The City Rail Link has a bit of a secret power. It doesn’t just transport you around Auckland, but even further afield. Standing on the platform at Te Waihorotiu at certain times in the middle of the peak, with up to four trains turning up and departing within a five-minute period, it gives off the vibe of a real metro and can make you feel like you’re in a city far away.
That secret power will wane over time as taking the train becomes a more everyday experience for Aucklanders. But in its place will be ever more people making use of the new possibilities the CRL has unlocked.
Last week we reported our impressions of Day One, and now we have a week’s worth of information about how it’s going. Already, Aucklanders are flocking to use the CRL with the early numbers showing a massive increase in train use, smashing the record for the busiest single week of use on the rail network with over 528,000 official boardings.
Auckland’s rail network has recorded its busiest week ever in the first seven days of CRL services, a strong early sign of Aucklanders embracing the new system, Transport Minister Chris Bishop and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown say.
A total of 528,007 train boardings were recorded between Sunday 13 September and Saturday 19 September, beating the previous seven-day record of 504,380 set in March 2019 by more than 23,000.
“The CRL is one of the most significant transport investments in New Zealand’s history, and it’s fantastic to see Aucklanders getting on board in such huge numbers after waiting years for its arrival,” Mr Bishop says.
“The week before the CRL opened, Auckland’s rail network recorded 325,203 boardings. One week later, patronage was up by around 62 per cent, showing the immediate difference the new system is already making to the way Aucklanders move around the city.
“People were eager to try the new network right from the first services on Sunday, with early risers turning up for the first train at 4.57am from Ōtāhuhu. By the end of opening day, 56,757 train boardings had been recorded. Momentum continued to build throughout the week, peaking at 85,289 boardings on Thursday.
“The network also performed strongly as Aucklanders got used to the biggest change to the city’s rail system in generations. Punctuality and reliability of train services remained consistently in the mid-to-high 90 per cent range throughout the working week, strengthening further as the week went on.
“A strong performance in the first week was important for building confidence in the CRL as a reliable, genuine public transport alternative for Aucklanders who might otherwise choose to travel by car.
“For years, the focus was on getting the CRL built. Now the exciting part begins as we see what Auckland can do with it, joining the great modern cities around the world where fast, frequent rapid transit is part of everyday life.”
That’s a fantastic early result, and something so clearly out of line with the results we’d been seeing over the last few years. It shows that Aucklanders are keen for better options.
A key part of this new record was a significant increase in ridership on the weekends – so while the weekdays weren’t quite as the level of March Madness 2019, the massive increase in weekend usage secured the new record.
Absolutely, some or all of the extra trips will simply be people investigating the stations and network – many of whom may be riding trains in Auckland for the first time – but there will also be many new or returning rail users who are keen to make use of the improved service.
Auckland Transport told us yesterday afternoon that this Monday was tracking only around 10% lower than last Monday, and thus still significantly higher than we’ve seen in the last few years.
They also told us that numbers for both buses and ferries last week were up on the week before. That’s positive, as it highlights that while the CRL is likely to encourage some change in choice of public transport mode – such as people in the inner west shifting from bus to train – there is still overall growth happening in the system. This is something that’s bound to continue as fuel costs start to rise again.
It’s also worth a reminder that ridership growth from projects like the CRL doesn’t happen all on Day One, but instead is realised over many years. A great example of this was the electrification of the rail network which resulted in around three years of sustained high-growth and was still growing until COVID emerged.
So in this case, I expect we’ll have many years of strong growth ahead – providing Auckland Transport, Auckland One Rail and KiwiRail can keep the network running smoothly.
Interestingly, actual ridership is likely to be even higher than the numbers reported above. The data above is based on the HOP system, so it only counts when people tag on. So, it doesn’t pick up people who (like me and my family) tagged on, and then visited the various stations to take a look, but without tagging off at each station.
Auckland Transport also has automated counters onboard their trains which actually count people as they get on, allowing for a more accurate count of actual ridership. The latter were the numbers that were first reported last week, and they were even higher again – which will be largely due to lots of people hopping on and off trains to check out the tunnels and stations without ever leaving them.
Another interesting fact Auckland Transport shared with us was that Waitematā was still the number one station for boarding or alighting, with Te Waihorotiu not far behind.
This is interesting, as previous modelling suggests that the latter would grow to become the busiest station within in first year – and it still may, but it isn’t there yet. Perhaps even more interesting was that Karanga-a-Hape was not all that far behind them, which is notable as previous modelling suggested it would be significantly lower.
