Naming the Sydney Metro lines

If you were one of the 1.4 million riders attracted to the new Sydney Metro in its first week you may have noticed something curious. The new line appears to have the same name as the main motorway heading north from Sydney.

What?!? London’s equivalent of our metro, the underground, has names for each line, often related to when the line was built, or where it goes. Singapore’s MRT has adopted a similar naming strategy, with descriptive names like Circle Line and Thomson-East Coast.

On the London underground, some lines, such as the Elizabeth line, are named after significant public figures, while others such as the Victoria line are named for the main station they connect with. Some don’t make sense at all – such as the Jubilee line that opened in 1979 was named after the Silver Jubilee in 1977, or the Circle line that isn’t a circle at all.

For the Sydney Metro, the only operating line is called the M1 Line. The remaining three lines are yet to be named as they are under construction. They are Sydney Metro Southwest, which will duplicate the existing T3 Sydney Trains line from Sydneyham to Bankstown, the Sydney Metro West, that will run between Greater Parramatta and Sydney CBD, and the Sydney Metro Western Sydney Airport line that will service the new Western Sydney International Airport and Bradfield City Centre.

Given the level of enthusiasm we’ve seen for the new metro line, could we perhaps tap into this energy and get a bit creative? Perhaps if we come up with convincing enough options, Sydney Metro will give in to popular demand and rename the lines.

It’s not too late to give the pragmatically named M1 a slightly more interesting name. And what about the three lines still under construction? What could these remaining three lines be called?

If you’d like to propose some names, use our live poll:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CGGWT79