inspired from the Norra länken tunnels in Stockholm which feature illuminated butterflies. NorthConnex is longer than the Lane Cove Tunnel, Cross City Tunnel and the Sydney Harbour Tunnel combined. History Past proposals The M1 Pacific Motorway, then known as the F3 Sydney–Newcastle Freeway, was originally planned to continue as the Lane Cove Valley Expressway, which was to join the North Western Expressway, leading to the Sydney Central Business District via Gladesville Bridge and the Western Distributor, but those plans were cancelled in 1977. The F3 was extended to Wahroonga in 1989, there was no plan for a motorway route continuing beyond that location. However, the corridor of land to link the F3 and the M2 via the Lane Cove Valley was reserved for road use since 1988. It was abandoned by the state government in 1996, but was retained as open space. In 2001, at the same time as announcing Western Sydney Orbital (now Westlink M7), the federal Coalition government proposed that the Orbital would form part of a bypass route, with a new road branching off the F3 Freeway near Mount White and crossing the Hawkesbury River with a new high-level bridge to join the Orbital at its distinct northwestern corner at Dean Park. Hence, the road would avoid the steep grades of the Mount White section of the F3 immediately north of the existing low-level bridges across the Hawkesbury River and would be a quite direct bypass of Sydney that would be separated from much of Sydney's commuter traffic. A study was undertaken by Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) into options for connecting the F3 with the Sydney Orbital. At the preliminary stage of that study, the then Roads and Traffic Authority decided that the primary goal of the new road was the best possible relief of traffic on the existing route, Pennant Hills Road. Corridors for that proposal were broadly defined as types A, B and C. Type A options were essentially from the existing end of the F3 to somewhere on the M2 Type B corridors branched off the F3 in the vicinity of Berowra and crossed the environmentally sensitive Galston Gorge Type C corridors were along the general lines of the Federal Government proposal (F3 to Western Sydney Orbital) The need to reduce traffic on Pennant Hills Road made the reduction of commuter traffic more urgent than that of traffic bypassing Sydney. As such, type B