Milan, July 20, 2018 – In a major milestone in the construction of the Sydney Metro Northwest, an automated train on a trial run crossed for the first time the skytrain bridge built by Salini Impregilo, a prominent part of Australia’s biggest public transport project whose importance to the city recalls that of Harbour Bridge a century earlier.

“You will see …how historical this moment is because to see a train of this significance in action means that around the corner the people of the northwest who have waited for generations for public transport of this magnitude are about to see it become a reality next year,” New South Wales Transport Minister Andrew Constance told reporters in announcing the news. “It’s transformative for what it means for the city, its people, the state of New South Wales. It is absolutely phenomenal,” he said.

“This is akin to the first car being on the Harbour Bridge,” he added, referring to one of the city’s most famous landmarks.

Sydney Metro Northwest, which will open in the first half of 2019, is the first stage of the Sydney Metro project, the country’s biggest public transport project.  Serving the northwestern part of the city, it will be the first fully-automated metro rail system in the country, stretching 36 kilometres from Chatswood to beyond Rouse Hill in the city’s northwest.

A curved, cable-stayed structure, the skytrain bridge is the first of its kind in the country. It has two towers reaching 45 metres in height. Each one has 16 pipes containing cables that fix it to the deck. The bridge deck is made up of 88 concrete segments, each weighing between 70 and 140 tonnes. It is the crowning achievement of a four-kilometre viaduct that Salini Impregilo built and on which more than 4,000 people worked.

Salini Impregilo has won a number of accolades for the project. Last May it won a “Leading As Built IS rating” by the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia (ISCA) for its sustainability. The Group and its partner SMEC earlier won a Leading Design IS rating for designing the project in the most environmentally friendly way possible. The recognition highlights the Group’s focus on improving people’s lives with its projects.

With the billions of Australian dollars that the country is investing in infrastructure, Australia has become an important market for Salini Impregilo. In Perth, the Group and a joint-venture partner is working on an 8.5-kilometre rail link that will connect the eastern suburbs with the city centre, helping reduce traffic congestion and air pollution.

Elsewhere in the world, Salini Impregilo is involved in some of the biggest public transportation projects that support sustainable mobility. They include the Grand Paris Express rail and metro network in Paris, Line 3 of the Riyadh metro network, the Cityringen metro line in Copenhagen and the Red Line North Underground in Doha.