Many of the details of the project – including precisely where motorway tunnels will emerge and where exhaust stacks will be built – will not be available until late next year when the WestConnex Delivery Authority lodges an environmental impact statement. But the new tunnels, which will be about nine kilometres long, will run from the existing M5 at Kingsgrove and surface at St Peters. Motorists will have to pay a toll to use them. They will also have to pay a toll to use the existing M5 East motorway tunnel from about 2019. The government has not confirmed the toll, but has previously said that a toll of about $4.80 in 2013 dollars would be charged on the M5 East. By 2019 and on recent inflation trends, that would be about $5.60. There are plans to link the new tunnels at St Peters with another tunnel under the inner west to Haberfield within a decade. But until then, traffic on the new motorway will emerge near Campbell Street and Euston Road, St Peters. "There is short-term pain for long-term gain," the Premier, Mr Baird, said.

"We will make every possible effort to ensure it is delivered in a way that minimises inconvenience but in the long-term everyone will be a winner," he said. "That is the great thing about this project." The new tunnels will be built to allow three lanes in each direction. As a consequence, the current four-lane capacity of the M5 East will more than double - to ten lanes. The new tunnels will also be built higher than the existing M5 East tunnels. Government bureaucrats gave started contacting the owners of the 80-odd properties that may need to be acquired. One of the residents, Jacinta Green, said she had spent $500,000 on home renovations in the past two-and-a-half years and did not know whether to finish them. "Our house is not water-proof," Ms Green said. "We can't live like this – it all depends on what they say." Ms Green said she had been told she would be contacted by someone who would tell her whether or not to complete her renovations. Greens transport spokeswoman Mehreen Faruqi immediately criticised the project for being outdated. "The M5 tunnel expansion will also bring thousands of vehicles into residential and local streets in the inner west, causing further traffic chaos and congestion," Dr Faruqi said.

The landfill site at Alexandria, once used as a brickworks and a quarry, will house both construction compounds and the eventual road interchange. Former NSW road and traffic tsar Ron Christie has previously said that overcoming notoriously difficult traffic conditions near Sydney Airport would largely determine the success of the $11.5 billion WestConnex project. Loading The NSW government has argued the WestConnex motorway is needed to accommodate traffic heading to Sydney Airport and to and from Port Botany. But a link road to Sydney Airport is not being planned until after 2019. Mr Gay said the existing M5 East tunnel would continue to serve the port. "It will continue to be the main link to Port Botany, because it comes in the closest," Mr Gay said of the existing tunnel.