I’m sure there were plenty of people just waiting for something to go wrong – especially in the media, which to its credit has been reporting the positive news – but other than a few minor issues, the CRL had a great Week One. Well done to Auckland Transport, Auckland One Rail, KiwiRail and everyone who helped make the first week go pretty smoothly.
Karanga-a-Hape Station Beresford St. Photo PR
Making it even better
There’s more good news too, as the network is about to get even better soon. Auckland Transport is planning to update the timetable again in November, which will see most of the East-West line running at 8 trains per hour per direction at peak.
There are currently short-running services that run between Sylvia Park and Kingsland at peak times. This will be extended to Henderson, providing more capacity and further improving the ability to transfer between E-W and S-C services at Karanga-a-Hape. (Auckland Transport says the thing preventing this improvement from being extended to Swanson is concerns around the Metcalfe Rd level crossing, which from what I can tell is the busiest road level crossing in the country)
The November improvements will also see 15-minute frequencies continue till about 11-11:30 on Friday and Saturday nights, a very welcome improvement.
Further improvements are planned for February 2027, which is expected to see frequency improvements to the South-City line.
At this stage the changes are largely about filling in the gaps in the timetable, so they won’t change travel times. However, Auckland Transport do say they’re looking at how they improve dwell times and other train operations, which will allow travel time improvements eventually.
But still: getting to 8 trains per hour, per direction, on the two main lines at peak, will be a key milestone. Because the two main lines overlap in the CRL, and at Puhinui-Ōtāhuhu, this means a peak frequency 16 tph/pd – a train every 3:45mins each way – on those core sections. A real glimpse of the future, more a real metro-like experience. This will especially be able to be felt on the relatively narrow island platform at Te Waihorotui.
Karanga-a-Hape Station pointing. photo PR
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Caught the E-W train on Saturday night. Train packed (and restaurants also packed). It was generally a good buzz.
Unfortunately it was a 3-car. Got talking to transport officers who said they had been running 3-cars a lot of the day. Didn’t know why. But there were too many people on board for them to check tickets. Especially hard for bikes, prams and disabled. Also, 3-cars very confusing for people at the long new underground stations as they have to run along platform.
Can someone please ask AT why they are still regularly running 3-cars? Is there a maintenance issue? Is it to save money?
Maybe they need to report on % of services that are 3-car and explain why.
Agree. They also stop them at the same place as the 6 car, so quite a long walk (and delay) at the big stations if you don’t know what’s happening.
Save money, wear and tear plus easier to manage for transit officers. Agree gets a bit busy some of those three sizes in the weekends.
We went to K Rd on Saturday, spent some money in St Kevin’s Arcade, had lunch in a café, didn’t see any 3 carriage trains, let a couple of full 6 car trains go by (full of greenie protesters heading home lol), before catching a nearly full 6 carriage train.
I imagine scheduling train maintenance around the extra services would be challenging.
AT say they are short 30 sets to be able to run 6-car consists with more intense timetable.
Which in turn needs more stabling, so that needs to go into the Long Term Plan.
A success problem.
Interesting. I was of the belief that they had received the new sets to allow this to happen, but it was obviously a partial order.
Do you know how many they ordered in the most recent bach?
Interesting that Waitemata is still the busiest, probably existing travel habits of nearby workers. Also I suspected K’Road would do well – a lot more going on around there perhaps compared to mid city until it picks up there again after all the works. Great to see timetable improvements planned so soon.
I’m not surprised for the first week. A lot of weekend uplift and from a recreational standpoint downtown has more going on, nicer to visit than midtown IMO.
I’d say as communters adjust this will settle down and Midtown station will become busiest as per the modelling due to the location to businesses.
Also midtown itself is a little bit of a mess at the moment, however as retail and businesses move back into the CBD we are likely to see some mode shift. Especially when the new convention centre starts being used.
There’s an awful lot of offices near Waitemata, and of course Wynyard Quarter (bit of a walk).
There’s not so much near Te Waihorotiu (council HQ though!).
For uni students, it’s probably split in terms of which station is most convenient (ie. depending on where faculties are located eg. Law is much closer to Waitemata)
There’s plenty of offices near Te Wai Horotiu and of course the Universities are significant employers. Additionally it’s a quicker walk to Te Wai Horotiu from Wynyard Quarter than it is to Waitemata.
Whilst it’s slightly closer to Wynyard, it’s arguably a slower walk due to the higher number of road crossings with longer light sequences, and it has more hills. If you can time the 75 Bus it works well though.
