Railways in Melbourne
In February 2015, the State Government established the Melbourne Metro Rail Authority to oversee planning for new twin 9-kilometre rail tunnels through the central city between South Kensington station and South Yarra. The new Metro Tunnel will have five new underground stations and connect the Pakenham and Cranbourne lines with the Sunbury line, creating a new route through the CBD as an alternative to the City Loop. New underground stations will be created at Arden, Parkville, Domain and two new CBD stations, State Library and Town Hall. Enabling works were underway by 2016 and major construction work on the tunnel and stations began in 2017.The project has an estimated cost of $11 billion and is scheduled to be complete by 2025.
Metro Tunnel
Melbourne's original development at a time when railway technology began to emerge as a feasible and efficient mode of transit led to a symbiotic relationship between the CBD and the rail network which grew to surround it. An almost purely radial system of lines, developed largely before 1930, linked the growing suburbs to the economic hub of the city centre, producing a system which supported a daily flow of passengers into and out of the city to work. Despite the increasingly car-oriented developments of the mid-20th century, the suburban rail lines in Melbourne continued to discourage any decentralisation of employment, leaving the city unusually dependent on its central core when compared to cities of similar size globally.