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Sydney Metro North West opening date announced

Posted: 7 May 2019 | | No comments yet

Running every four minutes at peak-times, Sydney Metro is expected to open and begin operations towards the end of May 2019 – eight years after it was first announced.

Sydney Metro North West opening date announced

After years in development, the first line of the new Sydney Metro will begin operating on 26 May 2019.

Final commissioning of Sydney’s new generation of driverless trains is currently underway with more than 180,000km of testing complete. Testing of Sydney Metro trains has included high speed tests on the skytrain, calibrating the system with the platform screen doors and loading one train with more than 100 1,000-litre tanks of water to simulate customer loads.

Australian-first technology like platform screen doors keeps people and objects like prams away from the tracks and allows trains to get in and out of stations much faster.

Sydney Metro is Australia’s first fully-accessible railway, which means lifts at all stations and level access between platforms and trains – there is no longer a large gap.

The commissioning process has involved the national rail safety regulator at every step of the way.

Metro Trains Sydney will run the new metro trains every four minutes at peak times at full operational mode in the North West – that’s 15 trains an hour each way, with the ability to run even more in the future.

During the initial settling in period of about six weeks, trains will run every five minutes at peak to allow the new system to ramp up to full frequency.

To support the introduction of metro rail, improvements have been made to the bus network in Sydney’s north west so that customers can easily access the new metro stations.

More than 1,500 additional weekly services have been added to the timetable and changes to some existing routes will be introduced to include stops at local metro stations and support growing residential areas.

Until the 26 May, Sydney Metro and the operator of the Metro North West Line, Metro Trains Sydney (MTS), will run the trains to the schedule which is planned for when the line opens, and will carry out final checks and refinements to the system.

During this time MTS will:

  • Continue to test systems and technology associated with operating the line, such as passenger information displays, platform screen doors and internal customer information systems in the metro trains
  • Monitor and fine tune the running of the 24/7 Operations Control Centre, which will now oversee the fully automated operations of the driverless metro trains
  • Work with Sydney Metro, Sydney Trains and Transport for NSW to make final adjustments to the interface between Sydney Metro and other modes of transport across the network, so that the transport system is ready for when the Metro North West Line opens.

This will ensure the systems, technology and interfaces are ready to go – so when the stations and new metro trains are open to the community, customers will be able to enjoy the exciting new Sydney Metro experience.