Premier says sorry over delay on metro opening

Premier Chris Minns has conceded his government should not have given commuters false hope that Sydney’s new $21.6 billion metro rail line would open on August 4.

Transport Minister Jo Haylen on Tuesday announced the 15.5 kilometres of new line between Chatswood and Sydenham could not open on Sunday as advertised, blaming a combination of problems including a lack of final approval from national regulators, a recent meltdown on a different stretch of line and industrial action from the firefighters’ union.

The government will not nominate a new opening date until all approvals are received, which may take several weeks. However, all bus route changes designed to align with the new metro line will come into effect on Sunday as planned.

“I think we’ve got everybody’s expectations up, and we can’t meet it, so I apologise for that,” the premier told ABC Sydney radio on Wednesday morning.

“It’s a bit of a lesson for us, to be honest, about how we announce these things to get the public ready for it. We want to make sure we get it right. Safety is obviously paramount here and the independent regulator needs a bit more time.”

Minns said the opening would be delayed by weeks, not months. “We’re not trying to be coy about a new start date,” he said.

Chris Minns admits his government should not have got the hopes of the public so high for the now canned August 4 opening of the Metro City and Southwest line.Credit: Nick Moir

More than a decade in the making, the main section of the Metro City and Southwest line between Chatswood and Sydenham comprises six new underground stations, including at North Sydney, Barangaroo and Martin Place, as well as new platforms at Central and Sydenham.

Like Haylen on Tuesday, Minns pointed to an incident on a separate stretch of existing Metro Northwest line between Tallawong and Chatswood on July 13 as a factor behind the cancellation of the much-hyped August 4 start date.

That meltdown stopped 31 driverless trains and forced emergency services to rescue more than 100 commuters from several trains. The Herald revealed after the incident that NSW’s fire agency commanders had savaged the private operator of the line for its response to the outage, warning of an “absolute failure” of emergency plans and “zero appreciation” of danger to life by rail staff.

The Fire Brigade Employees Union only last week lifted an indefinite ban on members taking part in critical safety exercises, which are now under way.

Minns on Wednesday said “we don’t want to repeat those mistakes on the new line when it opens”.

The metro line will take passengers from Central to the new Victoria Cross station in North Sydney in nine minutes, North Ryde to Martin Place in 18 minutes, and Waterloo to the Gadigal station beneath Pitt and Castlereagh streets in four minutes.

Driverless trains will run every four minutes in both directions on the line for three hours in the morning and four hours in the evening peaks, and initially every seven minutes in the inter-peak. Inter-peak frequency will eventually improve to every five minutes in both directions between 10am and 3pm.