SYDNEY - Did you know that on 26 May 2019 Australia opened its first fully automated, driverless metro? Sydney Metro Northwest, the Metro North West Line from Tallawong to Chatswood, began revenue service that Sunday with nobody in the cab and platform screen doors at every station.
Transport for NSW called it the first fully automated driverless metro rail system in Australia. Alstom, which supplied the trains and signalling, said the same in its 26 May 2019 press release: Australia's first fully automated, turn-up-and-go rail service. The line runs about 36 kilometres, with 13 stations and a depot. Peak service was designed for a train every four minutes in each direction. The end-to-end trip was meant to take about 37 minutes, ABC News reported on opening day.
Under a contract awarded through the Northwest Rapid Transit consortium in 2014, Alstom delivered 22 six-car Metropolis trains and its Urbalis 400 communications-based train control. The trains were designed in France and assembled at Alstom's plant in Sri City, India, with work from Alstom sites in Australia and elsewhere. Rail Engineer later described the Urbalis 400 fit as Grade of Automation 4, the unattended train operation level: the system starts, stops and opens doors without an onboard driver. Alstom said each car has three double doors, and that the trains carry constant CCTV, emergency intercoms and real-time passenger information.
The doors on the platform were another Australian first. Sydney Metro's January 2019 Northwest newsletter said platform screen doors had been installed at all 13 stations between Tallawong and Chatswood (including the upgraded Epping-to-Chatswood stretch), and that Sydney Metro would be the first Australian railway to use them. The doors open only when a train is aligned. ABC News cited speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour and the option, later, of headways as short as two minutes.
Opening day was free for passengers. NSW Government notices listed the 13 stations from Tallawong through Rouse Hill, Kellyville, Bella Vista, Norwest, Hills Showground, Castle Hill, Cherrybrook, Epping, Macquarie University, Macquarie Park and North Ryde to Chatswood. Premier Gladys Berejiklian rode from Tallawong. ABC News said more than 100,000 people used the service that day. Crowds and teething faults, including a train that overshot a platform and doors that had to be opened by hand, slowed the afternoon. The curiosity peg is not the first-day queues. It is that Australia's biggest city put empty-cab metro into public service at metro scale, with Alstom Metropolis stock, Urbalis signalling and glass along the platform edge.
The Northwest opening was Stage 1. Transport for NSW said the network would later push from Chatswood under the harbour and on toward Sydenham and Bankstown. Separate later trials on the City and Southwest extension converted existing suburban track to unattended metro. Those conversion trials are a different story. This one is the May 2019 Northwest debut: Australia's first fully automated metro, Tallawong to Chatswood, 13 stations, about 36 kilometres, driverless from the first revenue trip.
