
Ventilation systems account for 70% of the energy needed to operate road tunnels. Using 3D modeling and simulation, we've been able to optimize and fine-tune our ventilation performance by ensuring that fans are only on when they need to be while making sure that strict air quality controls and standards are met. This delivers considerable energy and cost savings to the business. Scope three emissions are emissions that include upstream and downstream activities of an organization. For most, including Transurban, they are far greater than our Scope one and Scope two footprints combined. Quite frankly, they're the most challenging. We don't directly control them. They're emissions from activities that we can influence, like purchasing goods and services for our major projects, fugitive emissions, business travel, waste management. To drive decarbonization across our supply chain, we do several important things.
We ensure all major projects are required to achieve an excellent infrastructure sustainability rating as a minimum standard. We're continually increasing contract-specific sustainability requirements in our projects. We're also a founding member of the Materials & Embodied Carbon Leaders' Alliance, we fondly refer to it as MECLA, to drive forward demand for low carbon materials. We work really closely with our delivery partners to source these materials, such as those with high recycled content like crushed glass, cement replacement, and warm mix asphalt. Last year, we achieved a 24% reduction in the carbon intensity of our major development projects compared to 2019. To date, we've saved over 644,000 tons of CO2 across our nine projects.
We're also engaging with top 100 suppliers through CDP Supply Chain to improve supply chain data quality and to encourage our suppliers to set their own carbon reduction targets and to switch to renewable energy. Two of our most recent Australian projects provide really excellent examples as to how we are tackling scope three. Both the WestConnex M4-M8 Link and West Gate Tunnel Project received leading design ratings. These are the highest ratings possible from the Infrastructure Sustainability Council here in Australia. On the M4-M8 Link, we saw a 57% reduction in embodied emissions in materials against the initial design base case. This was achieved by developing high performance shotcrete, reducing the amount of materials required to line the tunnels by about 20%.
15% reclaimed asphalt pavement was used in asphalt mix, and the contractor was able to reduce steel volumes by reducing the amount used for steel fiber reinforcement. On the West Gate Tunnel, the reduction in embodied emissions in materials is around 21%. Here, we were able to make some design changes that extended the tunnel length and reduced the need for ramp structures that would have required larger quantities of carbon-intensive materials. Let's talk about emissions from our customers, those people who travel on our roads. As I said previously, while these emissions don't sit within our scope three reporting boundary, and it's really early days, there is still a lot we can do to influence and advocate for positive customer outcomes. This graph shows how significant vehicle emissions are in relation to our scope one, two, and three footprint. It's more than double.
We know that what we do to help our customers reduce their emissions on our network can have the potential to have a much greater environmental impact when scaled across the broader road system, which is illustrated in these pie charts. We think about customer emissions in three ways. The smart design of our roads, education around sustainable driving techniques, and the uptake of zero-emission vehicles like electric vehicles. When we look at smart design, we can make a really big difference to vehicle fuel consumption by reducing the inclines and declines on tunnels such as at NorthConnex. Education is a really important part of our strategy. We regularly promote eco-driving tips such as minimizing accelerating and braking and keeping tire pressure up in our vehicles.
Our eco-driving trial in 2021 found that drivers could save 5.5% on fuel use if they adopted such behaviors. The saving might sound small to you, but it is quite significant if potentially rolled out across the whole road network. Finally, we're exploring ways we can encourage the uptake of electric vehicles, looking at both our own fleet and our customers. You can see some examples on this slide. I really wanted to call out our first EV Drive Day, which was held in February this year to inform our major fleet buyers around the benefits and financial incentives to switching fleets over to electric. 48% of attendees from that day said they are now more likely to convert their entire fleet of EVs in the next 5 years.
Keep in mind, fleet managers buy nearly half of all brand-new cars sold in Australia each year. While it is early days, there is so much opportunity in this space, and we will continue to encourage and support our customers in their own decarbonization journey. I would like to end my presentation before we move to the customer and community panel by showing you a video on NorthConnex, which has achieved an excellent Infrastructure Sustainability as built rating in 2020. At Transurban, we strongly believe that external rating tools, like those governed by the Infrastructure Sustainability Council, are important to provide a useful benchmark and third-party assurance by which we can measure our performance, giving confidence to our stakeholders that our words are backed by tangible action. Thank you.