The Metro Tunnel Project is running ahead of schedule, boosting local employment and incorporating bold design features in new underground stations.
Victorian Minister for Public Transport Jacinta Allan has unveiled the final designs for the stations which will combine functionality, space and natural light with the latest in public transport infrastructure design.
The bold final station designs make station layouts as easy as possible for passengers to navigate, whilst ensuring the structures and their surrounds set a new benchmark in architecture, sustainability and urban design.
The five new stations, which will be known as North Melbourne, Parkville, State Library, Town Hall and Anzac, will draw on the local character of each location in their design and layout.
North Melbourne Station has a large-scale brick arched entrance to reflect the area’s industrial heritage and skylights to enable natural light to filter down on the platforms and concourse.
In Parkville, a glass feature roof at the Grattan Street entrance provides passengers visiting this world class health and education precinct with a tree-lined view as well as natural light into the station concourse.
Grand entrances at State Library and Town Hall Stations in the heart of the CBD will create new meeting places, with redesigned laneways including cafes and retail shops. Below Swanston Street, passengers will enjoy wide and spacious platforms framed by sweeping arches.
A key element at Anzac Station in Domain will be an architecturally designed canopy reaching up from below ground, providing both natural light and weather protection for the thousands of passengers each day who will move between trains and trams.
The new station designs will also deliver a number of new parks and open space, bicycle facilities and community plazas. A pedestrian underpass beneath St Kilda Road will significantly enhance safety.
Training and recruitment for the $6 billion tunnels and stations package will be done at MetroHub and people seeking a job on this package will also be able to register their interest there.
It will exceed local content targets, including sourcing locally more than 88 per cent of the materials used to build the new tunnels and underground stations. A new manufacturing facility in Melbourne’s west will help achieve these targets by producing more than 50,000 concrete segments to line the project’s twin nine-kilometre tunnels.
The Deer Park facility will create 80 new jobs, including jobs for up to 50 ex-auto workers. Local business will also benefit with 65 per cent of the project being delivered by small and medium sized businesses.
The A’Beckett Street shed is the second of four massive sheds to be built in the CBD to fully enclose construction activity as shafts are built to transport workers and equipment underground for station construction. It is more than 15 metres high, 40 metres long and 11 storeys deep.
Designs for the Metro Tunnel stations and their surrounds are a world class collaboration between leading architects Hassell, Weston Williamson and Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners.
The Metro Tunnel is set to be complete by the end of 2025, a year ahead of schedule.
