Cross River Rail moves into testing as Albert Street's new plaza begins to open

Cross River Rail has moved into testing and commissioning. The tunnel is complete, and across the four new underground stations tests are under way on escalators, platform screen doors, CCTV, and fire and electrical systems. At Woolloongabba, station lighting, fire safety and speaker systems are being tested, CCTV cameras and digital signage are being calibrated, and the next stage of escalator testing is being prepared. At Boggo Road, internal tiling and mechanical and electrical installation are nearing completion as station systems testing continues.

First passenger services are expected in 2029.

A visible milestone landed in August 2026: the first public space section of the new Albert Street plaza, between Charlotte and Mary streets, opened alongside new dining and retail spaces between Elizabeth and Charlotte streets — almost seven years after Albert Street between Mary and Charlotte streets closed to traffic in September 2019 for station construction. Brisbane City Council says the final stage through to Mary Street opens in late 2026. Surface reinstatement is the part of a station box the public actually experiences, and it usually arrives years after the structural work is done.

The gap between "construction finished" and "trains running" is the part of this project least understood outside the rail industry — and it is measured in years, not months.

The two-year testing phase

The Cross River Rail Delivery Authority says testing and commissioning is expected to take about two years. It runs in stages: individual equipment is tested first; then integrated "dynamic" testing runs trains through the tunnels and stations at increasing speeds and complexity, including checks that the new ETCS signalling talks to trains and the Rail Management Centre; then operational readiness, with staff training, timetable simulations without passengers and emergency scenarios. Limited first passenger services follow and expand over six to nine months.

The operational readiness stage is what is needed to achieve accreditation from the safety regulator before the line opens to customers. In Queensland that regulator is the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator (ONRSR), which administers the Rail Safety National Law. ONRSR accredits rail transport operators — here Queensland Rail, which will run the line — rather than certifying infrastructure itself; a major project generally means the operator must vary or obtain accreditation.

The Delivery Authority says a testing program of about two years is in line with similar projects such as Sydney Metro, Melbourne Metro and Crossrail in London, and it explains a 2029 opening on a project whose tunnel is complete.

For contractors it has a specific consequence worth planning around: the tail of a rail project is long, and it is a different kind of work. Fitout, systems integration, testing support and defect rectification run for years after the tunnelling crews demobilise, employing far fewer people but requiring specialist ones. Anyone resourcing against "construction complete" as an end date on a rail job has the wrong date.

The essentials

The cost, and what actually moved

The Queensland Government announced in October 2025 that the total cost to complete Cross River Rail and associated works is $19.041 billion. That figure covers more than the tunnel: it also includes stabling yards, station accessibility upgrades, the new stations, the European Train Control System and integration work delivered by the Delivery Authority, the Department of Transport and Main Roads and Queensland Rail.

The largest single component is specific: the Delivery Authority puts the design, construction and maintenance of the twin tunnels and underground stations at $12.4 billion. In December 2024 the Transport Minister had put the cost to build and maintain the tunnels at more than $10.5 billion, against $5.4 billion originally. That package is a public private partnership with the Pulse consortium that includes 25 years of maintenance and facilities management.

Read these as revised estimates of the whole program. The Delivery Authority's 2025–26 annual report points to prolonged industrial disruption, cost escalation, supply chain disruption, weather and the complexity of integrating new rail systems into the existing network, and says the commercial negotiations resolved in October 2025 set a revised delivery program to 2029. No public breakdown into scope, escalation and delivery variance has been published.

Who is building it

CPB Contractors and UGL appear in both the PPP and the alliance — a concentration worth knowing about if you subcontract to either, because the commercial behaviour of the same firm differs markedly between an alliance, which shares pain and gain, and a PPP, which transfers risk.

What to watch

1. ETCS testing and commissioning. The new digital signalling is being tested on the Shorncliffe line as the pilot for the South East Queensland rollout, with Queensland Rail staff training under way; the Delivery Authority plans testing in revenue service there in 2026–27, ahead of testing in the tunnels.
2. Whether $19.041 billion holds through the testing phase.
3. Progressive station handovers. Parts of the project are already delivered — opening is staged, not a single event. Six of the seven southside station rebuilds are complete (Salisbury reopened in 2026), Exhibition station is finished, and Moorooka, the last, is due to finish major works in late 2027.
4. The three Gold Coast stations. Pimpama opened on 20 October 2025 and Hope Island on 18 May 2026; major construction at Merrimac is expected to finish in late 2026, followed by testing and commissioning.
5. Interaction with Brisbane 2032. A 2029 opening lands three years before the Games, into a Queensland labour market where Construction Skills Queensland projects an average shortfall of 18,200 construction workers a year over the eight years to 2031–32.

Published 1 September 2026 · Updated 4 October 2026