Empty Cab, Full Line: Sydney Clears Unattended Driverless Metro Trials Before Southwest Opening
Metro Trains Sydney has approval to run driverless trials with no supervisor on board on the Sydenham-Bankstown stretch, a month from the targeted Southwest Metro opening, the Herald reported.
Kenji Watanabe, Asia desk · Sept. 18, 2026 · 5-6 min
SYDNEY - Transport Minister John Graham confirmed Thursday that Metro Trains Sydney has approval to run driverless trials without a supervisor on board along the final stretch of Sydney's $30 billion M1 metro, a month out from the targeted Southwest opening, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The green light covers the 13-kilometre Sydenham to Bankstown conversion, the last section of the line. It is a step toward accreditation for passenger services, which still rests with the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator. Confidential Sydney Metro documents have cited mid-October as the most recent target date for opening.
ONRSR said that once all evidence and documentation supporting the safety case is received and its due diligence is complete, the application for accreditation can be finalised and granted. The watchdog said it would assess the final application as quickly as possible, but that it "requires sufficient time to undertake the work."
"As with other projects of this type, the final assessment, ahead of services beginning, will be to verify that all risks to safety have been identified and that the appropriate systems and processes are in place and working to manage these risks effectively," the regulator said.
Graham said he wanted to give communities an opening date they could rely on, and that depended on the independent regulator's work. "This is not a tick-and-flick exercise. This a real-life, independent safety assessment process," he said.
Sydney Metro said documents would continue to be submitted to the rail regulator "over the coming weeks in line with planned milestones as part of the progressive assurance process." The agency said the Southwest Metro will be open by the end of this year, while repeating that an opening date is not confirmed and that any suggested date is "purely speculative."
Graham has said the government should have "much firmer information" about the progress of testing by the end of this month, and be in a position to give an indication about the opening date "all going well."
The conversion has not been simple. Mechanical gap fillers on curved platforms and wildlife, including ibises, that trip corridor detection systems have complicated the final stretch, the Herald reported. Two years ago, the city-section opening between Chatswood and Sydenham was announced about a month out, then slipped by several weeks while the government waited on the same national regulator.
Commuters have lived with the disruption since September 2024, when the T3 heavy rail line shut for the metro conversion. Tens of thousands of people have relied on replacement buses each day between Sydenham and Bankstown. An earlier NSW ministerial release on Sept. 1 marked the end of a five-week Trial Running program that put the Southwest line through more than 130 operational scenarios, including a major emergency exercise near Bankstown Station.
That milestone cleared the way for further driverless testing and regulatory paperwork. Thursday's approval to run without an onboard supervisor is the next step in that sequence.
Graham described the flow of data and documentation to ONRSR as an iterative process aligned with planned milestones. Empty cabs on the trial trains do not yet mean full passenger service. Until the regulator signs off, Southwest Metro remains a line under assurance, not an open metro.
Sources
Kenji Watanabe, Asia desk. Kenji Watanabe is a senior correspondent covering autonomous mobility across Asia. Previously reported from Tokyo and Shenzhen for regional outlets; based in Tokyo.