I don’t want to harp on about it (this will be my last whinge I promise), but i wonder how many people have been put off using trains be the 30 min frequency after 8. Surely that wasn’t a network issue, just a cost saver. They should have made opening week awesome instead of conservative.
Their focus was on getting though the opening without any major issues, which is understandable. Can you imagine the headlines if something had gone wrong.
People need reliable frequencies, not 5 minute waits then 15 minutes. Should be 10 minutes 7am-7pm, 20 mins other times, then once feasible (level crossings removals, signalling, grade seperation etc.) 5 min frequency, in the interim scheduling the extra passenger services like O-W/freight slots etc. etc. in the slots between the 10 minute baseline.
They should be working backwards from the CBD with timetabling, with everything/every timetable based around that (including moving freight by a few minutes each direction – even if it requires putting some ambassadors at rural crossings for a few weeks in Pokeno so kids don’t get hit by the differently timed freight train).
In the CRL stations, you should have EW train arrive clockwise, wait 5 mins, SC clockwise, wait 5 mins, EW clockwise etc. – the exact time difference between EW and SC trains isn’t as crucial, just the 2 services being once every 10 minutes regularly.
AT knows this stuff, they do it well with buses.
I don’t think it’s the end of the world if a train has to pause for a few minutes waiting for their turn @Wiri/Westfield as long as trains are regular, they can make that up easily by just having sane dwell times (I think they’re working on improving the dwell times tbf, I didn’t time them in the weekend though).
By November there will be an even spacing between peak trains on the Western line and by February there will be an even spacing on the other lines.
It was likely more hassle having an interim timetable that had even gaps to cover just a few months.
I’m really looking forward to seeing some fine grained data on the three city centre stations. I suspect that Karanga-a-Hape actually has a massive residential catchment and might be a ‘home’ station rather than the destination for a good chunk of it’s trips. It’s also a great transfer location for buses from the nw and the inner west.
With regard to Karanga-a-Hape station: Take a look also at the foot traffic / pedestrian counters set up by Heart of the City. The huge spikes in foot traffic are during lunchtime and after-work. This suggests that, as well as apartment-dwellers for whom K Rd is their home station, there are also a lot of people (office workers) simply zipping over to K Rd for lunch, and maybe for after-work drinks. Presumably because once you’ve maxed out your $50 cap for the week, this trip is essentially free. I think I saw Stacy van der Putten saying as much on 1News yesterday — that is, the very fact of what’s accessible at lunchtime has enormously changed, and K Rd may be the top destination for that. https://heartofthecity.co.nz/pedestrian-count/
The photos at Karanga-a-Hape station show pupils from Auckland Girls Grammar, where I suspect a lot of girls commute to and from by rail , and previously the 106 bus service to and from the Waitemata Station. Now they have a very nearby railway station.
This is my daughter’s old school (highly recommend, BTW), so I have some experience here. Quite a number of girls used to schlep down to Britomart in order to get home, living south or west. The CRL is a huge improvement for them.
One of the quirks of odd little network that folds back on itself, is that for those heading south from the K, many can actually take either line, but from opposite platforms, so I did observe some entertaining switching back and forth as they negotiated social groups and next trains. Loadsa fun.
This is their station now.
Plus there were St Peter’s and Grammar boys heading west transferring, so this may do wonders for the social lives of some…
Which is only right and fair, as AGGS was actually founded as the mirror of AGS, back in 1888, but socioeconomics, location and a severing motorway separated these brother and sister schools, it’s taken a train tunnel to re-unite them.
I love it. So good.
I just hope they look at the bus networks and create feeder bus routes where appropriate
I’d love one to take me to Mt Albert Station (it would have to include Richardson Rd for that to happen).
Currently I bus from Owairaka but would prefer a train
The 2018–2028 edition of the RPTP proposed rerouting the 68 from Pt Chev, along Woodward Rd and Richardson Rd, to a CC2M light rail station at Hillsborough, and replacing its old route with a new bus route 69 (lol) from New Lynn to Onehunga via Blockhouse Bay and Lynfield.
Funnily enough my grandmother, T D Tompkins, was the first head girl of AGGS (1908) when it separated from AGS. Until then they were educated separately from the boys: the boys in the school—then located where the UoA School of Architecture still remains—and the girls in the crypt of the recently erected St Paul’s church across the road. The new school building in Hopetoun St was a distinct improvement. Boarding in Devonport, she would have appreciated Karanga-a-Hape station.
