Metro Tunnel High Capacity Signalling (CBTC)
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
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Australia's first brownfield moving-block signalling opened on 30 November 2025. High capacity signalling is not a synonym for driverless: a driver stays on board for doors, supervision and emergencies.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 9 more in Melbourne · 🚌 Public transport guide · 🚲 Mobility projects
Melbourne's 9km twin-tunnel Metro Tunnel, opened 30 November 2025, runs on Alstom's Urbalis Flo CBTC — Australia's first brownfield moving-block signalling install. Trains keep an onboard driver (automatic train operation, not driverless) while headways tighten toward 24 trains/hour; all five new stations have platform screen doors.
📊 Impact
24 trains/hour maximum signalling capacity (a train roughly every 2.5 minutes) once all rolling stock carries CBTC equipment; ~18/hour at opening. From the 1 Feb 2026 'Big Switch' timetable, Sunbury/Cranbourne/Pakenham line trains run through the tunnel at least every 10 minutes, 6am-9pm.
🎓 Lesson
'High capacity signalling' and CBTC are not synonyms for driverless operation — Melbourne's system is GoA2 (automatic train operation with a driver retained onboard for doors, supervision and emergencies), the same automation tier as many modernized European ETCS lines, not the GoA4 unattended operation used on genuinely driverless metros elsewhere in the atlas.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Metro Tunnel High Capacity Signalling (CBTC)” — Melbourne, Australia. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/melbourne-metro-tunnel-signalling/ (last verified 2026-08-01). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.