A long-awaited extension to Sydney’s metro line will open on Friday next week, bringing an end to more than two years of replacement buses for residents in the city’s south-west.
In a video shared on Instagram on Thursday morning, the New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, announced that the south-west metro extension would open on Friday ۳۰ October. In a statement, the government said the first service would commence at ۴.۳۱am.
Minns thanked “the thousands of commuters, families and local businesses for their patience while we’ve undertaken this major transformation.”
“This is a huge moment for south-west Sydney,” he said.
It comes more than two years after the former T۳ heavy rail line, which serviced ۱۰ stations in Sydney’s inner west and south west – Marrickville, Dulwich Hill, Hurlstone Park, Canterbury, Campsie, Belmore, Lakemba, Wiley Park, Punchbowl and Bankstown – closed in September ۲۰۲۴ to be converted to the driverless rapid transit system.
A continuous ۶۶km metro line will span from Tallawong in the city’s north-west through the CBD to Bankstown in the south-west from Friday.
After regulator approval delayed the opening date of the city metro section in ۲۰۲۴, the Minns government had been at pains not to commit to a date for the south-west extension, despite media reports that it was aiming for launch on ۱۸ October.
Last week, the transport minister, John Graham, said that the opening was “very close” and “a matter of weeks, not months” after the operator, Sydney Metro, provided the final piece of safety data to the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator (ONRSR).
The project to connect the stations to the city metro, which opened in August ۲۰۲۴, was estimated to take ۱۲ months at that time. In the interim, commuters have had to use pink replacement buses to connect to metro services at Sydenham, where the line currently terminates.
The government says the pink rail replacement buses will continue to operate on ۳۰ October and the first weekend of operation.
When the line opens, a journey from Bankstown to Central is expected to take ۲۸ minutes – a six-minute saving compared with the former heavy rail line. Longer journeys are expected to yield greater savings, such as Lakemba to Victoria Cross, which will take ۳۷ minutes – a ۲۴-minute saving on previous travel times.
The government says the extension will deliver capacity for an additional ۱۷,۰۰۰ people during peak hours. Metro services run every four minutes during peak hours, five minutes during the day, and ۱۰ minutes in the evenings and on weekends.
The project has been delayed amid challenges in converting the ۱۳۰-year-old heavy rail line and historic stations, including the need to add mechanical “gap-fillers” to fill spaces between curved platforms and trains.
When the south-west metro opens, six of the ۳۶۰ doors on the line where gaps are widest – three doors at Dulwich Hill, and one each at Marrickville, Canterbury and Campsie – will not be in use while data is collected on the reliability of the gap-fillers.
The project was first announced by the former Coalition government in ۲۰۱۴. Labor campaigned against it at the ۲۰۱۹ election but committed to completing it after Minns became premier in ۲۰۲۳. Amid blowouts, the city and south-west metro sections are expected to cost more than $۲۰bn combined.
