Delays on building Metro Tunnel stations piles pressure on promise to run first trains next year

New documents reveal stations for the $15bn Metro Tunnel have been delayed by a year, piling pressure on to the Allan government’s promise to run trains by the end of 2025.

The final stations being built for the $15bn Metro Tunnel are a year behind schedule, piling pressure on to the Allan government’s promise to run trains by the end of 2025.

A contract variation for the city-shaping project was tabled in parliament on Thursday and shows a provisional handover of the infrastructure to operators is now planned for April 30 — 12 months later than the previous deal outlined.

It also shows details of the taxpayer contribution for blowouts worth $837m that the government revealed on AFL Grand Final eve, including $745m in capital costs.

New documents reveal the $15 billion Metro Tunnel has been delayed by a year. Picture: Vic Gov

Legal claims for extra cash by the builders have been settled through the contact variation “with the exception of a limited number of expressly excluded matters”.
It is unclear what those excluded matters could be.

The date for the “final acceptance of the tunnels and stations PPP” is now listed as December 31, 2025 — it was previously listed as 17 March, 2025.

The dates are effectively deadlines for builders and do not mean that they could not wrap up earlier, but project sources have told the Herald Sun the final two stations, being built more than 40m under the CBD, are still “miles away”.

Metro Tunnel was initially scheduled to take passengers by 2026, and cost $11bn, but the operational date was brought forward by a year in 2018, by then-premier Daniel Andrews.

The timeline for the Metro project has shifted multiple times. Picture: Supplied

Since 2018 there have been a series of cost blowouts, including a bill of $2.74bn announced in 2021 that was shared between builders and the taxpayer, and in recent months delays have plagued the two CBD station builds.

The total project budget is now expected to be more than $15bn, with about $13.5bn of that paid for by taxpayers.

Transport Infrastructure Minister Danny Pearson said the tunnel was a “complex” job but that 30,000km of train testing had been done and people should expect to board trains next year.

“I am confident that we will have people riding on the Metro Tunnel in 2025,” he said.

“I don’t want to provide a guarantee when there might be external factors that are beyond all of our control and you will say to me afterwards, ‘well you guaranteed’,” he said.

If the tunnels and stations were ready by April, there would still have to be commissioning of equipment and network integration, staff training, and regulator approval to run services.

Opposition transport infrastructure spokesman, David Southwick, said “not only will taxpayers be forking out an extra three-quarters of a billion dollars, there are now serious doubts as to whether the Metro Tunnel will be open on time”.

“Labor’s latest big build blowouts means even less money for urgent priorities across health, education, community safety and roads maintenance,” he said.