The billion-dollar Hume Highway duplication project has been completed with the construction of a new bypass in Holbrook, New South Wales (NSW).

The newly-built bypass, the final stage in the upgrade of the inter-city highway, is scheduled to open to traffic in July.

It is estimated that nearly 130,000 Australians have at some point worked on the highway project, which was built over a period of almost 50 years.

The project involved duplicating the entire 808km-long Hume Highway, as well as removing nearly 90 million cubic metres of earth, erecting 205 new bridges, constructing 68 new interchanges and planting millions of trees.

The highway has been re-routed around 49 towns including Holbrook.

Travel times between Sydney and Melbourne have been reduced by nearly three hours as a result of the project, which has improved safety also. Fatalities on the NSW section of the highway dropped from 71 in 1976 to four so far in 2013.

The Hume Highway is one of Australia’s busiest transport routes and is vital for road freight to transport goods to and from Sydney and Melbourne. It also serves Albury-Wodonga and Canberra. The project has sped up the movement of freight along the eastern seaboard, improving national productivity.

Work on the northern section of the highway between Picton and the Goulburn Plains first started in 1819.