Hunter Street Station, soon to be the busiest underground station on Sydney’s coveted Metro Line, is due to open in 2032. Despite being eight years away from opening, boring machines are currently drilling below the Sydney CBD that will eventually become transportation routes that will link the harbour city to its western districts.
When complete, it is anticipated that 10,000 people will utilise Hunter Street Station every hour during peak times. Engineers currently have a dilemma on their hands, having to dig a tunnel to allow for eastbound trains – some 120 metres in length – to cross over future lines before heading out west towards Parramatta. ‘Stub tunnels’ are also being dug, which will allow for the line to be extended out towards the south east in future years.
These tunnels sit directly beneath the Domain and State Library. The centrality of the tunnels is a head scratcher for even the world’s foremost underground engineers, including Eastern Tunnelling Project Director Bob Nowotny, a 35-year industry veteran.
“From an engineering standpoint it’s an engineer’s dream to be building this cavern because of the scale of it, where it’s located and the engineering that goes in behind what we do. We are more sculptors than we are tunnellers – sculpting the rock to fit all the infrastructure in,” he says in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald.
“You can see the vastness of the operation. There’s a lot of logistics and planning that goes into it.”
Unlike many of its counterparts which have separate tunnels for separate platforms, Hunter Street will feature a singular cavern. It will serve as a connection place for other metro lines, with trains arriving every four minutes from both east and west. It is anticipated that from Hunter Street, trips to Olympic Park and Parramatta will be 15 and 20 minutes respectively.
“It will sit at the intersection of a number of lines,” says Sydney Metro Head of Project Delivery, Josh Watkin.
“It’s not only a terminus destination in its own right but also a major thoroughfare underground for people connecting to all the other lines. In terms of the pedestrian walkways and customer accessibility, it absolutely does have some challenges for us to maximise those flows, so there’s no crowding.”
The future Bays Precinct at Rozelle will link up with Hunter Street when the line is operational. Boring machines will drill for 3.5 kilometres in the coming months, and are predicted to reach the Hunter Street station by mid-2025.
Above Hunter Street there are a number of development consortiums jostling for the tender for over-station development. A 51-storey tower at the junction of Hunter and George Streets, as well as a 58-storey tower on the corner of Hunter, O’Connell and Bligh have already been earmarked for the future.
A proposal put forward by Lendlease, Mirvac and Merivale will see pedestrians walk from street level to the building’s terraces. The government’s brief asked for bidders to improve the surrounding area with their developments and to create a distinctive, vibrant precinct. The site of Hunter Street Station’s eastern entrance on Bligh Street, is already owned by Mirvac. The contract will be awarded next year.
