Tunnelling on Metro West nears completion – but don’t expect new lines any time soon

3 weeks ago 6

Her tungsten carbide teeth each weigh 250 kilograms, and her head is constantly turning – but she only moves a few metres each day.

She’s not a monster, although at more than 1.2 tonnes she’s as scary as one: this is Betty, the tunnel boring machine on the Sydney Metro West line, and she’s just arrived at Westmead.

The first of two machines cutting out kilometres of rock and sediment for tunnels for the new metro system that will eventually connect Sydney’s CBD to Westmead was celebrated by the state Labor government on Monday, even as Premier Chris Minns doused hopes of constructing any new metro or heavy rail lines in the city despite transport officials making the case for them in the long term.

Westmead’s metro station will be directly next to the suburb’s train station, which is close to the stop for the Parramatta light rail and the nearby hospital. When it is complete, the suburb “will be one of the most well-connected suburbs in all of Sydney”, Westmead MP Julia Finn said.

Walk more than 170 steps down the scaffolding on the edge of the station box and you’ll find hundreds of metres of concreted tunnel, the end of a future transport line that stretches through the rock all the way to the CBD.

MP Julia Finn in the Metro West tunnel beneath Westmead.

The boring machine has mostly been grinding against Sydney’s famous coarse sandstone. But around Westmead, the sediment is mostly shale, which a worker said was “like butter”.

In addition to the four cutting teeth in the centre of the machine, there are more than 30 teeth on the rest of the machine’s front. After being scraped by the teeth, the rock falls into a catcher and then onto a conveyor belt in the machine’s body that takes it to Rosehill. The borers average about 90 metres of tunnelling a week.

While the first boring machine has finished its journey, the second is still at the western end of the Parramatta CBD, hampered by delays after contractors became concerned it could have come within four or five metres of a nearby building.

The station box for the new Westmead metro station, looking west.

Focus on fixing rail network

With the government under pressure from transport planners to build more rail lines to keep up with population growth, Minns said his government would focus on repairing the existing network.

The government has received a draft of a report he ordered into the city’s network following May’s disastrous shutdown after a single train’s wiring got entangled. He said it was “sobering reading”.

Asked if his government was future planning for the network, he said: “I think that we’ve got to finish the meal in front of us … I’m not going to promise things that we’re not going to complete. One of the knocks on the Labor Party in the past is that we put out four, five, six, seven plans for new public transport infrastructure and delivered none of them … well, I’m just determined not to make that mistake again.”

The Sydney Morning Herald has opened a bureau in the heart of Parramatta. Email [email protected] with news tips.