These improvements include "a tram route to connect the City of Melbourne to the City of Maribyrnong [and] a new tram depot in the Dynon precinct". The tram connection, if built, would mark a comeback for trams in the western suburbs, which previously had its own web of local tram routes until their closure in 1962. The old tram lines spun out in three directions from Footscray railway station. Route 82 between Footscray and Moonee Ponds is all that remains. Footscray had its own local tram network between 1921 and its closure in 1962.

Victoria's transport bureaucracy has been largely silent until now about its long-term development plan for Melbourne's tram network, and the government chose not to answer a question about where the proposed new route might run. A spokeswoman for Roads Minister Luke Donnellan would only say: "Transurban is working with Public Transport Victoria to preserve long-term opportunities to improve the tram network during planning and delivery of the Western Distributor project." Bill Russell, a rail researcher who has advised the Andrews government on transport issues, said it was essential not to let the Western Distributor impinge on future public transport options for Melbourne's west, given the surge in development there. His research group, Rail Futures, released a report late last year that proposed two options for a tram extension between the city and Footscray: either via Spencer Street and Dynon Road, or via Footscray Road and through the planned E-Gate redevelopment.

Dr Russell said he still had distant memories of catching trams around Footscray before they shut the system down. "The western suburbs got a very raw deal out of tram development," he said. "They used to have a local tram system which was removed in the 1960s ... while we were extending the tram routes in the wealthy suburbs, the government was removing them from the poorer suburbs, which was fairly stupid." The City of Maribyrnong also considered a possible new tram connection between Footscray and the city in its 2013 Footscray structure plan, either along Dynon Road or Footscray Road. But both of those possible routes could be complicated by Transurban road projects.

Footscray Road will have an elevated road built above it as part of the Western Distributor and traffic on Dynon Road is forecast to increase by between 90 and 107 per cent following the CityLink/Tulla widening project, also a Transurban proposal. Transurban pitched the Western Distributor to the Andrews government as an unsolicited proposal before it was jointly announced early last year. Labor, having cancelled the East West Link project shortly after forming government, embraced Transurban's proposal for an alternative cross-city freeway connection. Jago Dodson, Director of the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University, said the government had leapt at Transurban's proposal, even though it cut against other transport plans. "Transurban are running circles around a state government that really does not understand what it is doing," Professor Dodson said. "It's going to compete with the Regional Rail Link for customers, and it's going to dump traffic into the CBD at a time when almost all strategies are trying to achieve the exact opposite."

The reference design for the Western Distributor also states that the final design must preserve options for bus routes on Footscray Road, upgrades to the M80 and Princes Freeway and freight rail on the Newport to Sunshine line, at the Port of Melbourne and the Dynon Road precinct. Construction is expected to start in late 2017 and be complete in 2022. An artist's impression of the Western Distributor tollway as it crosses the Maribyrnong River.