Melbourne Metro Tunnel opens to passengers, cutting CBD travel times dramatically

Melbourne's Metro Tunnel opened to passengers on Tuesday, completing one of the most complex infrastructure projects in Australian history and delivering the biggest improvement to Melbourne's rail network since the City Loop opened in 1981. The twin tunnels link South Yarra to the new Arden station in North Melbourne via five new underground stations, fundamentally reorganising how the Cranbourne and Pakenham lines move through the CBD.

The opening sees trains on the Cranbourne and Pakenham lines for the first time running through the City Loop in reverse, entering the CBD via the Metro Tunnel at Anzac station in South Yarra rather than at Flinders Street, dramatically reducing dwell times and the cascading delays that had afflicted the corridor. Morning peak journey times from Pakenham to Southern Cross were cut by an average of 12 minutes in the first week of operation.

Premier Jacinta Allan said the Metro Tunnel was the single most consequential public transport investment in Victoria's history. The project employed more than 7,500 workers at its peak construction phase and involved the removal and reprocessing of more than three million tonnes of earth and rock from beneath the central city.

The five new stations — Anzac, Forrest Hill, State Library, Town Hall, and Arden — have drawn particular praise from design critics, with their deep concrete shells and art commissions from Australian artists described by the National Gallery of Victoria as among the most ambitious public art installations in the country.

Patronage on the first days exceeded projections, with Metro Trains reporting more than 180,000 trips through the tunnel stations in the first week of operation.

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