‘We’ve been waiting for years’: Plenty of buzz as Metro completion approaches

Welcome to Metro in the ’burbs.

Almost two years after it closed, along with nine other stations along the south-west corridor as part of the tricky final 13-kilometre completion of the M1 Metro line, Dulwich Hill looks … well, pretty much the same.

But if the reaction from the hundreds of Metro-heads who turned up to a community open day at the soon-to-reopen station on Sunday is anything to go by, people won’t mind once the trains start running.

As with most commuters along the west and south-west corridor, Sophie Duxson, from South Marrickville, is well and truly ready to see the end of the pink replacement buses that have ferried passengers between Sydenham and Bankstown since the line closed in September 2024.

Duxson commutes to the city and Parramatta for work, and the latter trip has been taking her about an hour-and-a-half since the line closed, with a bus to Petersham and then all-stops train to Parramatta. She, like the roughly 9500 passengers expected to catch the trains during the morning peak of 8 to 9am, is ready for it to end.

“We’ve been waiting for years,” she said.

“Look, the buses have actually been really well managed and everyone loves our local Metro lady at this stop. She is so lovely. She feeds everyone’s dogs. They’ve been some of the best rail replacement buses I’ve dealt with, to be honest. But we’re still over it. It’s been almost two years.”

Glittering architectural designs stunned Sydneysiders when the CBD stations opened in 2024, but Metro Project Director Alia Karaman said commuters on the south-west extension should not expect to find “cathedrals” when the stations re-open in the coming months.

Beyond the addition of the by-now familiar Metro doors and fresh paint, those touring the new station on Sunday won’t have seen much that wasn’t there before.

Looks can be deceiving, however. Karaman said Dulwich Hill was one of the most challenging stations during the line conversion, in part due to the curved tracks leading into and out of the platform, as well as its position along the freight rail line. Some stations have undergone more significant change. The new Bankstown plaza is a major addition to that station, for example.

At the same time, heritage buildings and concourses at Dulwich Hill and other stations have been refreshed and renewed, and acting Metro chief executive Hugh Lawson said maintaining the feel and functionality of suburban stations had been important.

“They are what people need. They’re in the right setting. The community wanted to retain the heritage features so we’ve worked hard to do that,” he said.

When the Sydney metro extension through the CBD opened it was justifiably hailed as a transformative piece of infrastructure. It sparked a wave of excitement – from bar crawls to food tours – as Sydney residents took advantage of newly convenient access to parts of the city previously seen as prohibitively distant.

Jo Haylen, the MP for Summer Hill, said the extension from Sydenham to Bankstown would only add to that excitement.

“We already saw people taking food tours on the city Metro. Wait until we open south-west,” she said. “You’ll be able to jump on at Vic Square [in North Sydney] and have dinner in Lakemba or Punchbowl.”

Most important, though, would be the ease of transport for residents along the line.

“I think people have been thankful [the pink buses] have been free and frequent but, particularly getting through this winter, I know how tight some of those cold mornings have been. I think they’ll be happy to see the back of them. It’ll be so much easier to just turn up here and go,” she said.

“We’re going to be in the city in the flash of an eye. It’s going to be incredible. I’m excited. My kids are excited.”