Sydney Southwest Metro as it happened: Crowd cheers as mega rail project’s final stage opens after two years of disruptions

Premier Chris Minns and Transport Minister John Graham are holding a press conference to discuss the opening of the metro extension.

We’re expecting it to kick off just after 11am.

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The Inner West Council has seized the opening of the final section of the M1 metro line to launch a campaign aimed at luring visitors to food and entertainment hubs in Marrickville, Sydenham, Dulwich Hill and surrounds.

Mayor Darcy Byrne said residents and businesses were expecting thousands of visitors to pour into the inner west after the opening of the final stage of the metro line linking Bankstown to Tallawong in the north-west.

“Inner westies are proud of our diverse and distinctive suburbs, and after a challenging period of construction, we’re excited to welcome people from across Sydney to rediscover the inner west, enjoy everything it has to offer and get behind our local businesses,” Byrne said.

“We are rolling out the welcome mat.”

In the history of Sydney’s three-stage M1 metro rail line, it’s been standard for the government to opt for openings on a Sunday – if it could.

The ribbon was cut for the first stage from Tallawong to Chatswood on a Sunday in May 2019. The M1 line’s city section was also due to be opened on a Sunday in early August 2024 until a delay resulted in the government opting for a Monday several weeks later.

The common wisdom of a Sunday opening is that it avoids a busy weekday when patronage surges, giving authorities wriggle room if something goes awry after the ribbon is cut.

So why was a Friday chosen for the opening of the south-west section?

At Hurlstone Park, complaints have trickled in about the volume of the loud speaker at the new metro station.

And having just arrived there, the speaker is noticeably louder than at other stations.

Locals Mary Kean and Jamie Honan said they’d heard of the complaints and the noise.

“We heard the people that live here have a petition together, but this station has been noisy for a while, even before the metro opened,” Honan said.

The worry for commuters who catch the metro from Sydenham in the morning is that the opening of the line to Bankstown will mean the end of getting a seat during peak hour.

But on day one, at least, those fears did not materialise.

Commuters from further up the line ditched the pink buses to Sydenham, so the platform at Sydenham was near empty. When the carriages pulled up, there were plenty of passengers inside, but no one was standing and it was still easy to find a seat.

The caveat is that Fridays are always quiet days. The test will come midweek next week.

Aside from catching the first train, it has been all about securing the metro badges that station staff have been handing out this morning.

That is, the teal-coloured badges sporting the names of each of the 10 stations along the southwest section of the M1 line.

Some trainspotters have been travelling between the stations to collect badges from each of them.

Sydney Metro chief executive Camilla Drover had the badges pinned to her jacket for the first ride at 4.31am.

Commuters at Campsie station are excited to return to a sense of normalcy after two years of disruptions.

Outside of the media scrum and excitement at Bankstown, commuters at other stops along the southwest line have cautiously stepped into their new metro commute.

Irfan Khan’s commute will be chopped in half by the metro as he takes the train from Campsie to Victoria Cross.

“I intend to sleep during that extra half hour, but I can do anything with that extra half hour,” he said.

A few readers have shared with us their alarm at seeing the dreaded pink buses still parked outside freshly opened metro stations.

Don’t stress – the state government tells us the buses are only there as a backup. They’ll continue to run for three days, but if all goes to plan, you won’t need to step on board one.

Our reporter Bronte Gossling was one of those commuters who had a jolt at seeing the buses outside her local metro station this morning.

She told me her commute today was 50 minutes door to door, compared to as much as 1½ hours on the crowded replacement buses.

The early signs are that the entire M1 line between the city’s south-west and north-west is operating well as trains run during the morning peak, which is the system’s first major test.

Sydney Metro executive Hugh Lawson, who oversaw construction of the city section of the mega project, said the 66-kilometre line was so far “going brilliantly” and services were running “perfectly to the timetable”.

“We’re into the peak service, and everything’s working well across the whole network, not just on the southwest [line], but all the way through to Tallawong,” he said at Bankstown station.

Lawson admitted to being nervous ahead of the new section’s opening.

“It doesn’t matter how many thousands of times we’ve tested the train successfully, I think we all wanted that first train to run smoothly, and it did,” he said.

“But I was relieved when we got to Sydenham and everything had gone really well. Everyone [was] very happy, and that train was absolutely rammed. It was heaving with people.”

The relief among commuters at Bankstown this morning is palpable.

With the dreaded pink replacement buses now consigned to the past (though some are running today as a back-up service), commuters feel they can return to something of a normal commute.

Pita Siganisucu still remembers what it was like to take a train from Bankstown to the city before his life was upended by the construction of the metro.

“It was a bit of a drama. I went from a simple train ride to having to change twice on a nearly 90-minute commute. It was a nightmare.”

“I almost forgot how good it was – the nightmare of the buses consumed everything.”

The station is getting fuller and despite the early morning, most commuters are grinning as they jump onto their first metro ride.