Auckland’s ongoing rail pain will intensify again from this weekend as Kiwirail shut down the network for two weeks as part of their push to get the network ready for the City Rail Link.
KiwiRail will progress upgrade and renewal projects across Auckland’s rail network over the Easter holiday period later this month, as the region draws ever closer to next year’s opening of the City Rail Link (CRL).
Auckland Transport (AT) will run replacement buses and regular scheduled buses for Aucklanders who still need to travel during this period.
KiwiRail teams have preparations well underway to make the most of the Easter Rail Upgrade from 12 to 27 April 2025. Passenger and freight trains won’t be running during this time of lower demand when schools and universities are closed, and many Aucklanders are on holiday.
The closure enables teams to build on the critical upgrades already completed and major infrastructure projects underway, to be ready for the faster, more frequent train services the CRL will bring. The opening of CRL will see trains every five to eight minutes across much of the city, create new connections between east to west and cut journey times, particularly from the west.
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KiwiRail will progress upgrade and renewal projects across Auckland’s rail network over the Easter holiday period later this month, as the region draws ever closer to next year’s opening of the City Rail Link (CRL).
Auckland Transport (AT) will run replacement buses and regular scheduled buses for Aucklanders who still need to travel during this period.
KiwiRail teams have preparations well underway to make the most of the Easter Rail Upgrade from 12 to 27 April 2025. Passenger and freight trains won’t be running during this time of lower demand when schools and universities are closed, and many Aucklanders are on holiday.
The closure enables teams to build on the critical upgrades already completed and major infrastructure projects underway, to be ready for the faster, more frequent train services the CRL will bring. The opening of CRL will see trains every five to eight minutes across much of the city, create new connections between east to west and cut journey times, particularly from the west.
I think this is the first time we’ve see such a long shutdown outside of a Christmas/New Year period. It’s frustrating but I can also see why they’ve picked this period. School Holidays start this weekend too and with Easter and ANZAC day occurring within the same week there will be a lot of people taking time off (I’m one of them).
They say they’ll be working on more than 80 sites, with more than 900 people and that 60% of the upgrades will be worked on 24/7. It also means no freight trains will run so that will need to be moved by trucks.
Where KiwiRail is working
During the Easter rail closure, KiwiRail will be delivering essential work across a range of projects such as:
- Progressing the final stages of Rail Network Rebuild (RNR): The focus of the Easter works will mostly be on priority areas of the Southern Line between Wiri and Papakura.
- The final stages of the Middlemore Station redevelopment
- Ongoing work on the Western Power Feed in Glen Eden, which will add greater electricity capacity to the network in Auckland, boosting its resilience and allowing for future growth
- Nearing completion of the Wiri to Quay Park, Third Main Line project that will separate passenger and freight trains on the busiest parts of the network; this is soon to be opened to freight trains
- Progressing construction on new train stations at Drury and Paerātā in South Auckland
- Commissioning signalling at Quay Park
- Building a third platform and additional tracks at Henderson Station, as well as completing the upgrade of the lifts as part of Auckland Transport’s station improvements
- Maintenance work across Auckland, including replacing rails, turnouts, sleepers and ballast.
As for rail replacement buses.
Alternative transport options
While trains aren’t running over the Easter closure, there will be bus options available, says Ms van der Putten.
“We’ll be running full rail replacement bus services stopping at all train stations, as well as express buses on the Southern Line, which were well-used during the summer closure. Things will look a little different from the summer closure, with a few bus stop changes on the Western line and fewer express bus options, so please plan your journey before you travel.
“We know these buses can get busy during peak times, so there is also our network of frequent scheduled buses, which run at least every 15 minutes and stop at many of Auckland’s train stations.
Why aren’t the West getting those express buses too?
As noted, there are a few changes to where rail buses will stop which AT say are to improve journey times. These changes are for the Western Line and are for Fruitvale Rd, Avondale and Newmarket. For example, at Fruitvale Rd the stops will now be on Gt North Rd which means buses will avoid a slow detour via Arawa St. From my experience, that change alone will probably save 2-5 minutes per journey.
At the end of this shutdown, Pukekohe travellers will see a big improvement with AT doubling services at peak times rom 3 to 6 trains per hour.
Southern Line trains will serve Pukekohe Station every 10 minutes on average at peak commuting times on weekdays.
• Trains from Pukekohe Station will run every 10 minutes on average from 5:31am until 8:51am, and from 2:49pm until 6:11pm.
• Trains from Waitematā Station (Britomart) will run every 10 minutes from 6:50am until 9:10am, and 3:50pm until 7:10pmTrains will mainly use Platform 3, but trains will use other platforms throughout the day, so check the digital display boards before heading down to the platform. There is one digital display at the station entrance near the bus stop off Custom Street, and another on the overbridge that you have to use to get to any platform.
Trains will leave Pukekohe Station every 10 minutes on average. The actual time between trains will be either 12 minutes, 10 minutes or 8 minutes. This is to accommodate freight trains.
We’re not making any other changes to the weekday timetable – the first train will still leave Pukekohe Station at 5:11am on weekdays, and trains will still run every 20 minutes in the middle of the day and every 30 minutes in the evening. We’re not making any changes to the weekend/public holiday timetable.
There are also some extra bus trips in the mornings timed to connect to the first trains (more details about them here).
Finally, for our southern friends, there is similar disruption to Wellington’s network.
