Suburban Rail Loop tunnelling starts as TBM Alice leaves Burwood

Suburban Rail Loop tunnelling has begun beneath Melbourne’s south-east, with the first of eight boring machines now cutting north from Burwood towards Glen Waverley along the 26 km of twin tunnels planned between Cheltenham and Box Hill.

The machine carries the name Alice, after Melbourne producer and musician Alice Ivy. A second TBM, Hacia — named for Empowered Women in Trades founder Hacia Atherton — sits in the ground beside it and is expected to open the parallel bore within weeks, also heading for Glen Waverley. A third machine, Aayushi, is being assembled at Clarinda for a launch later this year, and more will follow in 2027 from Burwood towards Box Hill and from Heatherton to Cheltenham.

A launch method used in Victoria for the first time

Neither Burwood machine entered the ground fully built. The launch box is too confined for that, so the project adopted what it calls an umbilical method, new to Victoria: the front section begins excavating while the remaining gantries are installed behind it, with power and services fed down from the surface through long cables and hoses. Assembled in full, each TBM will run to roughly 120 m.

The 500-tonne shields were bolted together at ground level and lowered into the shaft by heavy-lift crane, an approach that kept the rest of the site working while assembly went on. Excavation of a second launch box at the northern end of the Burwood site is already advanced, and the two machines that will start from there are due to head towards Box Hill in 2027.

Eight machines, two launch sites

SRL East is being bored by eight TBMs working out of two points. Four operate from Burwood — two towards Glen Waverley, two towards Box Hill. The other four launch from Clarinda: two run west to Cheltenham by way of the Heatherton stabling yard, two north to Glen Waverley through Clayton and Monash. Herrenknecht built the four southern machines, each 7.24 m across and between 100 m and 150 m long, while China Railway Engineering Equipment Group supplied the northern set.

All eight draw on renewable electricity. One of the southern crews will be the first all-women TBM team in the world, and is expected to be tunnelling from 2027. The finished tunnels will sit about 26 m down on average and reach some 60 m at the deepest point, with each machine able to advance up to 90 m a week where ground conditions allow.

The SRL East tunnelling fleet

All eight machines are already accounted for: four Herrenknecht units for the southern tunnels and four from China Railway Engineering Equipment Group for the northern ones. Source: Suburban Rail Loop tunnel works, Victoria’s Big Build.

The milestone follows a $1 billion trim

Tunnelling began less than two weeks after the Victorian government cut the project’s scope. On 25 August it said roughly $1 billion had been stripped out by dropping what it described as unnecessary additions: underground station interchanges at Box Hill and Glen Waverley, a second entrance at Clayton, and complex pedestrian bridges in Burwood and Cheltenham. Parking at Glen Waverley will be delivered another way. The government put total estimated investment in the Suburban Rail Loop at $33.3 billion, commissioned an independent technical review to find a further $1 billion, and said no additional contracts will be signed until that review reports.

Minister for Public Transport Vicki Ward tied the milestone to both commitments.

“We’ll deliver the Suburban Rail Loop on time and under budget.”

The auditor reaches a different conclusion

A report tabled by the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office on 26 August took a less confident view. It found SRL East more likely than not to exceed the publicly disclosed ceiling of $34.5 billion, put a potential outturn cost above $36 billion, and judged the government unlikely to meet its promise of trains running by 2035. Contamination and poor ground, station and line-wide package prices above budget, and a 2024 decision to defer spending were all cited.

The same report recorded a $5.5 billion hole in approved funding as at June 2026. Canberra has committed $6 billion of the $11.5 billion Victoria is seeking, after an extra $3.8 billion was confirmed in the 2026–27 federal budget. Until the state closes that gap, it cannot sign the contract for the second of the two stations packages.

Where the funding stands

Approved funding covers around 85 per cent of the project’s estimated total cost, and the state’s own share is now larger than the third originally intended because value capture revenue has yet to arrive. Source: Delivering the Suburban Rail Loop, Victorian Auditor-General’s Office, tabled 26 August 2026.

Work is running at all six SRL East station sites — Cheltenham, Clayton, Monash, Glen Waverley, Burwood and Box Hill — with more than 4,000 people employed on the project at the end of July. The Burwood box sits across the road from Deakin University, which will gain a direct train service for the first time when services begin in 2035.