>>1415617I'm from Melbourne, but it connects Epping and Chatswood (which are very important centres outside of downtown) with the northwestern suburbs of Sydney. It will be extended to downtown in the coming years, but until then, pax change for a regular city bound suburban service at either Epping or Chatswood.
It's important to note that the metro, functionally, is meant to perform the same job as the existing suburban railway, the only difference is that it uses single deck trains which are automated, compared to the suburban double deck driver operated ones.
Here in Australia, the term "metro" is usually thrown about as a standard our suburban railways should improve to, such as the proposal to "convert the Bankstown line (in Sydney) to 'metro operation'", or "build the 'metro tunnel'" (in melbourne). Hence, it's become more of a political term than a phrase of any substance, especially when the suburban railways (at least in Sydney and Melbourne) are already operationally very similar to a "metro" anyway.
tl;dr "metro" is just a marketing term down here for improvements to the suburban railway system
