Providing fast, reliable, turn up and go services and fully accessible stations on Australia’s only driverless rapid metro system, Sydney Metro City & Southwest connects Chatswood to Bankstown via Sydenham through the heart of Sydney’s CBD.
Sydney Metro City & Southwest
Providing fast, reliable, turn up and go services and fully accessible stations on Australia’s only driverless rapid metro system, Sydney Metro City & Southwest connects Chatswood to Bankstown via Sydenham through the heart of Sydney’s CBD.
Sydney Metro City & Southwest is the second stage of Sydney Metro – the first driverless metro system in Australia. It will deliver 31km of new metro rail between Chatswood to Sydenham in 2024 and onto Bankstown in 2025, including new twin tunnels under Sydney Harbour and upgrade and conversion of all 11 stations between Sydenham and Bankstown to metro railway standards.
The project will also see new stations at Crows Nest, Victoria Cross, Barangaroo, Martin Place, Gadigal in the Sydney CBD and Waterloo along with new platforms at Central and Sydenham station. The project provides a faster, more reliable service for customers by increasing train numbers 60 per cent during peak periods and catering for an extra 100,000 commuters per hour.
Winner – 2017 Consult Australia Awards for Excellence - Technological Innovation
Additional passengers per hour
100000
Number of stations
11
Track length
31 km
Transport for NSW engaged WSP as their technical advisor in 2014. The team worked collaboratively to provide the engineering, rail infrastructure and architectural design support to develop the reference design, tender documentation and final business case for the preferred alignment and station arrangements.
Systems Connect – a joint venture between CPB Contractors and UGL was appointed to deliver the Sydney Metro Line-wide Works, with WSP and Aurecon providing the detailed design in 2018. This package of work included:
31 km of underground railway track and overhead power equipment
11 new substations and 350 kms of tunnel service cabling
Connecting the railway tracks from the end of the Metro North West Line at Chatswood to the new tracks into the city
Constructing the Sydney Metro Trains Facility South at Marrickville to provide stabling for up to 19 six-car metro trains, and expanding the Sydney Metro Trains Facility at Rouse Hill
Installing tunnel equipment including ventilation, drainage, fire hydrant and detection, emergency evacuation and monitoring equipment
Fitting-out the tunnels and installing ventilation and high-voltage equipment in six new underground stations, and in 58 cross passages between the twin tunnels.
Train testing in the City & Southwest tunnels
Reference design sets project up for success
There were two parts to the reference design that WSP assisted with – geotechnical modelling and digital design.
We developed a bespoke digital engineering framework that combined data management and virtual reality to visualise customer experience and optimise tunnel and underground station design, modelling of passenger flow to optimise the location of station elements, as well as designing for future scenarios such as climate change for drainage and flooding and allowing for potential new developments.
Site investigations, geophysical testing and surveys were used to assist with the geotechnical modelling including echo sounding to provide a map of seabed levels; side scan sonar to map seabed features; seismic reflection to profiling to map the subsurface velocity distribution, confirming the depth of rock and identifying any significant variations in seismic velocity. This project is one of only a few projects over water to employ the use of cross-hole seismic tomography, setting up two drilling barges over water, 40 metres apart, to perform sonic scanning between the two holes. This provided additional information on the bedrock condition at the base of the paleo valley. Geophysical surveying provided detailed information to assess multiple tunnel alignment options and to find the most suitable one. This investigation defined the palaeogeographical rock surface and identified the existence of a paleo valley crossing the scoping design alignment and it was revised to accommodate this.
To view this content, please update your cookies preferences and refresh the page.
Innovation and sustainability were a priority with the project’s design submission achieving 10/10 for innovation from the Infrastructure Sustainability Council and a ‘Leading’ design rating. Throughout construction, more than 95% of inert construction and demolition waste has been avoided from landfill, and more than 50% of office waste. The project achieved a 15% reduction in materials lifecycle impact compared to base case footprint and a 74.7% reduction in water demand.
Boral’s ‘Low Carbon High Performance’ synthetic-fibre-reinforced ENVISIA®concrete mix was suggested during tender phases and used in the design. This approximately halved the emissions-intensive Portland cement requirement without compromising early strength and cycle times (compared to conventional concrete with 100% Portland cement). The resulting concrete has circularity benefits, less embodied carbon, and superior shrinkage and creep performance, while otherwise behaving like conventional concrete. Approximately 46,000m3 of Boral Envisia was used, reducing embodied carbon by >10,000tCO2e compared to typical Australian-Standard-compliant concrete.
Sydney Metro Trains Facility (SMTF) at Rouse Hill
Rather than importing sand for use in the installation of new drainage at the Sydney Metro Trains Facility in Rouse Hill, the team procured recycled crushed glass sand. Approximately 1,000 metric tonnes of recycled crushed glass was sourced at no charge from a NSW-based waste service provider – greatly reducing emissions-intensive haulage requirements and avoiding the environmental impacts of sand-mining.
A permanent groundwater treatment plant at Marrickville, Sydney Metro Trains Facility South was constructed to enable the capturing of rainwater and groundwater seepage from the rail tunnels. Up to 2ML of wastewater per day was treated and transformed into a useful resource.
Efficient design through innovation
To deliver the designs with increased efficiency, conventional modelling software was combined with custom code solutions to automate production of the overhead wiring (OHW) rigid bar conductor system and tunnel trackform, sleepers and acoustic treatments models. An automated OHW structural design calculation process was also developed using custom code. These innovations were critical to achieving the program’s ambitious timeframe and ensuring all project interfaces were readily coordinated.
A world-class metro for a growing city
The Sydney Metro City line between Chatswood and Sydenham connects with the existing Metro North West Line, and there will be future work to continue the line further southwest from Sydenham to Bankstown. With these new and planned routes expanding the Sydney Metro network, and with state-of-the-art stations and associated developments such as the Waterloo Station integrated station development along the alignment, this project will connect communities and improve the integrated transport experience for generations to come.
