Weekly Roundup 11-September-2026

Kia ora, and welcome to our weekly roundup of stories about what makes cities great, including our own. Today’s header image shows our Matt Lowrie and Patrick Reynolds, with the godfather of the City Rail Link, former Mayor Len Brown, at today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. A happy day!

This Week in Greater Auckland

• On Monday, we ran a video interview with Simon Bridges, the second in our series about how we got the CRL
• On Tuesday, we reposted Matt’s musings for The Post, on what we’d do in our first 100 days as Prime Minister
• On Wednesday, a guest post by Darren Davis looked at Auckland’s great strides for public transport since the turn of the (21st) century
• And on Thursday, Patrick lifted our eyes to the horizon, as we count down to the CRL opening: what’s next?
• And earlier today, Matt took a look at rail ridership stats, ahead of the CRL opening this Sunday!

Greater Auckland in the News

Oh hey! We have an Instagram account now!

Connor’s op-ed about the jubilant CRL vibes of the moment ran in The Post today. (We’ll reprint it next week)

And, our recent post about artwork around the new CRL stations was picked up in a piece for The Conversation (and RNZ, and the Herald), by University of Auckland academics Tom Baker and Salene Schloffel-Armstrong:

Some have argued the project represents a coming-of-age moment for Auckland – a step toward embracing its identity as a genuinely metropolitan city.

.. as public transport advocacy group Greater Auckland put it after the unveiling of two new public art pieces outside midtown station Te Waihorotiu, “We can have beautiful things!”

For decades, Auckland suffered from a peculiar form of civic hesitancy. It wanted the advantages of a major city but often felt uneasy about building infrastructure, public spaces and the civic ambition required to realise them.

The enthusiasm surrounding the City Rail Link suggests that mood may be changing.

Horotiu the giant tuna, by night. Image: Jolisa Gracewood

Friday’s formal ribbon-cutting for the City Rail Link

You might have noticed we’re publishing a bit later in the day than usual – that’s so we could include reporting from this morning’s official ribbon-cutting at Te Waihorotiu. We were delighted to be on the guest list, with Matt, Patrick, and Connor in attendance.

Full video of the speech-making is here (fast forward to about 20 minutes), beautifully introduced by Otene Hopa from Ngāti Whātua o Ōrakei:

“CRL is about people, not just transport, it is about connection. Cities succeed when people can move easily, safely and affordably through them…A successful city is one where people feel connected, welcomed, and able to participate fully in city life.”

And thereafter ably coordinated by Auckland Transport’s CEO Stacey van der Putten.

While a couple of speakers took the opportunity to get some old grumbles off their chests, kudos to others for maintaining focus on the actual achievement. As Minister of Transport Chris Bishop pointed out, this project has been more than a century and a half in the making, so today is a very big day!

Dignitaries of all political stripes at today’s City Rail Link ribbon-cutting ceremony, on the platform at the new Te Waihorotiu station (screenshot from footage supplied by Auckland Transport).

The last speech of the ceremony, by Ryvah Cooper, head girl of Auckland Girls’ Grammar, was especially notable for its clarity and dignity, and her beautiful te reo. A poised and positive presentation, with a clear understanding of the ultimate value of this asset to our city. So we’ll give the last word to her:

For students at Auckland Girls’ Grammar School, this is particularly exciting. Eighty-five percent of our 1200 students come from out of zone. This means over a thousand of our girls cross the city every day to get to AGGS. The City Rail Link will make a huge difference for them and their whānau.

This addition to our rail network will provide a faster, safer and more reliable journey for our girls, which will see them get to school on time, and ready to learn. It will also bring the CBD closer to our school, so our students can enjoy culturally enriching experiences, including the museums, galleries, universities and libraries in the heart of our city.

But it’s not just about our girls – it’s important for all rangatahi across Tāmaki Makaurau. Public transport isn’t [just] about getting from A to B. It’s about access: access to education, to opportunities, to friends, to sports, to jobs, and to everything Tāmaki has to offer.

For students and families, having transport that is safe, affordable, and reliable can make a huge difference. It can mean a young person can attend a school they love, take up an opportunity across the city, or get home safely without relying on somebody else for a ride.

The City Rail Link will help make those opportunities more accessible, connecting communities across Auckland and making it easier to move through our city.

But perhaps the most exciting part is what this means for the next generation. The decisions we make about transport today will shape the Auckland that young people will grow up in tomorrow.

A city where public transport is easy to use, connected, and future-focused is a city where young people have greater freedom to explore, participate and dream big.

Today is not just about opening new stations or train lines. It’s about opening doors: to education, to opportunity and to a more connected Auckland. Thank you, and congratulations to everyone who’s helped make the City Rail Link a reality.

