Late last year I sat down outside Waitematā Station with the Godfather of the CRL to discuss how he did it, plus some further ruminations on our city’s development.
As we count down to the opening of the City Rail Link, just a matter of weeks now, it is really interesting to go back over how the project was fought for and finally approved.
This seems especially relevant to debates around possible future projects, and tensions between central and local government about how how our one city of scale could or should develop: big questions around funding and control. Plus of course how to get difficult and important things done, and questions of leadership and legacy.
Auckland is already changed by this big shape-shifting project, not least of all in the creation of new people-focused places in the city centre. Now it remains to be seen how quickly people take to using it, and whether it will live up to the promise as a transformative watershed moment in the wider city’s direction. Will CRL, and the development it supports, further change the very idea of Auckland, delivering concrete form to its unique role as the international face of our little nation?
Does this a city make?
Advocacy for the CRL has been at the very centre of our whole project at Greater Auckland. Limitless hours of work has been dedicated to first trying to get it approved, then eventually completed and operated as well as we hoped. So, for us too, this moment is especially critical. We have always claimed it will be as significant for our city, and indeed for the whole country, as the opening of the harbour bridge.
Is this, as we hope, a key engine for a better city: a more productive, more liveable, more equitable, even perhaps, more urbane, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland?
Time will tell.
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As ever, if you enjoy our content and wider work, and are able to, please consider supporting us financially, especially as we are now a registered charity. Plus there’s also our new merchandise store at the link above for some fabulous urbane kit for the whole fam.
Thanks especially to Dallas Rabot of MARTIAN BUNKER for his generous shooting and production of the video, and of course to Len Brown, first for the CRL itself, and for giving his time for this interview.
Enjoy.
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Its so important that the trains, busses and bikeways become more popular. There are many events in Auckland at the art gallery, ASB theatre, Town Hall, Aotea theatre, Q theater, Spark theatre, the concert chamber, the coming St James theatre, the Civic, the coming Mercury theatre, the convention theatre, Sky city theatre. All these venues depend on good numbers of people attending. Auckland has a great reputation for its music, plays, and culture and the value to the city is large. People judge a city by its events and easy transport to the city will support further growth and our great reputation.
I think there is still huge potential to make our PT and active modes a much more integral part of our city wide events and activities. I was in the city on Saturday night to yet again see Peter Hook sling his bass low and had pretty seemless bus rides in and out from West Auckland. But compared to many other cities it still feels like using PT here is not promoted, encouraged or highlighted as an option.
Taking the bus is kind of terrible.
Inconsistent routes and services, waiting on the side of the road often with no seats or cover, getting stuck in the same traffic as people driving their cars, and if the bus is busy (which we want) it means loads of extra stops to let people on and off which means longer trip times.
Repurpose road space for bus priority it is then.
Fair point about stops.
Shelter and seating should be standard, especially where frequencies are low.
If you have a long trip, you’d want to transfer to a train or express service for the bulk of it, with the bus only serving your first and last mile.
Bus stops need to be better.
– Seating: Proper benches, not those horrid leany-angle thingies
– Shelter: This is self-evident. No-one wants to wait in the rain
– Passenger information: As well as the electronic (Passenger Information Displays, aka PIDs) you can now get “electronic paper” that displays information like an e-book
Combine these with bus priority on roads and at intersections and you get a much more enticing service.
My pet peeve is the “phantom buses” of Auckland City, which are scheduled and appear on the realtime display as being due, then suddenly vanish from the display without ever appearing. Happens on the 24 route all the time and often means wait times of 20 minutes or more to get on a fully overcrowded bus.
I used to catch the bus from Maungawhau to Newmarket (station closed), then started walking instead cause it takes pretty much the same amount of time
Probably faster in most cases due to not having to wait for the bus
The Britomart Rail Station, now known as Waitematā Station, opened on 7 July 2003. At the time, many regarded it as a “white elephant”—an ambitious and costly project whose value and potential were not yet widely appreciated.
I had the privilege of working on the original vision for Britomart and later contributed to Auckland’s urban design discussions in my role as Principal Urban Designer on Auckland Council’s Urban Design Panel. Throughout my career, I’ve seen that some of the most important decisions emerge from robust debate —but only when there is mutual respect.
I also remember the debates around Britomart, where differing views on rail, heritage, and the future of the city were strongly contested.
Democracy depends on the open exchange of ideas, not personal abuse. When respect is replaced by intimidation or name-calling, everyone loses—not just those around the Council table, but the people Auckland’s leaders are there to serve.
Mario – nice to see you here. I’m interested to know more about the initial underground station at Britomart – I remember at the time there was much trumpeting of the fact that it was the world’s only underground diesel-loco station, something that was a curious thing to celebrate, as really, perhaps it should not have been celebrated. I think everyone is much happier now that it is all electric trains and thus no smoky emissions.
