Sydney Metro West construction begins

The site of the future Bays Station is now being prepared for the arrival of tunnel boring machines for the Sydney Metro West project.

Works are expected to create more than 10,000 direct new jobs and 70,000 indirect.

Sydney Metro West is expected to help cut crowding on the three major train lines and take tens of thousands of cars off the roads each day.

Stations on the new line will be fully accessible at Westmead, Parramatta, Sydney Olympic Park, North Strathfield, Burwood North, Five Dock, The Bays and the Sydney CBD.

The train line will have a target travel time of around 20 minutes between Parramatta and the Sydney CBD.

Road works at The Bays, assessed and approved earlier this year, will allow the first of the mega tunnel boring machines to be in the ground before the end of 2022.

The shortlisting process for the tunnelling contract packages is still ongoing. The first package is the Central Tunnelling Package, which includes 11 kilometres of twin tunnels from The Bays to Sydney Olympic Park.

Due to the scale of this project, the tunnelling and excavation works have been separated into geographically-specific contract packages between Westmead and the Sydney CBD.

The first tunnelling contract is expected to be awarded by the middle of 2021.