How long is the Melbourne Metro Tunnel going to be?
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The Metro Tunnel (sometimes also known as the Melbourne Metro Rail Project or the Metro Rail Capacity Project) is a metropolitan rail infrastructure project currently under construction in Melbourne, Australia. It includes the construction of twin 9-kilometre rail tunnels between South Kensington station (north west of the Melbourne City Centre) and South Yarra (in the south east) with five new underground stations. The southern portal for the tunnel is to be located to the south of South Yarra station. As a result, the tunnel will connect the Pakenham and Cranbourne lines with the Sunbury line, and allow these lines to bypass Flinders Street station and the City Loop while still stopping in the Melbourne central business district.
Metro Tunnel
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In February 2015, the State Government established the Melbourne Metro Rail Authority to oversee planning for new twin 9-kilometre rail tunnels through the central city between South Kensington station and South Yarra. The new Metro Tunnel will have five new underground stations and connect the Pakenham and Cranbourne lines with the Sunbury line, creating a new route through the CBD as an alternative to the City Loop. New underground stations will be created at Arden, Parkville, Domain and two new CBD stations, State Library and Town Hall. Enabling works were underway by 2016 and major construction work on the tunnel and stations began in 2017.The project has an estimated cost of $11 billion and is scheduled to be complete by 2025.
Railways in Melbourne
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In February 2015, the Andrews government announced $40 million in immediate funding to establish the Melbourne Metro Rail Authority, in order to commence detailed planning work along the original route, and promised a further $300 million in its upcoming budget. It also revealed that a $3 billion line of credit established to fund the EWL would be redirected to the Melbourne Metro project. A timeline was provided, with construction expected to commence in 2018 and the tunnel to be open in 2026. Meanwhile, however, the federal government continued to refuse to fund the project, which led some observers to describe Andrews' commitment as a significant political risk.
Metro Tunnel
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Meanwhile, Public Transport Victoria's Network Development Plan Metropolitan Rail (NDPMR), released in early 2013, identified the Metro Tunnel as the centrepiece of a 20-year strategy for improving the Melbourne suburban rail network. CEO Ian Dobbs, launching the plan, argued that any expansion of the system was "impossible" without vastly improved capacity in the core of the network. The NDPMR envisaged the tunnel's construction taking place in a wave of major development from 2017 to 2022, enabling the segregation of the rail system into four independently-operated lines, each with their own routes through the CBD. It also outlined a service plan for the tunnel, proposing an initial peak hour flow of 8 trains per hour in each direction.
Metro Tunnel
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In February 2015, the State government established the Melbourne Metro Rail Authority, with $40 million in funding, to oversee planning of the project and $1.5 billion to commence land and property acquisitions and detailed route investigation, and a further $3 billion in funding was committed. Most of the project would be built as a public-private partnership, with private sector investors funding much of the estimated $9 billion to $11 billion cost upfront. Early enabling works commenced in late 2016. In late 2017, sections of the Melbourne central business district, including City Square and parts of Swanston Street, were closed to enable construction of the tunnel and stations. The project was originally expected to be completed in 2026, but has now been revised to late 2025.
Metro Tunnel
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The Stage 4 service plan in the 2012 NDPMR suggested that the tunnel – terminating at Fishermans Bend – would carry 15 trains an hour in peak times, most running the full length of the line from Mernda. However, no service plan has been publicly released for the longer tunnel to Newport .
Melbourne Metro 2
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In February the following year, the state government announced that it was considering alternative alignments for the tunnel, because of concerns that cut and cover construction in Swanston Street in the central city would result in massive disruption to traffic and retail activity for an extended period of time. Then, at the launch of its 2014 budget in May, the Napthine government announced that the Metro Tunnel project would be abandoned and replaced with an alternative proposal called "Melbourne Rail Link". The MRL route consisted of a tunnel from South Yarra to Southern Cross via Kings Domain and Fishermans Bend, where it would join existing City Loop tunnels reconfigured for bidirectional traffic. Furthermore, the government promised that the realignment would enable a Melbourne Airport rail link to be constructed from Southern Cross at the same time. Ultimately, the reconfiguration of the rail network was to have produced similar operational outcomes as the Melbourne Metro plan, with a Sunbury-Dandenong corridor operating directly between Southern Cross and Flinders Street in both directions, but with an additional end-to-end line from Frankston to Ringwood via the new tracks.
Metro Tunnel
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According to government ministers, the Melbourne Rail Link offered greater capacity increases and less disruption during the construction phase than existing plans. However, it was heavily criticised, including by Lord Mayor of Melbourne Robert Doyle, who described the route change as a potential "100-year catastrophe" because of its failure to service the Parkville medical and research precinct. Furthermore, the government revealed in the days following the budget that it had not produced a business case for its plan, and that the decision had been taken primarily on the basis of a "common sense" need to service its urban redevelopment project at Fishermans Bend. Other concerns emerged in the months following the budget, with experts publicly questioning whether the Napthine government had committed sufficient funding, and whether the proposed tunnels could be engineered to successfully avoid the main Melbourne sewer.
Metro Tunnel
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Then, in October 2016, the inaugural 30-year plan released by Infrastructure Victoria suggested that the entire project – from Newport to Clifton Hill – needed to be constructed simultaneously, but would have enormous costs potentially not offset by its benefits. The report recommended a reconfiguration of the City Loop as an earlier and cheaper measure to improve core capacity in the network, but stated that any redesign of MM2 would need to consider delivering further improvements to the lines through Sunshine after completion of the first Metro Tunnel. On the other hand, the report also suggested that the massive improvements in property values created by MM2, which it estimated as being up to $20 billion, could be used to partially fund the project using a value capture levy or tax.
Melbourne Metro 2
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The public profile of tunnel works increased through the end of 2017, with Lord Mayor Robert Doyle complaining that the City of Melbourne's pest controllers were being overwhelmed by rats disturbed by underground works, and a public viewing platform established at the City Square building site. On 18 December, the state government announced that it had finalised its contract with Cross Yarra Partnership, with a value of some $6 billion. Opposition leader Matthew Guy immediately signalled his intention to bring the dispute over the tunnel's design to the 2018 state election, writing to CYP to indicate that he would seek to include a station at South Yarra should his party win government the following year.
Metro Tunnel