The Eastern Suburbs Light Rail is now well under construction. It will consist of a 12km route which will include 19 stops & run through Sydney CBDs George St where a large section of it will permanently be closed to cars & be sorely for light rail & pedestrian usage only.

Here is a list of the stops along the Sydney light rail route:

• Circular Quay
• Grosvenor Street
• Wynyard
• Queen Victoria Building
• Town Hall
• Chinatown
• Rawson Place
• Central Station
• Surry Hills
• Moore Park

From here it splits off into two separate lines, the first goes to Kingsford from Moore Park with the following stations:

• Carlton Street
• Todman Avenue
• UNSW Anzac Parade
• Strachan Street
• Kingsford

The second split of goes to Randwick from Moore park with the following stations

• Alison Road
• Wansey Road
• UNSW High Street
• Randwick

Here is an image of the map including different transport mode changeovers of the route:

According to the NSW State Government, the cost of the light rail project is expected to cost $2.1 Billion AUD ($2,100,000,000AUD) making it the most expensive light rail project ever undertaken in Australia’s History.

It is expected that services will start running from the year 2019 with the final stage of construction due for completion in December of 2017 according to the NSW Government.

It was announced by the official Sydney Light Rail website that there will be a wire-free section of the light rail in the CBD between Circular Quay, through the pedestrianized zone from Hunter to Bathurst Street. Without poles and overhead wires the CBD’s historic buildings and pedestrian boulevard will be the highlight. The third rail is only powered when the vehicle is directly over the rail for safety reasons.

The Light Rail project is expected to run high frequency ‘turn up and go’ services operating up to every four minutes in the peak. It is expected that the system will move up to 13,500 customers an hour in both directions between 7am and 7pm. On Special event days, there will be extra services between Central and the Moore Park and Alison Road stops.

The light rail is expected to connect with another light rail line, the Inner-West Light Rail line at Central Station. This will make for easy changes between the two light rail stations and add to the use of Central Station further promoting it as the premier station in NSW, justifying the Central Walk project also proposed by the NSW Government.

It is however expected that the Parramatta Light Rail will be more expensive on completion than the Sydney CBD Light Rail if it is built in its full form as first envisioned by the Parramatta Council.

You can discuss the Sydney CBD & Eastern Suburbs Light Rail Infrastructure project on Build Sydney’s Forum.