South Gippsland Freeway is a short freeway linking Dandenong in Melbourne's south–east to other south–eastern destinations, including the Mornington Peninsula and the Gippsland region. The freeway bears the designation M780.
Route
South Gippsland Freeway starts at the interchange with Monash Freeway in Endeavour Hills and runs south as a four-lane, dual-carriageway route, under the Princes Highway at Eumemmering, over the Pakenham railway line, then along the western border Hampton Park until it ends at the interchange with the South Gippsland and Western Port Highways in Lynbrook.
The standard travel time on the South Gippsland Freeway is 4 minutes (city-bound) and 3 minutes (Lynbrook-bound). The usual peak period travel time, is between 6–8 minutes. However, in times of extreme congestion or roadworks, including being residual due to an incident, the travel time can well exceed 10 minutes.
History
Plans for a "Mulgrave By-pass Road and Eumemmerring By-pass Road" had been made as far back as 1966, between Warrigal Road in Chadstone and Princes Highway at Eumemmerring. The freeway began as an overflow from construction of Mulgrave Freeway (now Monash Freeway) in 1970, where the freeway entered a sweeping turn south, crossed Eumemmerring Creek in Doveton and officially terminated at Princes Highway in Eumemmerring: this section opened in 1972 as Eumemmering Freeway, The freeway was extended 2.5 kilometres further south to terminate at the original alignment of the South Gippsland Highway where it met Pound Road in 1976.
- 1976: South Gippsland Freeway, dual carriageways completed between Princes Highway and Pound Road, Hampton Park, as well as the southbound carriageway to Dandenong-Hastings Road, opened 6 December 1976 at a cost of $12 million.
- 1977/78: Northbound carriageway from Pound Road to Dandenong-Hastings Road completed.
- 2011: Pound Road interchange reconstruction, opened late 2011.
Road classification
The freeway was signed Freeway Route 81 upon its opening in 1972, until its replacement with National Route 1 in 1988 (with a portion of it renamed to the South Eastern Arterial) until the Princes Highway in Eumemmering, and the remaining stretch between Eumemmering and Lyndhurst Interchange allocated Metropolitan Route 65. With Victoria's conversion to the newer alphanumeric system in the late 1990s this was replaced by routes M1 and M420 respectively. When the Hallam bypass opened and route M1 reallocated along it in 2003, route M420 was officially extended north to the new junction with the Monash Freeway. In 2025, M420 was rerouted through Koo Wee Rup after Koo Wee Rup Road was upgraded to a dual carriageway highway between the Princes Freeway and Koo Wee Rup Bypass. The freeway was therefore redesignated as M780.
The passing of the Road Management Act 2004 granted the responsibility of overall management and development of Victoria's major arterial roads to VicRoads: in 2004, VicRoads re-declared South Gippsland Freeway (Freeway #1310) from Monash Freeway at Doveton to Western Port Highway in Lynbrook.