The Western Australia’s Minister of Transport, Rita Saffioti, and Western Australian Premier, Roger Cook, have inaugurated the new Thornlie–Cockburn rail line, Perth’s first east-west cross line connection, making travel more flexible while providing a higher level of public transport service to city’s south-eastern suburbs.
The event also marked the opening of line’s connection with the new 8 km the elevated inner-section of the Armadale Line.
“Through the new Metronet Thornlie–Cockburn rail line and stations on the inner Armadale Line, we are giving people in Perth’s south-eastern suburbs more travel choices, addressing road congestion, and stimulating land development to help deliver well-planned and more liveable communities,” the Western Australian Premier said.
The 17-km Thornlie – Cockburn Line includes new stations at Nicholson Road and Ranford Road, along with major upgrades to the Thornlie, Cockburn Central, and Perth Stadium stations.
The new line will add significant resilience to the broader rail network, while also providing a direct route from the Mandurah Line to Optus Stadium for the first time. This means more trains will be able to arrive and depart from Optus Stadium during major events and games. Commuters will have a 27-minute journey to Perth from Nicholson Road Station and a 31-minute journey from Ranford Road Station.
There are 1,400 parking spaces across the three stations, while more than 20 new bus routes have been added to support connectivity.
Eleven of these new bus routes will travel to and from the Ranford Road and Nicholson Road stations, giving passengers convenient access to the wider public transport network.
With the opening of the 8-km rail branch to Armadale Line, there are now five new modern stations at Carlisle, Oats Street, Queens Park, Cannington, and Beckenham are now operational, while finishing works around the stations, including on the new activated parkland area under the elevated rail, will be completed over the coming months.
The project to build the new line covered the installation of more than 84,000 sleepers and 180,000 tonnes of gravel, used to build the new passenger line while the existing 22 km freight line had to be relocated.
Thornlie–Cockburn rail line provides communities in Perth’s south-east world-class public transport services and better connections to the wider Perth area. The line is part of Perth’s Metronet rail expansion strategy.
“Over the past three years, we have seen Metronet transform our city. (…) This new line will deliver a significant boost to the resilience of our rail network, connect tens of thousands of people to a train line for the first time and provide a direct connection to Optus Stadium for people on the Mandurah Line,” the Transport Minister said.
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