After descending almost 30 metres from the surface by stairs, you’ll sense the eeriness pervading a giant hole carved out of sandstone for a station for Sydney’s biggest metro rail project.
Above ground, motorists drive along busy Parramatta Road nearby, oblivious to the scale of the rectangular hole, which is 194 metres long and 25 metres wide. At either end lie entrances to large twin tunnels for the $29 billion project.
Over the next four years, the hole will be reshaped into an underground station known as Burwood North, one of nine along the 24-kilometre Metro West rail line between central Sydney and Westmead.
Protruding slightly from one of the walls in the deep hole is the entrance to a tunnel, which will become one of its unique features.
It will be turned into a 60-metre pedestrian link stretching from the station to the southern side of Parramatta Road, meaning commuters will avoid having to cross the arterial route.
Early design images have been released for the exteriors of stations, including Burwood North, Westmead, North Strathfield, Five Dock and The Bays at Rozelle.
Premier Chris Minns said the designs of Burwood and the other stations were in keeping with the local character and energy of their suburbs.
At Burwood North, the government has forecast up to 18,000 homes will be built around the station following rezoning and other changes designed to spur housing development.
“It starts to fill in the gaps when it comes to where we will build new housing and new homes for the next generation of young Sydneysiders,” Minns said.
Each of the stations at Burwood North, Westmead, North Strathfield, Five Dock and The Bays is costing about $600 million to build. The $2.85 billion contract for their design and construction was awarded in December, three months before the fuel crisis caused by the Iran war began pushing up costs across sectors.
Minns conceded the war was piling financial pressure on construction projects, but said the government was not forecasting further blowouts in Metro West’s cost.
“The contingency is large enough to deal with shocks to the marketplace, but we’re not immune from what happens globally,” he said.
In December, the government confirmed Metro West was forecast to blow out by as much as $3.7 billion, to $29 billion.
More than 53,000 tonnes of spoil was excavated to carve out the hole for the North Burwood station site, which is largely surrounded by single-storey homes and Concord Oval at its eastern end.
Transport Minister John Graham said transport and housing went “hand in hand”, and each of the Metro West stations would be unique, citing characteristic arches and brick facades in North Strathfield’s buildings being reflected in the new station there.
Last year, Minns said his government would take a “no frills” approach to the design of the Metro West stations, prioritising function over form to prevent cost blowouts of the project.
Graham said the designs for the stations had not been scaled back, and the government’s brief had been clear that it wanted them to reflect what was to be built around them later.
“These are expensive stations, but they really are in character. The brief was clear that we want stations that make the most of these neighbourhoods,” he said.
Early station works such as delivery of machinery and equipment, utilities investigations and survey works will start this month, while construction is due to begin by the end of the year.
Tunnelling for the project was completed in February, when the last of its giant boring machines broke through into a cavern for a station at the eastern end of the rail line under Hunter Street in the Sydney CBD. The remaining contracts for construction of stations at Parramatta, Sydney Olympic Park and Pyrmont are due to be awarded by year’s end.
Matt O’Sullivan is transport and infrastructure editor at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.