From the early hours of Friday 11 September you get a new 15-kilometre motorway between Black Hill and Raymond Terrace, and the Hexham bottleneck stops being your problem. The M1 Pacific Motorway extension opens to traffic after more than four million hours of construction, around 18 months earlier than originally planned.
What it saves you on the drive
The joint media release puts the peak-hour saving at seven to nine minutes. The bigger number is what leaves your local streets: up to 25,000 vehicles a day, once the through traffic moves onto the motorway.
The extension runs directly from the M1 at Black Hill to Raymond Terrace, which also means a cleaner run to Newcastle Airport and the Port of Newcastle. Governments describe it as closing the missing link in the Sydney to Brisbane economic corridor.
Melbourne to Coffs Harbour without a traffic light
That is the claim from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese:
It means motorists will be able to travel from Melbourne all the way to Coffs Harbour without hitting a single traffic light or roundabout and we’re getting on with finishing the Coffs Harbour Bypass too.
What it means for holiday runs and freight
Catherine King, Federal Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, said “the days of holiday traffic crawling through the Hunter are over, with our new bypass of Hexham and Heatherbrae now delivered”. For freight, the government frames it as a faster and more reliable connection through the Hunter and along the Sydney to Brisbane corridor.
NSW Minister for Roads Jenny Aitchison said that “on 11 September 2026, communities in the Hunter will wake up to a brand new 15km M1 motorway”, and pointed to almost 950,000 people expected to call the Hunter home by 2041.
What it cost and who paid
The M1 Pacific Motorway extension and the Hexham Straight widening were jointly funded, with a total investment of $2.24 billion. Of that, $1.79 billion came from the Albanese Government and $448 million from the Minns Government.
The release also notes a further $266.4 million committed since 2022 to finish the remaining upgrades along the Pacific Highway corridor.
Why it opened a year and a half early
King was blunt about the timeline: “We planned to open this project in 2028, they got it done one and a half years early.” More than 2,700 workers built it, 70 per cent of the workforce came from the Hunter, and 99 apprentices and trainees gained experience on the project.
The scale of the build
Eleven bridges, supported by 278 bridge piles and 863 bridge girders. More than 1.6 million cubic metres of earth moved — enough, the release says, to fill around 650 Olympic-sized swimming pools — and more than 720,000 tonnes of imported rock placed across the project.
There are also more than 520 kilometres of drainage and wick drains, 435 habitat structures installed to support native wildlife, and 96 per cent of construction waste diverted from landfill.
Source: Transport for NSW joint media release from the Prime Minister, NSW Premier, Federal Infrastructure Minister and NSW Minister for Roads, 9 September 2026.
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