Calder Highway is a rural highway in Australia, linking Mildura and the Victoria/New South Wales border to Bendigo, in North Central Victoria. South of Bendigo, where the former highway has been upgraded to freeway-standard, Calder Freeway links to Melbourne, subsuming former alignments of Calder Highway; the Victorian Government completed the conversion to freeway standard from Melbourne to Bendigo on 20 April 2009. Route South of the Victoria/New South Wales border the highway is a dual-lane, single-carriageway road, continuing through northwest Victoria from the Abbotsford Bridge, through Merbein to the major regional town of Mildura, where it is 2 lanes each way through southern Mildura and Irymple, in the state's north-west. Here also it crosses the Sturt Highway (A20) leading to capital cities Adelaide heading west and Sydney heading east. Further south, it crosses the Mallee Highway (B12) at Ouyen and runs south-east eventually to Bendigo. Between Red Cliffs and Wycheproof the highway has a speed limit of 110 km/h. The Calder Alternate Highway (A790) connects to the Calder Highway at either end - just north of Ravenswood, and at Marong - and provides a bypass west of Bendigo. For most of its length from Ravenswood to the junction with the Tullamarine Freeway in Melbourne, the Calder Freeway is a four-lane dual-carriageway freeway which bypasses the towns along the former alignment of the highway. The northern end of the freeway shares a concurrency with the Midland Highway (A300), from Bendigo until south of Harcourt, where it resumes south-westerly to the major regional centres of Castlemaine, Ballarat, and Geelong. Towns bypassed by, but still accessible from, the Calder Freeway include , , and . The freeway ends at the interchange with the Tullamarine Freeway, the main route to Melbourne's central business district to Melbourne Airport. Within the urban section of the Calder Freeway (between Kings Road and the Tullamarine Freeway), the standard travel time, in each direction, is 10 minutes. (5 minutes between Kings Road and the Western Ring Road and 5 minutes between the Western Ring Road and the Tullamarine Freeway. The usual peak period travel time, is between 9–13 minutes. However, when there is extreme congestion or roadworks, including being residual from an incident, the travel time can go beyond 13 minutes, sometimes upwards of 20 minutes plus. History The passing of the Highways and Vehicles Act of 1924 through the Parliament of Victoria provided for the declaration of State