Residents along St Kilda Road will soon have direct access to the rail network with the completion of the third Melbourne Metro Tunnel station.
Anzac Station below St Kilda Road at South Melbourne is the third station to be completed of the five that are part of the Metro Tunnel Project.
The underground station has four accessible entrances and there is also a new pedestrian underpass under St Kilda Road.
The station will provide a rail connection to the Domain area that includes the Royal Botanic Gardens, Alfred Hospital, Albert Park and the Shrine of Remembrance.
It has been designed as a pavilion in the park with 85m by 21m skylights and sits next to a tram stop with extra-long platforms to fit four trams at once, which opened in 2022.
This makes it Melbourne’s first direct tram-train interchange and is designed to take pressure off what is the world’s busiest tram corridor.
The design also aims to make it easier for large crowds to use public transport to attend key events such as the Melbourne Grand Prix at Albert Park and Anzac Day services.
There are separated bike lanes from the Melbourne CBD to the suburb of Windsor to help support the tram and train services.
Artist Raafat Ishak’s bright and colourful artwork, Future Wall Painting, will be printed on the glass wall panels in the Albert Road entrance to the station.
Construction of the station began in 2016 with the Metro Tunnel Project aiming to connect the Sunbury and Cranbourne-Pakenham lines through a new tunnel under the CBD.
This would create an end-to-end line from the north-west to the south-east and allow the City Loop to be bypassed as needed.
Anzac Station is slated to open to the public when the Metro Tunnel opens next year.
The Metro will give passengers direct train access to new destinations, including St Kilda Road (Anzac Station), Melbourne’s major health and education precinct (Parkville Station) and North Melbourne (Arden Station).
Passengers will be able to travel from Sunbury to Cranbourne or Pakenham without changing trains.
A single change will connect people to the Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong, Warrnambool and Gippsland regional rail lines.
Tunnelling for the project began in 2019 and was completed in 2021. The project was originally to be completed in 2026, but has been brought forward to 2025.
The project is being delivered by the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority.
