It's finally oppened - the rail link between Epping and Chatswood stations, with a stop at Macquarie university, and for a period of time it's free. I no longer have to give visitors long convoluted instructions ending with "just get a taxi".

I must say I'm impressed with the construction, particularly the Macquarie station. It quite happily stacks up against stations I've seen in Japan and Europe. The trains are modern and comfortable e and it's easy to fire up the laptop and get a paragraph or slide done before you hit your exit.

Unsurprisingly, there are bugs. There are far more escalators going down to the trains in Epping than the single escalator pulling commuters off the platform at Macquarie for instance, and it's not going three times as fast - so expect a crowd at its base. Also at peak times it's packed, pretty much standing room only. Maybe it's the novelty of it, but it looks like the service is already at capacity and its only three days old. It could use more frequent trains already.

Still this is what public betas are for - sorting out bugs.