Not blaming anyone, as that is what we had to work with back then – but just wondered, was this a difficult sell to the consenting authorities back then? Was there a time limit imposed, or something similar?
It’s rare to have diesel trains operating in undergound stations, but Britomart wasn’t unique. Nørreport in Copenhagen (rebuilt 2009-16) is fully underground and accommodates diesel-powered regional trains that serve other parts of Denmark.
I was out on K Road on Saturday night of the long weekend. There were hordes of people out and about, standing around the bars and walking between bars. On the road, hordes of cars were stopped and mega traffic jams were rife in both directions. Queues were caused by cars pulling in and out of on-street spaces, taxis/ubers, and people walking across through the traffic – it was a mess. These queues were holding up all motor traffic, including buses and ambulances, significantly. The Inner Link bus I was catching was delayed and arrived at the K Rd overbridge practically empty (the stop was also empty just a few metres from the masses). People are not taking the bus for a night on the town – in my view, it doesn’t run late enough, it is too slow and not part of the social norm. With the K Rd Station located in the heart of this precinct, here’s hoping that the train can be more attractive option for people to get to and from nightlife where buses have failed. It needs to run late enough and be frequent enough!
The CRL will be great. Been a lot of even mainstream media hype for it lately. I really looking forward to it but would caution that we don’t “over hype” it so that once it’s opened and had a few uses of it, we are like: “now what?”. It’s like going to a good movie or concert of your favourite band but your expectations are way too high, above what it actually is, you can then be disappointed. I like to set expectations a bit lower then be pleasantly surprised.
The CRL is useless as it does not connect all of Auckland Mt Roskill Blockhouse bay and both Domestic & International airports not connected. Big loss to business in the CBD which had to close down So much hype and bullshit advertising K Road station glorified with waste of taxpayer dollars. Other countries have trains, metro connecting every area but not Auckland
Yeah, naah. Disagree.
So because it doesn’t go everywhere, it doesn’t go anywhere?
Pretty odd idea.
No one here is claiming this one mode is as comprehensive and Shanghai or Tokyo, but it is effective where it does go.
And thousands of people uses buses and ferries to connect to this small rail network. This all works.
One example:
I use rail to get to the airport, via a really good frequent electric bus connection at Puhinui. Would I rather there was a train that went there directly?, sure. But until there is, the bus connection takes no longer than trips I’ve done elsewhere around the world between airport terminals.
The whole journey is not quicker than driving but it is more predictable and a hell of lot cheaper and calmer.
By all means join us in pushing for more high-order transit routes in Auckland. I agree, to some degree the CRL is just the start.
Some valid points you make. I am not as negative in CRL, but valid points nonetheless. Although you probably won’t get much sympathy for them here.
Zen Man, I think just about everybody here would agree there needs to be more rail connecting more of Auckland.
alright then, how would you add those Mt Roskill and Airport train lines to Waitematā station without decreasing peak frequencies on the existing Southern, Western, and Eastern Lines?
Remember that as a terminus station, Waitematā could handle only 20 trains per hour in and out.
Not to mention poor Western Line passengers being forced to put up with the indirect route into downtown via Newmarket.
Well it can’t. Which is why a the sensible plan is to add a new rail network to complement the existing system. Connection via transfer as is the case all over the world.
This was even the official plan for over a decade till first ALR got carried away and then this government killed all work on the next rail network, anything at all on the CC2M route, or the Shore.
So for the foreseeable is buses all the way down.
And no, Avondale-Southdown will never happen. That’s just a baseless KiwiRail fantasy, clinging on to an old steam-era designation. An unhelpful distraction from much higher priority expansions, like extending the 3rd and adding a 4th on the NIMT, and a 3rd on the E-NIMT (eastern line), after the level crossing removals, of course.
Plus of course electrification and optimisation of the Golden Triangle.
In summary, the narrow gauge HR AKL network is done in terms of its extent.
I know this feels counterintuitive at first glance- why not just keep adding to the existing system? Well because it’s full. Further this idea mistakes an urban railway for a motorway network, ona metro-like system any new branch comes at a cost to the rest of the system, is not an addition. The cost is to frequency and capacity of existing lines.
A whole new line and system would add 100% of its frequency and capacity to the city, a branch has top steal from the existing.
Borrower’s point above.
A whole new line and system connected to what? Running to where? Carrying what? A-S is a ring route type bypass of Auckland’s city centre, and connects to a network which is conveniently already build, electrified and operational. Seems like wishful thinking to say some unspecified ‘new’ railway is a better investment?
That was the LRT plan; a complimentary rail network starting with Britomart to the airport. Interchanges with current HR stations (Kingsland, Mt Eden, Onehunga). Then you expand out from there – NW, Airport to Botany, and over the harbour.
By all means build A2S, but that’s about where HR tops out.
