PROJECT STORY
The challenge
Building Australia’s biggest public transport project requires more than just the technical know-hows.
Sydney Metro
Transforming travel around Sydney in Australia’s largest transport infrastructure project
The solution
Arcadis provided a wide range of engineering services for the North West, City & Southwest, and West sections of the project over a period of six years.
The impact
Sydney Metro will change the way people experience public transport in Sydney by providing safe and convenient ways to travel.
31
new metro stations
66km
of new metro rail
5-Star
Green Star rating
The challenge
Sydney Metro is Australia’s biggest transport infrastructure project. It is a direct response to the growing demand for better transportation fueled by the city’s population and employment growth. Its network is expected to have 31 metro stations and over 66km of metro rail by 2024 with further expansions by the end of the decade. The delivery of a project this scale is no small feat, especially with the inclusion of Sydney’s flagship underground metro station design and when time and public safety are at stake.
The solution
Arcadis’ six-year work on the Sydney Metro project covered three areas: North West, City & Southwest, and West. Our involvement in the North West line covered helping the design and construction contractor to get the project up and running. Our high-quality and timely design expedited the access for the tunnel-boring machines which enabled the construction to finish ahead of time. Although construction finished early, it was important to ensure that the North West line is safe before it can be opened to the public, which we addressed by providing an independent certification of the stations, viaducts and civil works.
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For the City & Southwest and West areas, we delivered environmental planning approval services where our team studied the technical and environmental challenges of construction in densely populated areas. This step was critical for the projects to secure approvals on time.
One particularly challenging part of this project was Barangaroo, Sydney’s flagship underground metro station design. Located almost 25m underneath the northern end of Hickson Road, Barangaroo station needed to meet specific requirements of multiple stakeholders. We worked as part of a design joint venture to design the excavation works while ensuring construction safety in a dense urban environment. We used 3D digital modeling and virtual reality to enable our partners and stakeholders to interact with the visualized space. The feedback and insights from this experience brought diverse community perspectives to the project. The experience also highlighted the unique requirements of the station design and underpinned the importance of putting the users’ welfare first. We used feedback to deliver complex designs with the help of our multidiscipline design teams across Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the Philippines, India, Hong Kong and Singapore.
The impact
By creating a clutter-free stations and designing them as close to the surface as possible, people will be able to enter and exit the station with ease. Increased reliability of services and implementing several Australian-firsts, including fully automatic driverless, single-deck metro style trains and automatic platform screen doors, will also improve safety and convenience.
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It makes us proud to know that the sustainable design approach we implemented helped the project achieve a 5-Star Green Star rating for sustainability. This means customers will experience improved transport, and Sydney will solidify its reputation as a world-class city with a public transport system that rivals other great, innovative systems around the world. As a standalone rail network, Sydney Metro will clear the city’s public transport bottlenecks and meet its goal of giving people more time to enjoy the city and everything that it has to offer.
