New South Wales minister for transport Jo Haylen has announced the opening of the Sydney Metro City section will not occur on the 4th of August as originally planned.
This city section of what will be known as the M1 Northwest & Bankstown Line includes an additional 15.5-kilometres of metro rail extending the North West line from Chatswood, below the harbour and through the Sydney CBD, to Sydenham.
In a statement to media Haylen said passengers will unfortunalty have to wait a little longer for the city line to open but not much longer.
“We have worked through over 11,000 hours of testing between Chatswood and Sydenham,” she said.
“Trial running is complete. More than 200 exercises have been completed for trial running of the Metro.
“Our full fleet, 45 trains has been tested, our bus timetable and changes are ready, our transport team is ready, the operator MTS and Sydney Metro are ready, but we do need a little more time for the safety regulator to give us the final tick of approval.”
Haylen said the government wants to ensure the railway is safe and reliable before people journey on the new train line.
“I appreciate that they will be disappointed it is not this weekend but it’s not far off and the wait will be worth it,” she said.
Minister Haylen did not confirm a new opening date for the line and ONRSR said several critical safety checks were yet to be completed.
Sydney’s new M1 line includes:
- 45 metro trains and 445 new services a day;
- That’s a train every four minutes in the peak, seven minutes during week days, between morning and afternoon peak services (gradually increasing over the first few months to a train every five minutes) and every 10 minutes during off peak and on weekends;
- Six fully accessible new stations at Crows Nest, Victoria Cross, Barangaroo, Martin Place, Gadigal and Waterloo, along with new platforms at Central and Sydenham;
- Simple interchanges with buses at all stations, ferries at Barangaroo, light rail at Central and with train services at Martin Place, Central and Sydenham;
- Uninterrupted network mobile coverage;
- Safe journeys monitored by a state-of-the-art control centre, with approx. 100 CCTV cameras at every station and 38 cameras inside each train;
- Over 600 secure bike parking spaces at Crows Nest, Victoria Cross, Waterloo and Sydenham, as part of 900 new bike parking spaces across all eight stations.
- Platform screen door technology to keep people and objects safely away from tracks.
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