Why Sydney’s 24-hour airport won’t have a 24-hour metro

Planes will fly in and out of Sydney’s new international airport 24 hours a day after it opens in late 2026, but an $11 billion metro rail link to the terminal will not operate through the early hours for passengers to get home.

Sydney Metro has confirmed that driverless trains will initially run from 4.30am to midnight from Sunday to Thursday along the 23-kilometre rail line between St Marys and the new city of Bradfield via Western Sydney Airport.

The new metro line, which is due to open at the same time as the curfew-free airport, will operate from 4.30am to 1am on Friday and Saturday.

A huge rectangular hole dug for the airport metro station is several hundred metres from the terminal for Western Sydney International Airport.Credit: Janie Barrett

Sydney Metro said the new airport line’s operating hours would be aligned with Sydney Trains services at St Marys, where passengers would connect to the broader rail network.

“Metro has the capability to provide alternative service patterns, but this would need to be done in alignment with the broader transport network and the train maintenance schedule,” it said.

However, Greens MP and transport spokesperson Cate Faehrmann said the government needed to clarify that Western Sydney Airport was going to be a 20-hour airport, and not a 24-hour one.

“There’s been a big focus on the Western Sydney Airport being 24 hours,” she said.

“Are we seriously going to be telling international passengers who arrive at 2am after an exhausting long-haul flight that the only way of getting to the CBD is by a taxi and, oh by the way, it’s another hour away?”

Senior transport officials were grilled at a budget estimates hearing on Tuesday about why both the airport metro line and the recently opened extension to the M1 line under central Sydney could not operate 24 hours.

Sydney Metro chief executive Peter Regan said it made sense to run 24-hour services for special events such as New Year’s Eve celebrations and Mardi Gras, and authorities had tested the ability to do so before the city-section of the M1 opened more than two weeks ago.

“It’s certainly an option but the way the contract has been set up to date is not something that is prescribed for on an every weekend basis,” he told the hearing.

“It’s a trade-off issue around cost and patronage, as well as being a contract issue.”

The government’s contract with the private consortium that operates the M1 line allows for all-night services during special events, but not regularly because of the maintenance required.

Services on the M1 line are ending earlier at 10.30pm from Monday to Thursday for the next three weeks, which is deemed necessary for “essential engineering and maintenance works”. Following that work, they will run until 12.30am on weekdays and 2.30am on weekends.

The new metro line to Western Sydney Airport has largely flown under the radar in comparison to the planned $25 billion Metro West between Parramatta and the CBD, and the M1 extension. However, the airport line was savaged by the country’s peak infrastructure adviser three years ago, with a warning that its cost would far outweigh the benefits.

Once it opens, a trip on the metro trains from Western Sydney Airport to St Marys will take about 15 minutes, and a journey to Bradfield will be five minutes. The airport line’s trains will be about 30 centimetres wider than Sydney’s other metro trains to cater for flyers who are lugging bags.

Five bus routes to the new airport and Bradfield are due to start before the first planes take off in late 2026. Under Transport for NSW’s plans, buses will run every 30 minutes from 5am to 10pm on the new routes before the airport opens in two years.

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