Suburban Rail Loop in 2026: What Has Actually Been Built, Approved and Funded

Tunnelling has started on Suburban Rail Loop East, the Cheltenham to Box Hill section. One tunnel boring machine was digging in early September 2026. The six stations do not yet have signed construction contracts, on the latest independent account, and the published cost is a range for this stage. The photograph is the existing Box Hill station concourse on 31 August 2024. Box Hill is the northern end of SRL East. The concourse in the photograph is the station already there.

What SRL East is

Victoria’s Big Build describes SRL East as 26 kilometres of twin tunnels and six new underground stations: Cheltenham, Clayton, Monash, Glen Waverley, Burwood, and Box Hill. Its page, updated on 7 September 2026, says trains will be running in 2035. The same project’s map has two later sections. SRL North is Box Hill to Melbourne Airport. SRL West is Sunshine to Werribee. The Auditor-General describes the whole loop as 90 kilometres, in three sections, with Melbourne Airport Rail alongside it.

Those names are the places. Cheltenham station is the Frankston line station already operating. Clayton station is on the Pakenham line and the Cranbourne line. Glen Waverley station is the terminus of the Glen Waverley line. Box Hill station is on the Lilydale line and the Belgrave line. Monash, in that list, is the planned station at Monash University in Clayton. It is not a suburb, and the station is not open. Burwood has no metropolitan railway station. The six underground stations are a separate set, and none of them is open.

Cheltenham is in the City of Kingston. Clayton and Glen Waverley are in the City of Monash. Box Hill is in the City of Whitehorse, which records that Burwood is shared with Monash.

Airport Rail’s stage now under way is the rebuild between West Footscray and Albion. SRL North is a different section, and it is not that stage.

What is in the ground

Big Build’s timeline dates the start of construction to 2022, planning approval to the same year, and the start of tunnelling to 2026. The early works package finished in early 2026. The Auditor-General’s report, tabled on 26 August 2026, says that was about six months later than July 2025.

The same audit says the tunnels packages were in the early stages of delivery and that no substantive tunnelling had commenced. On 7 September 2026 Big Build reported that tunnel boring machine Alice was tunnelling from Burwood toward Glen Waverley, and that a second machine, Hacia, was in the ground and due to start the other bore in the coming weeks. At Clarinda, machine Aayushi was being assembled to tunnel toward Glen Waverley later in 2026. Further machines, from Burwood toward Box Hill and from Heatherton to Cheltenham, were described as launches for next year.

Those are different packages. Burwood is on the northern tunnels, Glen Waverley to Box Hill, contracted in December 2023. Clarinda is a launch site for the southern tunnels, Cheltenham to Glen Waverley, also contracted in December 2023. The audit says the southern package was already at least two months behind because of ground conditions, including at Clarinda, and that the authority was forecasting a delay of up to 10 months on that package.

Big Build’s 7 September notice also says major construction is under way at all six station sites. The audit, tabled 12 days earlier, says the contracts to build the stations had not been signed.

What has been contracted

The two tunnels packages and the line-wide package are the main works under contract. The line-wide contract requires completion in May 2035. The authority’s forecast, recorded by the audit, moves the start of rail services from an earlier June 2035 date to 31 December 2035, using about seven months of contingency after that May date.

The stations are split in two. The northern package is Glen Waverley, Burwood, and Box Hill. The southern package is Cheltenham, Clayton, and Monash. When the audit was tabled, the authority was targeting an award in August 2026 for the northern package and May 2027 for the southern one, about a year behind the earlier procurement schedule. The audit called the missing funding for those two contracts the most significant risk to the 2035 date. A later section of the same report puts a gap of about $5.5 billion against the second, southern, contract specifically.

Spending to 31 December 2025 was $5.7 billion, on the authority’s reports as the audit records them: $1.8 billion on initial and early works, $1.9 billion on the main works packages, and $2.0 billion on other costs including land and precinct planning. The main works budget sitting beside that $1.9 billion was $23.8 billion.

What has been funded

The 2026–27 state Budget, as the audit records it, puts SRL East at between $30 billion and $34.5 billion. The audit’s own conclusion is that the project is more likely than not to exceed the upper figure, because of ground conditions, higher pricing on the line-wide and stations packages, and decisions to slow spending. The authority was still forecasting that it could meet the announced cost and the 2035 date. The audit says that forecast is not reasonably assured this early.

Approved funding, on the audit’s account, is $29.3 billion, about 85 per cent of the estimated total. That includes $23.3 billion from the state and $6 billion from the Australian Government, against an expected Commonwealth contribution of about $11.5 billion. The $6 billion includes a further $3.8 billion in the Commonwealth’s 2026–27 Budget. The government’s funding model also counts on new revenue, including a levy on public transport fares collected since January 2025, for about a third of the cost. The audit says that part of the model is uncertain. The longer reading of the cost and the funding model is a separate question from what is currently signed.

SRL East is the section in construction. SRL North and SRL West are named on the project map. They are not this funded stage, and they do not have trains in 2035 on the pages cited here.

References

• Suburban Rail Loop, Victoria’s Big Build. Page last updated 9 September 2026. SRL East under construction, tunnelling this year, trains in 2035. SRL North is Box Hill to Melbourne Airport. SRL West is Sunshine to Werribee.
• SRL East, Victoria’s Big Build. Page last updated 7 September 2026. Twenty-six kilometres of twin tunnels, six underground stations, tunnelling under way, trains in 2035.
• Tunnelling underway on SRL, Victoria’s Big Build, 7 September 2026. TBM Alice tunnelling from Burwood toward Glen Waverley, Hacia in the ground, Aayushi being assembled at Clarinda, and construction at the six station sites.
• Delivering the Suburban Rail Loop, Victorian Auditor-General’s Office, tabled 26 August 2026. Cost range, funding, contract status, spending to 31 December 2025, the December 2035 forecast, and the finding that substantive tunnelling had not yet commenced.
• Photograph: Box Hill station concourse, 31 August 2024, Philip Mallis, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.