Abandoned plan stacked SRL on a 20-storey airport rail station
The Age reports on 8 November that a 2019 plan stacked a Suburban Rail Loop station on the Melbourne Airport rail station, 20 storeys high. It was dropped.
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- Read original source · The Age
Victoria’s government once drew up a scheme to place a Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) station directly above the Melbourne Airport Rail Link (MARL) station at Tullamarine, a 20-storey double station that never went ahead, The Age reported on 8 November 2026.
Chip Le Grand’s report recounts a late-2019 briefing at a government office on Exhibition Street. Evan Tattersall, who then led Rail Projects Victoria, put the idea to a room of transport executives and consultants: build the SRL station over a MARL station that sat above ground.
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Why it matters
According to The Age, nobody has yet explained how the northern leg of the SRL, running from Box Hill to the airport, would join the proposed airport rail link, a stage of the SRL that may or may not ever be built. The stacked station was, for a time, the government’s answer to that gap.
The paper says the airport preferred an underground MARL station, while the government wanted it above ground. Under the stacked concept the heavy rail line would have been lifted 60 to 70 metres, not far from where long-haul planes land.
One person at the briefing described the concept as “insane”, the report says. SRL passengers would have stepped off at roughly the same height as the air traffic controllers in the Tullamarine tower. The scheme was eventually dropped, and Tattersall, no longer with the department, declined to comment to The Age.
The numbers
- 20 storeys: the height of the proposed double station, per The Age.
- 60 to 70 metres: how high the heavy rail line would have been lifted, per The Age.
- 40 years: the term for which a private consortium, AirRail Melbourne, offered to build and run a fast rail service between the airport and Southern Cross Station.
The Age describes AirRail Melbourne as a bid funded by several of the country’s biggest super funds and supported by the companies that run Melbourne Airport. Government had been assessing it for a year, according to the report. Consortium representatives also sat down with three senior ministers who oversaw the state’s major projects program: Daniel Andrews (premier at the time), Tim Pallas (treasurer) and Jacinta Allan (transport infrastructure).
The article runs under The Age’s Victorian election coverage. It names Premier Ben Carroll as treating the airport link as his top priority and says Opposition Leader Jess Wilson also backs the project.
What’s next
The Age says how the northern SRL stage will meet the airport link remains unresolved. The remainder of the article is behind the outlet’s paywall and was not available to us, so nothing further is stated here.
We will update this story if the Victorian government or the airport operator publishes a connection design for the two projects.
Earlier coverage: Melbourne Airport Rail Sunshine station preferred bidder.
Source: The Age, 8 November 2026. The Australian Developer.
Quick answers
What are the key numbers in this story?
storeys: 20; line height: 60-70m; consortium term: 40 years.
Where does this information come from?
This story cites The Age. Every source is linked on the page.
Sources
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