Ryvah Cooper speaking at the City Rail Link ribbon-cutting at Te Waihorotiu, 11 September 2026

Upcoming Events

The big event this weekend is of course the inaugural running of trains through the City Rail Link, on Sunday 13th! Details of first trains below for the earlybirds. Auckland Transport is running extra trains all day, to accommodate the excitement. More here on what to expect on Day One.

Related stuff happening around the stations this weekend

Saturday 12 September sees the first of a planned weekly Karangahape Farmers’ Market (8am – 1pm at Hopetoun Alpha in Beresford Square), alongside the monthly FAM markets (running till 3pm), so you can shop vintage and veggies! More on Facebook, Insta, or here.

Sunday 13 September is the day to ride the trains, and there’s lots happening:

Downtown, Britomart is hosting a market day from 8am – 2pm, with live music and more than 80 stalls in the area between Waitematā Station and Takutai Square – details here.

Up along Karangahape, there’s an afternoon party at Greens HQ, 12.30 – 3.30pm (RSVP here). And Coco’s is offering bottomless pizza (11am -3.30pm) to celebrate the new station – bookings and more info here. Plus, if you’re really committed, look out for flash tattoos along the strip!

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Riding the CRL buzz, this weekend and beyond

A handy explainer from RNZ on what the new lines mean for everyday trips.

The brilliantly named City Ale Link commences at midday on Sunday, but you can do it any time and in any order. It’s a DIY pub tour of independent venues close to five stations in a row: Te Waihorotiu, to Karanga-a-hape, Maungawhau, Kingsland and Morningside. Collect stamps to unlock perks at every venue. (See also: The Pursuit of Hoppiness)

As UrbanList concurs, it’s been a long haul, but lots of small businesses around the stations are excited to get their spark back. And not just hospo, either:

One of those is Basement Theatre. Sitting just 500 metres away from the new station, the team there are positively anticipating the hopeful influx of people the station will bring.

“I’m really excited for what this means for the area. I’m excited for the liveliness to come back and for people to return to the city, and be able to go to gigs and shows without transport being an issue,” [says] Selu-Kian Lealiifano-Faletoese, the theatre’s Programmes Navigator.

The theatre is launching a new happy hour in anticipation of the opening (5-6pm, every day except for Saturdays), and has a stacked lineup of new programming—Test Fest in October, and Silly Season in December. “The idea is that, if you’re in the city for whatever reason, on a date night or out with the girls, you can pop in and catch a show.”

And for The Spinoff, Hayden Donnell rounds up some of the coolest spots accessible via the new lines and around the new stations.

Though many people may only use the CRL for a quicker commute, it offers much more than that, making huge swathes of the city easily accessible by public transport. To help everyone fully realise those new possibilities, we’ve compiled this user’s guide to some of the best places to eat, shop and visit as you enjoy the novel experience of travelling on a functional train system in New Zealand.

Meanwhile, the team at Crushes is crushing on their new station across the road…

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Reader comment of the week

Regarding the new Auckland Rapid Transit map, reader BlackSmith makes a great point:

My modest suggestion on the ART map, would be to link in key destinations like Zoo/Stadium/Ferry terminal as well as station names.

It has the airport, which on this map is shown as clearly accessible via rapid transport. That is a good thing; a lot of time on travel forums, people overlook the PT option as it doesn’t seem clear, but it is a low cost and easy way to get to/from the airport. Seeing that visually on this map is important.

ART 2026

I (and visitors to Auckland) also prefer to go to events at Mt Smart (Warriors) and Eden Park via ART. IKEA/Sylvia Park are also destinations. I see in small print that ‘Go Media Stadium’ is written there, but my suggestion would be to mark stations (even as icons) as; ‘this one’ for Ferry Terminal/ Stadium/Zoo/ Shopping mall.

Maybe different tourist orientated overlay to avoid this map getting cluttered?

I am hoping like in other cities, people get used to the concept that when they are considering taking the family to the mall/ sports/ zoo/ beach etc, and feel like they can jump on rapid transport to get there and don’t need the SUV

Not so fast, fast-track!

Auckland Council held its ground this week in the face of fast-tracked developments. As reported by the NZ Herald and The Post (paywalled), Council is stuck between a rock and a hard place: facing a huge shortfall when it comes to providing the infrastructure to support these developments, while also stymied by the threatened rates cap.

Stewart Sowman-Lund, in The Post:

Auckland Council said this week it was grappling with a potential $5b infrastructure bill from up to 60,000 “unanticipated” homes. Around $3b of the potential infrastructure bill was growth-related and could potentially be recovered through development contributions, while another $2b was non-growth-related and would likely fall to ratepayers.