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Does anyone believe these mass closures will stop post CRL? KR should be splitting electrification/adding points near stations so future works only require a block of the line for a few stations, and the rest of the network can work essentially as normal, with rail buses only replacing trains for a couple of stations.
Instead what I expect is we’ll ping pong between KR funded so they do closures to the levelit drives away patronage, or unfunded so they do nothing until patronage improves enough for them to repeat.
KR are working toward a more ongoing maintenence schedule to rely less on full closures, and rely more on ongoing works when the network closes at night, or by only closing specific sections of thr network
Some of last years works included more track switches for just that
Sounds good. It seems that way to me too, just hearing/observing what’s going on a bit.
I am impressed by the passenger uptake to and from Pukekohe since it reopened. This will set it back. Extra trains will be a bonus as will extra stations. If it was up to me I would just carry on the electrification to Tuakau, Pokeno and Mercer. Although I wouldn’t like to be on a rail bus for that journey. Still there could be express buses. It is so good to sit back and relax rather than having to face rail buses with there connections or for most battling it out in the car on the Southern motorway.
Think there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Minor thing noticed is the website used such a low resolution map for their current work. 20 minutes from Pukekohe did seem a bit lame and assumed that was going to continue.
On recent trips to Sydney where major upgrades are taking place on their rail network replacement buses are common place.
In some cases where there is demand Express Busses are used.
I felt that Wynyard to Chatswood Express was faster than the train!
On the Inner West lines where there are 6 tracks connections between tracks allow services to continue.
Use the Metro from Martin Place to Chatswood – faster than both!
Some overblown claims are not at all helpful. E.g. “Completion of Wiri to Quay Park 3rd main” – the current project will deliver 11km of 3rd main from Wiri to just North of the Otahuhu station, which is great but hardly the claimed completion all the way to the port (Quay park). The same thing is happening with level crossing removals – big claims about progress by CRL Day-One (I.e. early 2016) but apart from Church Street East none of the dozens of road level crossings will actually be closed in the next 12 months.
Sorry – 2026 not 2916
Just found out that the expression “Wiri to Quay Park” is a complete misnomer, conflating 2 separate pieces of work separated by about 15 kilometres of existing double track. In South Auckland they have nearly completed construction of a 3rd rail line extending from the Wiri Junction to the Westfield Junction some 7-8km to the north (I was previously informed that this was 11km of new track). Quite separately from that is the Quay Park 3rd-main being built parallel to the Eastern Line through the old rail yards. Though KiwiRail considers them part of the same project they are physically quite separate. Completing the 3rd Main between these two sections will be quite a challenge as it will require a new 600 metre tunnel under the St. Johns ridge (probably built to carry two tracks from the outset rather than one as the long-term goal is to four-track the Eastern and Southern Lines all the way from the Port to Pukekohe, and possibly further)
Are they doing the Manurewa turnouts in this BOL?
It’s frustrating but if it’s the last year we need these then I guess we just need to suck it up. One thing I noticed from previous shutdowns is replacement buses don’t take into account events.
The Auckland FC match on the last day of the shutdown would normally be served with trains full of fans going to Penrose. During the last shutdown on game day there was one bus every 20 minutes which utterly failed to cope with demand. Sadly, it seems to be beyond the capability of AT to plan for this.
It’s a big shame they’ve made the rail buses worse.
The summer rail buses over January were pretty good on most fronts and certainly the best rail buses have ever been in Auckland.
Express buses at least every 30 minutes from 6am-11pm every day, 7 days a week; usually every 20 minutes during the day.
There were though a lot of operational problems on the ground, but the frequency/span was at least approaching what Auckland deserves as a real train city. I’m sure they’d blame low patronage, but those services were poorly run by the operators and poorly timetabled by AT as to be unattractive to passengers.
AT must get a lot better at rail buses and this seems to be a regression.
“Ongoing work on the Western Power Feed in Glen Eden, which will add greater electricity capacity to the network in Auckland, boosting its resilience and allowing for future growth” Does this indicate an expansion of electrification northwards or?
No. There are currently two power feeds that are each enough to supply the entire existing network and frequencies.
With CRL increasing frequencies and Pukekohe extending the length of the network, new feeds are needed to support support it. One going in near Glen Eden and one down south somewhere (not sure if it’s already built or not).
It needs to be done! We need the rail system to be improved, to be consistent and function with fewer faults and stoppage. Just get the job done
“The opening of CRL will see trains every five to eight minutes across much of the city”
Not quite, especially as much of the city isn’t served by rail, and the following are excluded at peak, certainly more off peak:
*Pukekohe-Drury 10 minutes
*Parnell 15 minutes
*Onehunga 30 minutes
https://www.cityraillink.co.nz/crl-route-maps
With the western line, getting a train every 8 minutes is a slight improvement to the existing 10 minutes. With no level crossing grade seperation, perhaps this is all that is possible but it must increase the chances of fatalities like https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/557189/person-dies-after-train-and-vehicle-collide-in-auckland-s-penrose
It does say much. Vs today, a 10 minute service for Drury is quite the change, wouldn’t you say.
I am hopeful they’ve learned lessons on the chronic lack of maintenance, and that ongoing works will continue (god forbid the network opens over a holiday!) – including level crossing closures. And they are braver in just severing some entirely.
The third main is nearly done too, in its part. I wish we were going right for the fourth. Middlemore will be tricky to revisit.
Fill in Puhinui, it can turn extras or Te Huia / fasts have a dedicated platform.
Henderson is a good addition, finally. It’s nearly ready for the first wave.
Now to get more people hooked, and using it in different ways.