Cross River Rail is one of Queensland’s most complex infrastructure projects with more than ten kilometres of new line, four new underground stations, seven station upgrades, and seventeen active work sites across Brisbane. Coordinating this scale of design, construction, and community impact demanded a new way of seeing the project.
Before the first passenger ever steps onto a platform, the team behind Cross River Rail can already walk through Brisbane’s new underground railway. While Cross River Rail is still under construction and yet to open to passenger services, the digital twin is already being used to support planning, coordination, and decision-making. This was made possible by integrating Esri’s GIS platform with Autodesk’s BIM technologies.
See how the Cross River Rail digital twin brings the project to life.
Creating a shared 3D view of a city shaping rail project
To keep teams aligned across all seventeen sites and reduce rework, the project team connected Autodesk’s BIM models with Esri’s GIS platform to create a shared 3D environment that brings together detailed design data with real-world context in a single, accurate view of the entire project.
Autodesk’s BIM models provide detailed engineering and asset-level information, while Esri’s GIS adds geographic context, enabling teams to understand how each component fits within the broader transport network and surrounding environment.
The integrated BIM and GIS environment brings together millions of detailed models from designers and contractors into an engineering-grade, spatially accurate simulation. Within this connected environment, teams can explore the new tunnels and underground stations as if they already exist. This supports design reviews, helps detect clashes early, and lets teams work through key decisions before equipment or people are on site.
Planning passenger flows and major events before day one
Built on connected Esri and Autodesk technologies, the digital twin does more than show what Cross River Rail will look like. It gives the team a way to rehearse how the railway will work well before day one. Rather than relying on static spreadsheets, planners can step inside a photoreal station model, check sightlines, and test crowd management strategies before finalising their plans.
Operations specialists can model a busy morning peak or test out how 40,000 people move through key stations after a major event. By adjusting train frequencies, signage, or platform operations inside the twin, they can immediately see how small changes affect factors such as queue lengths, dwell times, and clearance intervals – supporting safer, smoother passenger movements before the network opens.
One model for teams, stakeholders, and the community
Major rail projects like this need thousands of specialists, each with their own models, drawings, and schedules. The digital twin gives all these teams a shared view of the project, improving coordination and reducing disruptions during construction.
This level of visibility helps communities understand what’s coming before construction changes the places around them. Through the Cross River Rail Experience Centre, community members can walk through and experience the same immersive model. People who live near a proposed station relocation can see exactly where the new station will be built in relation to their homes, which helps address concerns about access using precise, location-based visuals.
From construction to operations: a living digital platform for Brisbane
Because it is built on integrated Esri and Autodesk platforms, the digital twin will continue to deliver value long after construction finishes. As assets move from concept to detailed design and into construction, the twin is updated so engineers and operators can see every component in context, from tunnel segments to station plant rooms.
Rather than managing disconnected drawings and documents across multiple systems, maintenance teams can open the twin, locate an issue, and see how it connects to surrounding systems in seconds. As Brisbane grows and development happens around the stations, the digital twin can incorporate additional data layers to test land use scenarios, development proposals, and future network upgrades in a single view.
This connected approach enables a true system-of-systems view, where assets, networks, and surrounding environments can be understood and managed together.
Explore more about how digital twins are transforming infrastructure delivery and how this approach helped shape Cross River Rail