First look inside Melbourne’s suburban rail loop
Melbourne’s suburban rail loop mega-project is set to solve one of commuters’ biggest gripes, helping travellers navigate around using cutting-edge technology. This is how it will work.
VIC News
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Melbourne’s new suburban rail loop will operate up to 40m underground and could run driverless trains.
Cutting-edge phone technology would also feed commuters live information about disruptions and how to get around them.
Trains would be shorter than existing services so they can run more often.
A gun team of 150 experts from Australia and overseas has been assembled to get the $50 billion rail line — the biggest public transport project in Australia’s history — built.
Program director Dan Williams said the 90km loop wouldn’t only make travel easier but open up the suburbs for jobs and retail development.
“This is a mega project,’’ Mr Williams said.
“For the city it’s a game-changer.
“The size and scale of this project is immense.
“It’s bigger than just a rail project — this is around land use, this is around connecting people with places and this is about development of precincts.”
Mr Williams, who has worked on big rail projects back home in the UK and in Canada, said driverless trains were among options under consideration having proved “incredibly effective” globally and on the new Sydney Metro.
Phone technology was also being developed to allow commuters to not only pay but provide live options on the fastest way to get to their destination across different transport modes.
Designs provided to the Sunday Herald Sun show the line will travel under the Monash Freeway and Gardiners Creek in its first stage between Cheltenham and Box Hill.
Design director Chris Deakin — who moved from Singapore having also worked on rail projects in Kuala Lumpur and the UK — said the twin tunnels would typically run about 25m below ground.
But depths would vary not only to negotiate obstacles like sewers and rock formations but so trains used less energy.
The Sunday Herald Sun understands the range will be 20m-40m but this was still being worked through.
“We will move the train from station to station up and down,’’ Mr Deakin said.
“Once you map the whole underground you are then in a better position to define where that route actually goes in verticality.”
More than 20,000 workers will eventually join the Suburban Rail Loop team, whose work spans major projects overseas including the London’s Thameslink, a high-speed rail line linking Kuala Lumpur to Singapore and dozens of projects in North America, Africa and the Middle East.
Strategic adviser David Radcliffe, the project’s first recruit, said circular lines had been used to great success in overseas cities like Paris, London and Taipei.
“This project is right up there on the world scale,’’ Mr Radcliffe said.
“If we don’t do this then Melbourne will slowly choke.
“We have the opportunity to do something that is new and different for Melbourne — we don’t have to do what we’ve done before.”
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Around 100 boreholes to investigate geology will be dug over the next year with construction to begin by mid-2022.
The project will take up to 30 years to build and eventually run to Melbourne Airport through to Werribee.
“The Suburban Rail Loop will change the way our city moves forever,’’ Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan said.