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A consortium including Ghella and Acciona has been named as preferred bidder for tunnelling works on Suburban Rail Loop East (SRL East), part of Melbourne’s planned Suburban Rail Loop (SRL).
Suburban Connect, a consortium made up of Ghella, Acciona Construction and Australasian construction company CPB Contractors is expected to deliver SRL East’s main works contract. The contract is for 16km of twin tunnels between Melbourne’s eastern suburbs of Cheltenham and Glen Waverley. When complete, they will be the longest tunnels in the state of Victoria. The project also includes six new underground stations between the suburbs of Cheltenham and Box Hill.
According to figures from the Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office, the government expects SRL East to cost between AUS$30bn (£15.3bn) and AUS$34.5bn (£17.6bn). The contract is expected to be awarded by the end of the year and tunnel boring machines (TBMs) will start digging in 2026, with SRL East planned to open in 2035.
Early construction on key sections of the line is underway in the suburbs of Box Hill, Burwood and Heatherton, with works starting soon in the suburbs of Monash and returning to Glen Waverley and Clayton later this year.
A second contract for SRL East will be awarded next year for tunnels between the suburbs of Glen Waverley and Box Hill. In total, up to 10 TBMs will be used to excavate 26km of twin tunnels for SRL East, with TBMs also launching from the suburbs in Monash, Burwood and Heatherton at a later date.
The wider Suburban Rail Loop scheme will deliver a 90km rail line linking major train services from the Frankston Line from Flinders Street station in central Melbourne to Frankston station in the south-east, through to the Werribee Line running from Flinders Street Station to Werribee in the southwest, via Melbourne Airport.
SRL East is one of four sections of SRL including another principal section, SRL North. Combined, SRL East and SRL North will form a 60km fully automated orbital metro line through Melbourne’s central suburbs. The line will pass through 13 stations between the suburbs of Cheltenham in the southeast of the city and Melbourne Airport in the northwest, connecting to eight existing rail lines.
A third SRL Airport component in the city's west will include a separate Melbourne Airport rail link, which began construction in 2022 and is being delivered by Rail Projects Victoria. The line will run into Melbourne’s central business district via the Metro Tunnel and is planned to open by 2029. It is understood that the fourth and final section SRL West is still in planning by the state government but is expected to connect the city's outer western suburbs.
The plan for SRL also includes three “transport super hubs” in the suburbs of Clayton, Broadmeadows and Sunshine to connect regional services, meaning passengers will not need to travel through the centre of the city to access employment, world-class hospitals and universities in the suburbs.
Commenting on the naming of the Suburban Connect consortium as preferred bidder for SRL East, Victoria’s minister for Suburban Rail Loop Jacinta Allan said: “We need to boost housing choice and affordability in established areas, which is why our SRL Precincts have been so carefully selected - they are places with easy connections to existing transport and have enormous potential for high quality jobs.”
SRL has been beset by budgetary challenges since its inception, with some critics claiming the project was initially under-costed. When it was first announced in 2018, the Victorian government put a cost of AUS$50bn (£29.3bn) against the scheme. However, in August last year, the Victorian government’s Parliamentary Budget Office found that costs had blown out to AUS$125bn (£73bn), a figure likely to rise to over AUS$200bn (£117bn) if operating costs were factored in. The Parliamentary Budget Office report, undertaken at the request of the opposition Liberal party, predicted that the final cost of Suburban Rail Loop East alone would be AUS$36.5bn (£21.4bn).
Victorian state premier Daniel Andrews said at that time that the report’s cost estimates were in line with the government’s expectations and that the project should be viewed as a long term investment.
According to a Victorian government statement: “SRL is more than a transport project - it will help reshape how our city grows in the decades ahead. The areas around the new stations will be thriving communities for people to live, work, study and play – with more diverse housing options, local services and jobs closer to where people want to live and all a short distance from a train station.”
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