Light rail will be officially launched on April 20.Credit:Karleen Minney
"We want to have a huge celebration to mark light rail starting in Canberra and we need to start planning for that now that Canberra Metro have provided us a date,"Ms Fitzharris said.
However the start date is still subject to Canberra Metro obtaining approvals for the project from the third-party rail regulator.
Ms Fitzharris said"we’ll need to be a little bit flexible about what that process entails but the advice to me is that Canberra Metro will be starting operations in the middle of April and therefore we can have a community open day on Saturday,the 20th of April".
"Yes it’s certainly a tight schedule and there are a number of components to complete but as you can see the progress is huge and with the light rail vehicles running up and down the route now we are working through those final arrangements so Canberra Metro can get full accreditation,"Ms Fitzharris said.
Ms Fitzharris said there would be"contingencies in place"if the April 20 date could not be met.
Canberra Metro is in the final testing and approvals phase on the Gungahlin to Civic stage of the project.
Construction on the projectbegan in July 2016, after the ACT government announced the Canberra Metro consortium as the successful tendererin February of that year.