Traffic flow along Toorak Road in South Yarra will be cut from two lanes to one early next year to make space for Melbourne's newest tram route, when construction of the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel gets begins.
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Two new tram super stops will be built to service passengers on route 58, which will run between Toorak and West Coburg from mid-next year.
Route 58 will run along the western end of Toorak Road, which currently has no tram tracks and is used by about 20,000 vehicles a day, according to VicRoads data.
Those vehicles will be funnelled from two lanes of traffic into one so that trams have right of way and do not get held up in traffic jams.
A new easy access tram stop – the kind recently built in Bridge Road and Victoria Street in Richmond, to the displeasure of some traders and residents – will be built on Toorak Road, as will a new platform tram stop on St Kilda Road.
When route 58 – essentially a merger of routes 8 and 55 – begins trams will no longer connect with St Kilda Road via the Domain Road dogleg that passes the Royal Botanic Gardens.
The new route via Toorak Road, which will exist for at least five years while work on the underground Domain station is under way, and perhaps permanently, has been designed to give trams a quicker run.
Melbourne's tram speeds are among the slowest in the world, at an average of less than 16 km/h. Yarra Trams has said tramways shared between trams and general traffic are one of the main causes of delay.
Motorists who continue to use Toorak Road after the new tram line opens are likely to find their already slow commute has become even worse.
St Kilda Road, which connects with the west end of Toorak Road, will also be reduced to one lane in each direction late next year, instead of the current three, a situation that is tipped to last for two to three years.
Motorists have been advised to take Kings Way and Queens Parade instead.
But the intersection of Kings Way and St Kilda Road is already one of the worst stretches of road for congestion in Melbourne, as The Age revealed in July.
Peak-hour traffic on Kings Way slows to just 7 km/h in the evening as it approaches Toorak Road.
The RACV has warned that Melbourne faces potential "paralysis" on many of its roads in the next few years, given so many transport projects are happening.
The Melbourne Metro rail tunnel is a $10.9 billion project that includes a new underground railway through the CBD, between South Yarra and South Kensington, with five subway stations. It is due to open in 2026.
