A few photos from inside Arden station last week… it’s basically complete, now occupied by Metro as they get ready for the Metro tunnel opening.
The main entrance is at street level, about 10 minutes walk from North Melbourne station. The area mostly industrial right now, but I’d expect a mix of residential and commercial development to come pretty quickly once the station opens.
The gate line and information screens are at street level, with a booking office adjacent to the gates. There’s space for retail, ATMs and a public phone.
Lifts and escalators take you down to concourse level. These escalators aren’t in service yet.
One unexpected issue they have on the concourse is pigeon poo, thanks to a large number of pigeons feasting at a nearby grain depot, and finding the station a nice quiet place to visit.
The layout is similar to Parkville, with a walk along a wide corridor to escalators, lifts and stairs down to platform level. I’m not sure why they oriented the escalators facing away from the only entrance; I should have asked this. Possibly it’s to help spread outbound crowds when busy trains arrive.
The big island platform feels quite spacious (15 point something metres wide) with a fair bit of natural light. Curiously platform 1 is the outbound side, platform 2 is citybound – the opposite of most Melbourne stations, but reflecting that the line runs through the City with no terminus point there.
If you’ve seen my pictures from Anzac and Parkville, the platforms are similar. There are Platform Screen Doors; the platforms are 240 metres long, to cope with future 10 car trains, with the 7 car HCMT fleet initially using them – stopping at the front of the platforms.
There’s more train testing happening at the moment, most weekends.
On Saturday 21st June they’ll try something different: trains will run from Sunbury through the tunnel to Cranbourne/Pakenham… with passengers except in the tunnel section between Footscray and Caulfield.
Presumably on that day the Sunbury line will be running all HCMT trains, and a higher frequency than a usual Saturday to match the Cran/Pak lines.
(The week of closures from 23rd June is only the outer section from Watergardens to Sunbury, related to the Calder Park level crossing removal. The July closure seems to be bigger.)
When will the Metro Tunnel actually open? The ongoing work at State Library and Town Hall indicates it’s some months away. My guess? Around November.
Could the tunnel open in sections before that? Given it’s the two CBD stations that aren’t ready, it’d be very messy to open without them. Thousands of passengers would have to change trains to reach the CBD. Any benefit would be vastly outweighed by that.
We might just have to be patient.
But at least the Myki readers at Arden are working:
9 replies on “Inside Arden station”
I wonder how up and down trains will be defined. It could be the same as tram routes through the CBD along which one direction is always up and the other always down, or all trains towards Town Hall are up trains and those away from Town Hall are down trains.
i’m expecting regardless of readyness that the tunnels open just before the election, to maximise impact.
(tho i am expecting as well that they will be finished enough to have at least one entrance open at every station, some like fed square might not be open though.
Where could one hide inside an HCMT to be the first passenger to travel in the tunnel?
@Tramologist – up/down for services changes at Town Hall, while the chainage inside the tunnels is measured from the South Kensington portal.
@Andrew C – I believe the first public passenger has already accidentally been carried through the Metro Tunnel by a test train a few months ago.
I’m surprised they don’t just let passengers through the tunnel on the 21st. All I would do is not open the doors while it’s stopped at the new stations.
Using the Platform Screen Doors in association with the train doors may be part of the test.
And of course it’d be a real problem if during testing a problem is found and they have to suddenlty evacuate thousands of passengers from multiple trains.
I’m excited to see this station open — perhaps the most architecturally dramatic of the Metro Rail project (Arden > Parkville > TownHall > Library > Anzac) which are all more interesting, carefully designed, though far smaller than SouthernCross.
There aren’t really any other station entrances\concourses in Melbourne with a truly original architectural space, even the SRL has made some valiant efforts, but none created an inspired space, (eg. like almost any of the new stations in Italy or Morocco).
Just reading Rail Express, and it looks like that on Saturday 21 June, trains on the Cranbourne, Pakenham and Sunbury lines will be running to a draft weekday timetable instead of a Saturday timetable, even including peak hour services (although trains will run empty through the Metro Tunnel), so there will be more trains running on those lines than a normal Saturday. Other lines will be normal Saturday timetable on the day (https://www.railexpress.com.au/first-end-to-end-metro-tunnel-tests-to-take-place/)