Perth's Airport Line, opened in October 2022, runs under the Swan River from the CBD to Airport Central in eighteen minutes for a five-dollar cap — the flagship of a METRONET programme adding 72 kilometres of rail and 22 stations to Australia's most car-shaped city.
The Forrestfield–Airport Link, as it was built, cost A$1.86 billion and opened two years late on 9 October 2022: 8.5 kilometres of twin-bore tunnel under the Swan River and the airfield, 27 metres down at its deepest, with three new stations — Redcliffe, Airport Central and High Wycombe. The Skybridge walks passengers straight from the platforms to Terminals 1 and 2.
The catch, until 2031: Qantas and Virgin domestic flights still use T3/T4 across the field. The bridge is the free Route 292 shuttle — every twelve minutes at peak, three minutes to Redcliffe station, where the train does the rest. From 2028 the new runway, and from around 2031 the New Terminal, pull all operations into Airport Central and the workaround dies.
METRONET is the largest public-transport programme in WA history: seventy-two kilometres of new passenger rail and twenty-two new stations across the suburbs. The legacy network underneath is compact and legible — the Fremantle line to the port and Cottesloe's beach, the Mandurah line down the coast, Joondalup north — all crossing at Perth station.
And then there is the other railway: the Indian Pacific leaves East Perth for Sydney — 4,352 kilometres across the Nullarbor, the longest straight stretch of railway on earth — a three-night crossing that turns the isolation into the point. For the mine-country alternative, the Prospector runs daily to Kalgoorlie in under seven hours.
Our read: the Airport Line is the arrival — A$5, eighteen minutes, no surge pricing, and on Sundays the whole Transperth network is free with a contactless card. Use Redcliffe for T3/T4 and remember the 292 is free too. And if you have one grand gesture in you, make it the Indian Pacific east: Perth is the only city in this series where the train out is a world wonder in itself.
Subscribe to the digest and receive key market signals every two weeks.