It will be five long years before the most expensive dollar-per-kilometre ACT taxpayer-funded infrastructure project since self-government starts turning a steel wheel.
And in the meantime, private mixed development - shops and rich-lister apartments - will spring up like mushrooms inside it as the twin sets of light rail stage 2A's steel tracks are knitted in place. Provided, of course, the whole transport-infrastructure timeline runs to plan.
It's all part of an integrated development strategy so when the red trams first start rolling around the 1.7km route in the summer of 2028, they won't be stopping at lonely stations plonked onto a very expensive dirt-filled plain on the way to Commonwealth Park.
If it all proceeds on target with the May 2024 announcement of the successful developer for the coveted 19,000 square metres of land inside the former "cloverleaf" opposite the QT Canberra hotel, the new stations should be servicing the transport needs of residents moving in.
Forget the Kingston foreshores; views from the upper floors of the "gateway" tower will arguably be the best that money can buy in the ACT, with trams at the front door and a stroll down to the Acton waterfront. This will be "city to the lake", but not quite as Walter and Marion envisioned.
There will be no overhead wires either, to mar those panoramic views; all the 14 LRVs (light rail vehicles) on the expanded fleet will operate this section on their underslung battery packs, with the current trams to be retrofitted.
"Build it, and they will ride it" is the government mantra as the complex civil works element to the $577 million project marches ahead briskly, and with commendably less traffic disruption than many commuters expected.
Behind the temporary fencing festooned with government slogans, the truck-and-dog dump trucks, excavators, rollers, and compactors have already infilled and compacted the western "cloverleaf", with the adjacent eastern portion of the project halfway-topped with fill and rising fast.
Both infills are expected to be completed by Sydney-based contractor Abergeldie by Easter 2024 and an assurance provided that all the dirt - 60,000 cubic metres of it - was sourced from within the territory and tested for contamination.
The western ramp will lift the rail line six metres up from London Circuit and onto the new height of Commonwealth Avenue in a rate of climb which must conform to strict rail industry standards.
Mapping and preparing all the utility connections - sewer, power and water - and installing the huge underground storm water and drainage lines with an extra "climate change" capacity for extreme weather events - is all part of this process.
After the winning developers building inside the rail line start to dig their foundations, they will link up with a government-prepped, underground "combined services route" which will follow the rail track loop.
The deep drainage and all-important underpinnings which will carry hundreds of tonnes of imported rolling stock have dug down deep into Canberra's past.
Soil has emerged from when the bulldozers started gouging out Parkes Way 60 years ago, and even further back to when the nearby lake bed was being excavated.
"There was no dial-before-you-dig maps we could access for this," project director Ashley Cahif said.
"We are digging in places where there's no existing records of what's down there. So we have had to go carefully."
Mr Cahif has been carrying the lion's share of the ACT government's light rail ambitions for many years, having seen through the first City to Gungahlin stage and now the current three-stop extension.
His current 2A project also will build elements to prepare the way for the next and even more technically challenging City to Woden extension which sits in the government wish list for 2030 and beyond.
Having worked on the complex Sydney Cross City Tunnel - imagine, if you will, how many uncharted pipes his huge tunnel-boring machine cut on that project - he's a big-picture kinda guy.
There's the impression he likes working on transformative projects which will endure for a century or more.
"This project is going to change Canberra and prepare us for the next 75 to 100 years," he said.
"What people need to understand is that what we are building today is the transport enabler for a much bigger future city."
