Escalators plunging passengers 31 metres from street level to trains to and from underground Woolloongabba and Roma Street stations also for the $6.3 billion-dollar Cross River Rail project will arrive within months.
Meanwhile,work is under way to lay rail tracks through the station to link 5.9 kilometres of twin tunnels,and install platform doors to guide an expected 67,000 people a day on and off trains when commuters start use of the Albert Street Station.
“Most people going about their business in the CBD would have absolutely no idea about the extraordinary construction effort under way right beneath their feet,” Transport Minister Bart Mellish said on Thursday.
“With tracks,escalators and platform screen doors soon to come,what was once a massive empty cavern below ground is looking more and more like a world-class train station each day.”
When complete,the station will have two ground-level entrances and form part of a subtropical-looking streetscape rounded out with a new $750-million,40 storey commercial office tower directly opposite.
Deputy Premier Cameron Dick said the station would become the main pedestrian feeder point for QUT’s Gardens Point campus,the parliamentary precinct,Queen’s Wharf,the upgraded Eagle Street business district and the City Botanic Gardens.
Others,including Cross River Rail Delivery Authority chief executive Graeme Newton,have described the new precinct as the CBD’s new centrepoint. “It will be the cross roads of the city,”.
Then-transport minister Mark Bailey confirmed for the Labor government’s flagship project last April,also delayed from 2025 to the first quarter of 2026.
Asked about expected progress during a media tour of the site on Thursday,Cross River Rail Delivery Authority program director Jeremy Kruger told journalists the agency was still working towards the 2026 opening date once testing and training is carried out along the completed line.
Safety concerns have also featured amid construction of the project,most sharply after the injury of 54-year-old Nation “Nash” Kouka after falling several metres at the new Boggo Road station site at Dutton Park.
In 2022,Bailey said the need for the project was after an audit office report warned rail commuter habits were in the 2019 business case. will also take place as part of the project.
Related temporary summer track works – under way since December – are due to finish next week,before further station upgrade-related works across the network to effect some stations until mid-2025.
Get the inside word on the news,sport,food,people and places Brisbane is talking about..