Besides, Burrower’s initial point was that you couldn’t really do anything about expnding the HR network (e.g. Mt Roskill spur) without building the CRL first. Otherwise you just cannibalise exisiting services because there is little to no more capacity into Waitemata.
What are you talking about, the A-S bypass would have been great to have pre-CRL, freight trains from Northland could just bypass the Newmarket junction which would free up capacity
A-S doesn’t bypass enough, it doesn’t bypass the difficult Avondale incline or the New Lynn trench. So it doesn’t even achieve the one thing it claims to. Anyway, currently there is very little freight demand north so good luck getting any kind positive BCR for this. Especially compared to on the NIMT and to the AKL port where there is real demand.
The designation is on the route it is, because steam trains need gentle grades, and at the time it was identified, the route was paddocks. It really is not what is needed now, as well as being much more difficult.
If it were to have passenger services it would take frequency and capacity from the western line to the city – the biggest concentration of employment, education, and entertainment in the nation. Suboptimal.
But a new system using part of the route and heading through Mangere, which a transit desert, and severed by motorways, to the airport would indeed be a useful passenger route.
As has long been identified.
Do you think there will be more demand for freight slots once the Marsden Point rail link is completed
Also, a railway line to the airport is hardly a priority, plenty of buses go there already. Melbourne has one of the biggest tram networks in the world AND has a massive commuter network, but no airport rail link.
Interestingly I did see an analysis that said there could actually less freight demand through the Akl network with a completed Marsden Link (which in my view is a valuable addition to the network), as Northland derived bulk products like milk power and logs could then head north by rail to NorthPort, rather than South to PoAL.
Overtime, however there may be freight growth via NP for the AKL market, like the way PoT grew over a very long time.
Either way I think the pandemic showed how important having good links to NorthPort is for resilience, basically the 3 port strategy.
Melbourne is not a good example for airport access – anyhow they are now building a rail line there. The point of CC2M is not the airport alone, it’s much more about the Isthmus and especially Mangere needing Rapid Transit. The airport is simply a logical terminus for such a line.
Melbourne is currently building a line to the airport.
I agree this isn’t a priority for us, but I think serving the mangere area probably is, or at least a higher priority than building a bypass for two freight trains a day.
Does your vision of Auckland getting trams again include building a line through East Auckland too?
Am still keen of hybrid Surface/offline Queen St/Dom Rd (Surface) Mt Roskill/Onehunga/Mangere/Airport (mostly grade separate) Light Rail (CC2M)
That then goes over new bridge and up busway…
@jezza – melbourne is spending 10b on that airport link, we could build an entire network for that
Also guess which railway Melbourne have decided to connect to their Airport?
I kinda think you’re missing the point of what CRL is supposed to be…
Nice video. Any intel on how the timetable testing went and what that means for an opening date? Guess if it went well we may get an announcement in the coming week?
We’re hearing it all went well, and we’ll being getting an official announcement very soon.
Only 6-8 weeks to go now, yippee!
Excellent! Maungawhau station is a hive of activity as they ready the (former) tunnel portal area with trees and other landscaping. Exciting times.
Yes, Transport Blog, later Greater Auckland was so instrumental over the years and in the early days in promoting and explaining the CRL clearly and the benefits it would bring. I didn’t come to read the blog until after the Onehunga line had reopened with electric trains and then the Eastern line started to run them too. There was a lot of excitement over these projects.
In most cities, the subterranean system forms the backbone of the public transport network.
Here in Tamaaki Makaurau, that backbone is about to become reality, as the CRL converts our urban train system into something functionally faster, with the logical loop system that most trains systems employ around the world in urban zones.
The former Mayor Len Brown achieved this, the greatest infrastructure investments in the history of our motu, makes him the most important Civic leader since amalgamation.
With the CRL approaching ribbon cutting ceremonial persons-in-suits space continuum event, it is time for another visionary occupation of our civic leadership.
With the backbone established, we can build the arms, legs and fingers. The rail network with thoughtful transfers, like New Lynn, Otahuhu and Manukau. Opening Maangere and Mount Roskill now must be the priority. Buses cannot serve these highly populated areas adequately. We need light rail to connect them.
It is now easier, Maangere logically connects to Puhinui, or Otahuhu, or Onehunga train stations. A light rail loop could connect this enormous suburb, reducing the need for car domination.
Avondale to Southdown becomes justifiable, if built to include passengers. This could reconnect Roskill and Blockhouse Bay, suburbs isolated from the current rail network. The population of these areas demands that we need to prioritise solutions for these places, which sit on the isthmus.
Let’s celebrate the CRL by ensuring that other rail based solutions are prioritised in our city!
You have to remember the owner of the AucklandTrains blog moved to Australia because they did not think the CRL would happen. Len also had to be convinced and the first person to do that was the CEO of Manukau City at the time who was interviewed saying this.