Metro Tunnel
The Metro Tunnel, formerly known as Melbourne Metro Rail, is an underground metropolitan rail project in Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria and second-largest city in Australia. It involved the construction of twin heavy rail tunnels between South Yarra and South Kensington, with five new underground stations. The tunnel connects the busy Pakenham and Cranbourne lines with the Sunbury line north-south through the centre of the Hoddle Grid, creating a new high-frequency cross-city line that bypasses Flinders Street station and the City Loop. A proposed new Airport rail line serving Melbourne Airport and a future connection to Melton is also planned to run via the Metro Tunnel.
The Metro Tunnel project is managed by the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority and is part of the Victorian Government's "Big Build" infrastructure initiative. The project was built for an estimated cost of A$12.8billion. The project enables the operational separation of various existing lines on Melbourne's rail network and increase the capacity of the system to metro-style frequencies. The Metro Tunnel has communications-based train control and platform screen doors, both a first for Melbourne. In addition to relieving the peak-hour ridership pressure on the City Loop, the tunnel has also brought heavy rail services to the University of Melbourne, various major tertiary hospitals and health science research institutes in Parkville, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, all of which previously relied on trams and buses for last-mile transit to and from railway stations.
The Andrews Government began planning the project in 2015. Initial construction works commenced in early 2017. Sections of the Melbourne CBD, including City Square and parts of Swanston Street, were closed to enable construction of the tunnel and stations. Tunnelling began in 2019 and was completed in 2021. Construction of the five new stations was mostly completed in October 2025. The Metro Tunnel opened to the public with an initial soft-opening branded the 'Summer Start' on 30 November 2025, with over 70,000 people visiting on opening day. Full service through the tunnel, marketed as the 'Big Switch' commenced on 1 February 2026.. In celebration of the opening of the Metro Tunnel, all public transport services in Victoria were free on weekends from opening day till the commencement of the 'Big Switch' on 1 February 2026.
Background
Melbourne's original development occurred at a time when railway technology began to emerge as a feasible and efficient mode of transit. This led to a symbiotic relationship between the CBD and the rail network which grew to surround it. An almost purely radial system of lines, developed largely before 1930, linked the growing suburbs to the economic hub of the city centre, producing a system which supported the daily flow of passengers into and out of the city to access employment opportunities. Despite the increasingly car-oriented developments of the mid-20th century, the suburban rail lines in Melbourne continued to discourage any decentralisation of employment, leaving the city unusually dependent on its central core when compared to cities of similar size globally.The first underground rail line to be built in Melbourne was the City Loop, which began construction in 1971 and opened gradually between 1981 and 1985. Among its aims were to reduce pressure on Flinders Street station by distributing passengers to three additional stations in the city centre, and to improve the capacity of the network's central core by eliminating the need for trains to change direction after terminating at Flinders Street. However, it was not entirely successful in achieving these aims. The four tunnels of the Loop proved to be a capacity constraint on the ten main railway lines entering the CBD, and the peculiarities of operating four single-direction balloon loops meant that inner-city rapid transit was difficult for passengers. At the same time, the Loop consumed much of the capital available for investment in the city's rail system. As a result, the extensions to the outer suburban network which had been envisaged as a succession to the Loop itself did not eventuate. Meanwhile, patronage on the network had entered a long period of decline, which culminated in the Lonie Report of 1980 recommending the closure of several lines.
The need for an overhaul of the existing commuter rail network was first discussed in the early 2000s as unprecedented population growth began to place significant pressure on existing rail infrastructure and constraints on the inner core of the network as it approached capacity. Other problems faced by the network in the first decade of the 21st century included inefficient operations which had developed during years of low patronage, and a loss of corporate memory, caused in part by the privatisation of rail services in the late 1990s, which limited the flexibility of planners in dealing with the burgeoning passenger numbers. Consequently, a large number of services were experiencing major overcrowding in peak periods. A series of planning documents released during the early 2000s, including Melbourne 2030, Linking Melbourne and Meeting Our Transport Challenges identified that significant capacity constraints existed in the central core and on the Dandenong corridor, but did not propose any significant capital works in the city centre, instead suggesting that the issues could be resolved by relatively minor operational changes and construction of a third track to Dandenong.
Outside the state government, support grew for a more substantial augmentation of the rail network, with many such ideas based on new underground lines through the CBD. In 2005, The Age reported that it had received a number of proposals from planning experts and engineers for rail "loops and arcs" in the central city, and publicised a plan published by Monash University professor Graham Currie for a tunnel between the University of Melbourne to the north of the city and South Yarra station to the south-east. Currie's plan also envisaged extensive improvements to the Melbourne tram network, including upgrading lines along St Kilda Road and Chapel Street to light rail standards. In 2006, the state government considered a plan to construct a combined road and rail tunnel beneath the Yarra River to provide an alternative to the West Gate Bridge, but the idea was deemed unfeasible.
By 2007, the planned third track to Dandenong was effectively abandoned, with no money provided for the project in that year's state budget, and opposition growing from the Public Transport Users Association and others. Later that year, it emerged that train operator Connex and coordinating authority Metlink were among stakeholders encouraging the government to consider a proposal similar to Currie's, but extended to Footscray in the city's west. Melbourne City Council, on the other hand, proposed a tunnel conceptually similar to the Currie plan, but running from Jewell station in the north to Windsor in the south-east.
History
Early planning
In 2008, transport planner Sir Rod Eddington handed down the findings of a report into Melbourne's east–west transport needs, following a commission by the Brumby Government. The Eddington Report recommended two key projects in the city centre: an East West Link road tunnel providing an alternative cross-town route to the West Gate Bridge, and a rail tunnel from Footscray to Caulfield via the CBD. According to Eddington, the tunnel would increase the capacity of the central rail network by removing some trains from the City Loop, allowing future extensions to the suburban lines. In December that year, the project was incorporated into the government's Victorian Transport Plan, to be built in two stages: the first from Footscray to St Kilda Road, and the second along the rest of the route.Following the 2010 Victorian election, the newly elected Baillieu Government abandoned the Brumby transport plan, and announced that each of the projects would be individually reviewed, some by the newly created Public Transport Development Authority. Then, in its 2012 budget, the government announced a revised version of the tunnel plan: a "Melbourne Metro" from South Kensington to South Yarra along a similar city centre route to Eddington's original proposal. The revised project included five underground stations, and was submitted to Infrastructure Australia where it was deemed "ready to proceed" and was listed as the highest-priority infrastructure project in Melbourne. A business case was quickly developed based on the constraints of the existing rail system, which was rapidly approaching its maximum capacity. The Department of Transport commenced geotechnical drillings and route investigations.
A dispute between the federal and state government over the funding for the tunnel intensified in 2013, with the approach of that year's federal election. The state budget in early May revealed that none of the $50 million in planning money allocated the previous year had been spent, with new premier Denis Napthine deferring the project in favour of the East West Link. Despite this, with the release of the 2013 federal budget a week later, the Gillard government committed $3 billion to the project on the condition that the state match the contribution. The remaining money was to be raised by a public–private partnership, with the possibility that the contractor could take over running of the line in addition to its construction. However, federal opposition leader Tony Abbott declared that if he was elected in the 2013 federal election, no Commonwealth money would be spent on urban passenger rail, and that any commitment to the Melbourne Metro tunnel project would be revoked.
Meanwhile, Public Transport Victoria's Network Development Plan – Metropolitan Rail, released in early 2013, identified the Metro Tunnel as the centrepiece of a 20-year strategy for improving the Melbourne suburban rail network. Public Transport Victoria 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 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.