But Campbell Newman, the man responsible for it, was silent.

Just after 9pm, Lord Mayor Graham Quirk waved through the first $3 toll, a red hatchback, its driver enthusiastically waving back with both hands.

In his first official public appearance since losing the January state election, Mr Newman stood back and smiled, taking the occasional photo, as he watched cars file through the tunnel he had conceptualised in 2002, two years before he was Lord Mayor.

While Mr Newman may have been happy for his former deputy to take the spotlight, Cr Quirk was equally as anxious for Mr Newman to receive his due.

"Obviously it is wonderful to have Campbell here tonight, because he was very much a key driver in this infrastructure happening," Cr Quirk said.

"He made the big calls about taking the chance and going ahead with the infrastructure and people will look back and history will show, that this was the right thing to do.

"It was forward looking, it was planning for the future, making sure that we had the structural infrastructure in place to cope with growth into the future and these assets have a 100-year asset life and they
will serve this city and region well for a long time to come."

Mr Newman has stayed largely silent since the January 31 poll, which saw the LNP lose its historic majority and the election after just two years and 10 months.

While the dust is still settling on the legacy he left as premier, with the final piece of the TransApex transport infrastructure plan now in place, his legacy as the lord mayor, with a degree in civil engineering, was becoming clearer.

And that final piece may be the last tunnel Brisbane sees for quite some time.

The Labor state government is still investigating ways to fund a cross-river rail project, with Jackie Trad headed to London and Frankfurt in the next few days to investigate public-private funding models in an
attempt to make it happen.

But the city, Cr Quirk said, is done with tunnelling.  At least in the immediate future.

"It is not going to be in my political lifetime, I don't believe," he said.

"We have other big projects, other big plans ahead of us. We want to get on with Kingsford Smith Drive, the Wynnum Road stage one upgrade, we have the four laning of the Inner City Bypass, that great interchage road that connects structurally all of these major piece of infrastructure."

Mr Newman meanwhile, is expected to have plenty of things to say when his tome hits bookshelves, later this year.