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One traveller bound for Parkville from her home in Caulfield told The Age<\/em> the more direct journey would shave 15 minutes off her commute, while others were less fortunate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One harried commuter, heading for Collingwood from his home in Cranbourne, now faces a three-train journey, which adds an estimated 25 minutes to his morning travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Caulfield station on Monday morning, there was plenty of congestion and confusion as passengers darted between platforms, but a strong contingent of station staff provided guidance for commuters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The crush at the platform gates caused a number of frustrated passengers to miss their trains, but the time penalty was modest, as city-bound trains<\/a> pulled up with metronomic frequency every three to four minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n The launch of a full timetable through the Metro Tunnel this week has changed travel patterns that have been baked in for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Passengers on the Sunbury, Cranbourne and Pakenham lines no longer travel through the City Loop<\/a>, nor to busy inner-city stations Richmond, North Melbourne and South Yarra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Announced in 2016 at a cost of $10.9 billion, building the Metro Tunnel<\/a> and its five underground stations ultimately cost more than $15 billion, and the project marks the biggest upgrade to Melbourne\u2019s public transport system since the City Loop was opened in 1981.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Metro Tunnel opened to passengers<\/a> in November, with some trains travelling through the new tunnels<\/a>, but on a reduced timetable.<\/p>\n\n\n Trains on three lines will now travel through the nine-kilometre twin tunnel instead of the Loop, and will have to interchange to reach Loop stations Southern Cross, Parliament and Flagstaff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among those adapting to the change was Andreas Groell, who stepped off at Caulfield, trying to find his way to South Yarra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have to change trains. I wasn\u2019t really aware of that, but I just realised that I have to get out and go over to the other platform,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Groell estimated the transfer would add five minutes to his morning trip, but said he was unfazed.<\/p>\n\n\n \u201cI was under the impression I\u2019m not actually affected by it. That\u2019s all good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But flustered traveller Manoj Mathew had just discovered he would pay a much heavier time penalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Age<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Passengers on the Sunbury, Cranbourne and Pakenham lines no longer travel\u00a0through the City Loop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":271587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,9770,1168,47],"tags":[993,8],"class_list":["post-360716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-metro-trains-melbourne","category-metro-tunnel","category-rail-news","tag-melbourne","tag-victoria"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=360716"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360724,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360716\/revisions\/360724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/271587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=360716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=360716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=360716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/image.jpeg\")
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