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For commuters in Sydney’s southwest, the past few months have been a struggle – with the Sydenham to Bankstown train line closing back in October 2024, and work on its conversion into a metro line taking longer than expected. Back in November, high-speed testing kicked off between Sydenham and Bankstown, and this week, the full line (complete with Sydenham to Bankstown extension) clocked its first full test run. For the first time ever, a metro train travelled the full length of the M1 Metro North West and Bankstown Line, rolling all the way from Tallawong to Bankstown uninterrupted. It’s a big-ticket milestone for a project that’s been reshaping how Sydney moves, and a promising preview of what commuting could soon look like for the city’s southwest.
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According to Transport for NSW, the test train stopped at all 31 stations along the 66-kilometre route, hitting speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour on the freshly laid sections of track. When the line opens later this year, that speed will translate into frequency: a train every four minutes in peak hour. That’s 15 services an hour, nearly doubling the eight-per-hour offering of the old heavy rail T3 Bankstown Line and dramatically boosting connections between southwest Sydney and the rest of the city.
The time saved on commuting will be the biggest win for Sydneysiders once the line opens. Bankstown passengers will reach Gadigal Station in just 30 minutes (a full 15 minutes faster than the old trip to Town Hall), the Marrickville to Gadigal journey will take 12 minutes less, and Lakemba to Victoria Cross will be a breezy 37-minute ride, saving commuters almost half an hour.
An exact opening date is still yet to be announced, but according to Transport for NSW, 79 per cent of work across the southwest corridor and stations is now complete, with tiling finished at four stations and painting and landscaping underway at most others. Platform screen doors and mechanical gap fillers have already passed their first round of testing at every station, with integration testing up next.
As expected, there will be some short-term pain for the eventual long-term gain. A series of full and partial line closures are on their way coming as crews integrate the southwest extension with the existing metro network, and metro services won’t run on the weekends of January 17-18 and January 24-25, with replacement buses and Sydney Trains services filling the gaps.
As Transport Minister John Graham put it, this first full-length test run is “an exciting day for all of Sydney” – but especially for southwest communities who’ve been waiting to join the metro map. If the numbers are anything to go by, the payoff will be well worth the wait.
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