and was completed on 29 August 2018. The project included 8 km of new electrified railway, new stations at Middle Gorge and Hawkstowe, and a new terminus at a rebuilt Mernda station. In April 2019 the Victorian Government announced that Public Transport Victoria would be merged along with VicRoads into a new Victorian Department of Transport. Future expansion A number of major expansion projects are under construction or planned for the network. In addition there are a number of major upgrade projects, including the Level Crossing Removal Project, which is removing 110 level crossings and rebuilding 51 stations across the city. Metro Tunnel In February 2015, the State Government established the Melbourne Metro Rail Authority to oversee planning for new twin 9-kilometre rail tunnels through the central city between South Kensington station and South Yarra. The new Metro Tunnel will have five new underground stations and connect the Pakenham and Cranbourne lines with the Sunbury line, creating a new route through the CBD as an alternative to the City Loop. New underground stations will be built at Arden, Parkville, Domain and there will be two new CBD stations, State Library and Town Hall. Enabling works were underway by 2016 and major construction work on the tunnel and stations began in 2017. The project has an estimated cost of $11 billion and is scheduled to be complete by 2025. In September 2016, the State Government ordered 65 new High Capacity Metro Trains for delivery from mid-2019, which will eventually become the primary rolling stock used in the Metro Tunnel. In April, June and July 2019, multiple rail lines in Melbourne's east were shut down for several weeks to allow construction of the tunnel entrances near Kensington and South Yarra. The first tunnel boring machine began to be assembled in North Melbourne in June 2019. In May 2021, TBM Meg broke through at the future site of Town Hall station, marking the completion of tunneling for the project. TBM Millie, Alice and Joan completed tunneling over the previous month. The tunneling phase lasted 20 months. Airport rail link A rail link to Melbourne Airport has been proposed repeatedly since the airport's construction, with a variety of routes and service models suggested, but construction has never commenced. In July 2018, the Federal and State Governments each pledged A$5 billion (for a total of A$10 billion) to construct a rail link. The Federal Government