Hayden Donnell, in The Spinoff:

If the government had just dumped that invoice on councils, it would be annoying. But to do so while delivering patronising lectures about their financial profligacy and capping their means of actually paying for the infrastructure costs the government is foisting on them? Well, that was a step too far, and everyone was, to use the technical term, fucked off.

“It seems that at every step of the planning regime of this city, the deeper pockets are the ones that get what they want, and that’s outrageous,” said Waitākere councillor Shane Henderson. “Who is protecting elite soils in Auckland? Who is encouraging transport-related climate emissions reduction? This is the role of the local government, and yet we are disempowered at every turn by the central government.”

Jonathan Killick in The Post summed up the outcome of the meeting:

Auckland Council has unanimously backed a tougher approach to fast-track developers, including considering legal challenges and whether it can withhold some services from developments built outside its growth plans.

“We are taking a more nuclear option,” said planning committee chairperson Richard Hills.

…

A resolution drafted by Hills and Mayor Wayne Brown asked staff to determine what legal powers the council can use when deciding whether and how to service those developments.

It also resolved to “consider all legal avenues available to challenge” fast-track consents for greenfield housing developments “fundamentally at odds with Auckland Council’s planning documents”.

Where council cannot prevent unanticipated development, it will consider “reduced service levels or not providing some services altogether”.

Minister Chris Bishop, in response, said that “the development contributions paid by developers” should cover the cost of infrastructure and services (but they don’t). He promised that “legislation was coming through Parliament next week, which would fix a ‘lacuna’ in the system and mitigate much of the criticism” (but didn’t say what the fix actually is).

A primer on Auckland’s housing policy debate

Russell Brown digs into Auckland Council’s Plan Change 120 for The Spinoff. Public consultation on the options runs until Thursday 24 September – we’re planning to run a feedback guide, so stay tuned!

In the future, many more Aucklanders will be living in and around the city centre and major centres like Newmarket and Manukau, or near a railway or busway station and frequent bus routes.

That’s no accident. The plan deliberately channels more growth into the parts of Auckland that are best connected, while winding back some of the density that was previously proposed around smaller suburban centres.

Much of this is driven by government rules that require more homes near major centres and rapid transit, and in some locations within 10km of the city centre, that could mean buildings reaching 10 or 15 storeys high.

That’s because those areas already have some of the best access to jobs, transport, infrastructure, and services – making them better suited to more housing as Auckland grows, like the City Rail Link and the Central Interceptor.

Bridge or tunnel? Still a mystery

No luck for a recent OIA request to the NZ Transport Agency on the state of decision-making re the next Waitematā Harbour Crossing has had no success. You can see the response here. This is as much as they’re willing to share:

The Review team found that successful delivery appears feasible and significant work has been completed to date to present a compelling case for the Waitemata Harbour Connections (WHC) project and basis for considering two options for upcoming Cabinet decisions. However, there are issues that require attention and resolution in relation to clarity of the underlying strategic drivers, testing evolving market conditions, and governance arrangements for the next phase.

Meanwhile, here’s the Queensferry Bridge north of Edinburgh, in a gorgeous photo sent in by reader Kevin Langley. Squint, and it could be the brilliant bridge we’ve endorsed for the next Waitematā Harbour crossing.

Queensferry Bridge. Image by Kevin Langley

What cities remember; what cities forget

Astonishing to think that today on our calendar (tomorrow, in American real time) is the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. In a special issue of Vital magazine, novelist Colum McCann writes “We don’t need an anniversary for things we can’t forget” – and a piece by Harry Siegel makes the case that maybe forgetting is inherent to cities:

A city doesn’t just change hands; it changes ages. The New Yorkers who were here that morning are 25 years older now, and the ones who’ve filled in behind them — in the classrooms, apartments and trains — were mostly kids then, if they were born at all, or living somewhere very different.

For many of them, 9/11 is something that helps explain the cops with long guns at Penn Station and some of the shape of the city’s politics, but doesn’t organize either. It isn’t the rallying cry it was, or the touchstone, or that one seemingly apolitical stretch of days when most everybody in the five boroughs was grieving the same thing at the same time. That’s what time does to an event, and probably what it’s supposed to do. The anniversary keeps its date; the city keeps moving.

Speaking of New York City, and decades flying by: here’s a wonderful archive of street views from the 1940s.

“A former hub of scandalous literature”, according to 1940s.nyc

It’s getting hot in here

Three big city mayors – from Paris, Milan, and Phoenix, Arizona – write for the Guardian about the collective challenge posed by increasingly hot summers. With a big El Nino on the way, where is Auckland at on this question?

