The Epping to Chatswood Train Line Is Closing for Seven Months This Weekend
Here's everything you need to know about it.
If you're a regular on the train line between Epping and Chatswood, your routine is about to get a bit of a shake-up, because, starting this Sunday, September 30, the line will close for a whole seven months.
This is no small disruption —according to the ABC, around 20,000 commuters travel on the rail line, which is an extension of the T1 Northern Line, each day. To cope with the closure, Transport for NSW is launching Station Link, a new high frequency bus service that will ferry Sydneysiders between Epping and Chatswood while the works are in place.
So what does that mean for you? Well, if you travel to Epping — or North Ryde, Macquarie Park, Macquarie University — you'll now have to jump off the train at Chatswood and transfer to one of the hot pink Station Link buses. These will run the same route as the existing train line, with buses scheduled every six minutes between 6am–9pm and every ten minutes outside of that time (that is, 4.30–6am and 9pm–12.30pm). There will also be a bus running every ten minutes from Epping Station to the Macquarie Uni campus during semester, which might be useful if you can catch the Epping via Strathfield train.
In addition to the train replacement, new routes will be added, travelling from Beecroft to St Leonards, Macquarie University to St Leonards, and Eastwood to Macquarie Park. To cater for the influx of extra buses on the roads, turning lanes will be extended and 580 metres of bus lanes will be added. Plus, Transport for NSW has also announced that it will add 350 new services that cover the Macquarie Park and Lane Cove area, presumably to cope with the added congestion. The whole thing is estimated to cost the NSW Government $49 million.
The whole thing is happening so that major upgrades can happen at the five stations along the line: Chatswood, North Ryde, Macquarie Park, Macquarie University and Epping. This will see them go from suburban to metro stations, and is part of the Sydney Metro Northwest Project, which will apparently run trains to and from the city every four minutes. That's expected to be finished mid-2019.
The Epping to Chatswood line will run its last service this Sunday, September 30 at 12.23am. If you'd like to give it one last hurrah, a few thousand people are planning on riding it to give the line a send-off.
