Two tunnel boring machines (TBMs) constructing the 24-kilometre twin metro railway tunnels for the Sydney Metro West project have broken through solid rock walls, arriving at the junction caverns 24-metres below the surface at Clyde.
Sydney Metro is a jointly funded public transport project by the Federal and New South Wales governments.
The scope of the project being building, operating and maintaining a network of four metro lines, 46 stations and 113 kilometres of new metro rail, targeting to open in 2032.
The project will connect Sydney’s northwest, west, southwest and greater west with new metro services with fully accessible stations.
The metro program includes the operational M1 Line and three projects under construction; the Southwest, west and Western Sydney Airport projects.
Once completed, Sydney’s new metro railway will have a target capacity of about 40,000 customers per hour, compared to Sydney’s current suburban system which can reliably carry 24,000 people an hour per line.
This latest milestone means more than 80 per cent of tunnelling for the city-shaping project has been completed, with tunnelling ongoing on the project since April 2023.
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TBM Dorothy broke through to arrive at the junction caverns in February, after spending three months tunnelling 1.1 kilometres from Clyde.
TBM Betty is tracking slightly ahead, having arrived at the junction caverns in December 2024 after carving out the tunnel parallel to TBM Dorothy.
TBM Betty spent seven weeks traversing the cavern and undergoing scheduled maintenance and is currently tunnelling towards Parramatta.
The junction caverns are an important component of the new railway as they feature service tunnels linking to the above ground stabling and maintenance facility, where the network’s new fleet of trains will be housed when not in service.
Since starting their westward tunnelling journey in September 2024, TBMs Betty and Dorothy have excavated about 200 metres of tunnel each week.
So far, the TBMs have carved out 5.7-kilometres of twin tunnels between Sydney Olympic Park and Clyde, removing more than 1.1 million tonnes of material, equivalent to about 180 Olympic-size swimming pools.
TBMs Betty and Dorothy have each built over 75 percent of the nine kilometres of tunnel between Sydney Olympic Park and Westmead.
While, TBMs Daphne and Beatrice completed 11-kilometre twin metro tunnels between The Bays and Sydney Olympic Park in October 2024.
TBMs Jessie and Ruby completed 33 per cent of the 2.3-kilometre tunnels between The Bays and Hunter Street in the Sydney CBD. The remaining 1.7-kilometres of the alignment is being excavated by roadheader machines.
Along the way, the TBMs have installed more than 41,000 precast concrete segments to line the new tunnel walls. Each precast segment weighs about 3.8 tonnes, with six segments pieced together to form one ring around the tunnel.
Both TBMs will build a further 1.1-kilometre section of tunnels to reach the site of the future Parramatta Metro Station by mid-year.
For more information, visit: https://www.sydneymetro.info/
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