00:00Once inside, you go down, down and down.
00:07At its deepest point, 33 metres.
00:09A grand design in the heart of Melbourne.
00:1244 escalators, 12 lifts and two platforms at Town Hall Station,
00:17the centrepiece of the new Metro Tunnel.
00:19These twin 9-kilometre tunnels that are going to transform the way
00:24people move around this great and growing city and state.
00:28An end-of-year opening is still on track,
00:30but the government still hasn't locked in a date,
00:33and part of the system is still under construction.
00:36But once online, the new Metro Tunnel will service five new stations
00:40and connect the Sunbury Line to the Cranbourne-Pakenham Line,
00:43taking these services out of the City Loop.
00:46That delivers and enables a turn-up-and-go service down that corridor,
00:50but what does it also do?
00:51It frees up capacity in the City Loop
00:53so that we can continue to add more services
00:55across the rest of our rail network.
00:57This $13.5 billion project is being delivered ahead of schedule,
01:02but it's blown its original budget by more than $2 billion.
01:05Now, the government says it's doing extensive tests
01:08to make sure there are no further surprises.
01:11The new trains rely on advanced signalling technology
01:14that automatically adjusts their speed and distance from other services.
01:18We've run about 265,000 kilometres in the tunnel to date,
01:22and that's all about ironing out the bugs in the system,
01:26making sure the trains stop at the doors.
01:28To help passengers move between existing lines and the new services,
01:32an underground tunnel will connect the new platforms to Flinders Street Station.
01:36And we wanted to make sure that in the design of these new stations,
01:40they looked to the future of how these stations would be used by our city and state.
01:45It's one stop the Premier hopes will keep the city moving.
01:49in the website to the Sentonist Street Station.
01:53And we wanted to make sure that their stations are met in the way
01:56and they did not even make sure to make changes are needed.
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