It’s been delayed by over a year. Final costs are expected to balloon from initial estimates. Now, the troubled construction of Sydney‘s new light rail line has been postponed by the discovery of human bones.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports contractors uncovered the remains underneath Chalmers Street in Surry Hills yesterday, as they worked to construct the light rail passage between the CBD, Randwick, and Kingsford.
Work was halted at the site. A spokesperson for ALTRAC, the consortium responsible for the construction of the 12km route, said a forensic anthropologist from the University of Sydney was called in to confirm the remains were human.
The identity of individual is currently unknown. So too is the exact age of the remains.
The good news is authorities do not believe the finding to be suspicious. Before the area was acquired for the construction of Central Station, it was home to a cemetery; the prevailing theory is the bones identified on Monday were not relocated at the turn of the 20th century when construction on the station began.
7 News cited speculation that some families could not afford to bury their loved ones within the confines of the cemetery proper, and simply dug their own burial sites around the place regardless.
Nevertheless, ALTRAC is still required to wait for the green light from government authorities before it can resume work on the project, which has already been plagued by setbacks.
Earlier this month, it was revealed that Acciona, a member of ALTRAC, did not believe the project would be completed until May 2020, a cool 14 months after the deadline initially promised by the NSW Government.
With the discovery of the human remains, the construction of the rail passage might take a few days longer.