As mayors, we are confronting the same question: how do you protect millions of people when extreme heat is no longer an exceptional event, but an increasingly familiar part of summer?

For Phoenix, that question has shaped city government for decades. For Paris and Milan, it is now becoming one of the defining challenges of urban leadership.

It may strike some people as unusual that two of Europe’s oldest and most prestigious cities are looking to a city in the Arizona desert for ideas. But rising temperatures are now a global challenge, and we don’t have time for each city to figure out what works on its own.

Phoenix has learned, sometimes the hard way, that extreme heat cannot be treated as simply a weather event. It shapes decisions about transport, housing, public health, public space, and emergency planning. Preparing for summer begins long before temperatures start to rise.

Practical climate action is paying off in London

Will Norman, London’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner, notes (on LinkedIn) that 66% of the capital’s school children now get to school via active travel – thanks to a programme that includes over 870 school streets, where kids are prioritised over traffic.

Another way of looking at it is how many cars that took off the roads. Lots, it turns out.

Meanwhile, the city’s low-emission zones and related policies are also clearly helping Londoners breathe easier:

Pollution levels in London after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.

— Daniel Moser (@dmoser.bsky.social) 2026-09-03T10:36:55.801Z

Speaking of pollution…

It’s not just tailpipe pollutants that are messing up Auckland. “Road dust”, a toxic combination of particles from car tyres, brake linings, and the road surface may be causing even greater damage to human health and the environment, say two University of Auckland researchers.

Mingyue Selena Sheng and Le Wen report on their research in a piece for The Conversation:

We analysed data from 2006 to 2019 to measure the contribution of road dust to PM₁₀ – the technical abbreviation for airborne particles with a diameter of 10 micrometres or less.

Our study covered three monitoring sites: Queen Street in the central city, Khyber Pass on a major arterial route, and Penrose near a key motorway corridor. We then combined this air-quality data with information on traffic and weather conditions.

Even after accounting for factors such as rainfall, wind, temperature and traffic, road dust was more strongly linked to PM₁₀ levels than pollution from vehicle exhausts.

Perhaps surprisingly for a relatively wet city, road dust remained a major contributor to Auckland’s particulate pollution.

Heavy vehicles – those weighing more than 3.5 tonnes – also stood out. While accounting for just 4 percent of traffic in our dataset, a higher proportion of heavy vehicles was associated with increased PM₁₀ levels.

You’ll never guess what the solution might involve:

Possible policy responses include: better containment of soil and loose material near roads, improved management of road dust, and targeted controls on heavy-vehicle movements at pollution hotspots.

Reducing traffic volumes could help, too. Better public transport and infrastructure for walking and cycling would mean fewer vehicle movements generating and stirring up particles.

A clean sweep

Auckland Transport asked the public for suggestions for names for its cute lil’ CRL station-cleaning machines. No “Broomy McBroomface” here – we’re more creative than that!

You’ll soon see Robot Downer Junior, Fat Freddy’s Mop, and Meryl Sweep hard at work alongside the Downer NZ services teams – helping keep the City Rail Link stations sparkling clean and ready for customers.

That you, Robot – or Freddy, or Meryl? Image via Auckland Transport.

The quiet joy of cycling

A nice read by Shanti Mathias for The Spinoff, about how being on a bike opens up one’s view of the city.

Biking feels like the key to unlocking a hundred tiny intimacies of where you live, reshaping your attention. A slight downhill I’d ignore when driving becomes a speed boost; an ignored driveway between two houses turns out to be a bike-sized path and a perfect shortcut. On my ride home through a park last week, I noticed a tree dropping apples and picked several up to tuck into my panniers.

…

When I was 18, I knew I’d have to bike because it was the only option. Now, I know I’ll choose my bike again and again. It’s my favourite way to move in the city.

Good watching

Check out our YouTube shorts, starting with Len Brown on how we got the CRL:

And Patrick ponders how cool Auckland now would look from even a decade ago:

John Simmerman of the Active Towns podcast visited Auckland a while back, and took a ride around with Lennart Nout. These two videos contain useful observations of our growing cycleway network, and how to make it even better:

The sustainable transport/ Bird of the Year crossover you’ve been waiting for:

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Lastly: we would be remiss not to note two particularly heartrending losses in the last week.

A father of two, who died after being knocked off his bike on Rosebank Road, while cycling home from work early to take his sons to Kempo class (there’s a Givealittle to support his family). And a child, tragically struck by a train at a neighbourhood station on the Western Line, on their way home from school (here’s a Givealittle to support his family).

Our hearts go out to everyone affected by these unthinkably sad events. Everyday modes of travel should be safe for all, and everyone should make it home.

That’s us for the week – keep well, see you on Monday.

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