From my experience on Saturday Karanga-a-Hape isn’t that well set up for transferring to buses. There is a stop outside the Beresford Square station citybound however no matching stop for bus travel in the opposite direction. The nearest stop is above the motorway in Karangahape Rd. Not that great and needs sorting.
I think the nearest stop is the Grey St stop on Pitt St – of the times I’m around K Rd and want to catch the 18, I pretty much always choose that one as less ‘characters’, and about the same distance (and going slightly downhill vs flat). Plus is easier visually, as you can look and see the stop from the K Rd/Pitt St intersection, but you can’t see the motorway overbridge due to the curve. It’s also more pleasant as you’re not over the motorway.
Having looked on maps I see that one is now labeled Karanga-a-Hape Station when it isn’t outside the station. Needs to be moved closer.
I’m not opposed to moving the stop (or adding another, as the westbound stop is the pair of both the eastbound on the station and the eastbound on Grey’s Ave), it’s just it’ll end up with 2 stops roughly a block apart. As they can’t really do opposite the station as the buses are trying to turn right and don’t want to get caught in left queues. Plus there is a bunch of accesses there anyway.
It very much feels like they’ve had too many anti social people hanging around bus stops so the bus stop sites where people wait (westbound ones) are deliberately away from businesses.
I think the siting of the westbound bus stop down before Greys Ave has more to do with the fire station needing a clearway and the buses needing to be able to move into the right lane to turn right at the top of Pitt Street than it being about keeping bus stops away from businesses.
15 mins till 11-11:30 on Friday and Saturday nights!!
Fantastic news!.
Being able to leave a show / bar etc. and know a train is more than 15 minutes away will be a game changer and really boost numbers at night.
How about services every 15 min until midnight every night? Like a proper city?
I suspect when they say that they mean the last service departing the origin station e.g. departing Manukau, Pukekohe and Swanson which means those trains will be leaving the city around midnight.
Proper city runs metro 24 hours on the weekend
I don’t know whether there’s a formal definition of a proper metro but the metro in Paris doesn’t run all night and London only has select lines running reduced frequencies through the night on weekends.
Not really true, only a few metros run 24/7. Although any metro we build in NZ should have 24/7 operations in mind, doesn’t add much cost if designed for, but almost impossible to retrofit later. Denmark/Copenhagen is a great example.
Basically it involves signalling, bidirectional running, more crossovers and space between the tracks so at night they can decrease the frequency and do single track running while crews safely work on the opposite track.
Only full closures should be due to security incidents, bomb threats, seismic events, collisions – basically unexpected things that hurt both tracks.
Yeah London only has The Victoria, Central, Jubilee, Northern, and Piccadilly lines and a section of the London Overground (Windrush line) that operate 24 hours on the weekend.
The poor buggers, how do they cope?
London runs just under half of it’s lines at around 1/6 of peak frequencies.
The equivalent for Auckland would be S-C line running every 50 mins, or all lines running every 2 hours or so. It would be largely pointless and more easily covered by buses.
One day for sure, but it’s nowhere near the most important missing piece of the puzzle on the rail network. In my view 10 min frequencies between the peaks is.
Freddy – Kiwirail has partioned the network into 36 unique pieces that can individually be reduced to bi-directional running if required.
as someone who is more likely to be out late on Sunday, I suppose I’ll have to wait my turn for good frequency… until then it’s the bus for me
How about services every 15 min until midnight every night? Like a proper city?
This is fantastic and the art uplifts the whole experience. Now let’s connect Auckland with the rest of the country by train and connect trains to buses. There can be no justification for putting more government $$$ into Auckland while much of NZ doesn’t even get buses connecting their towns to other places. It’s shocking to think of people living in small villages with no way of travel except for private cars. NZ has done this before and we must do it again.
This is great start.
However the real test will be in 6-12months time to see if we have real uplift (which I have no doubt we will as long as AT deliver constistent and reliable service).
The other big benefit will come from development in the surrounding catchments at all stations. There already has be some, but with a reliable service, businesses and developers will be eyeing up property surrounding all stations.
It sounds great. Is there any future plans to expand in any way.
No.
Unfortunately I just can’t see another inner city rail project out there; one that either party would be prepared to fund given the unfortunate experience with LRT.
I think the immediate future is more bus priority; completion of eastern busway and NW busway, better priority for the NEX south of the bridge and further off, Airport to Botany BRT. Nothing to be sniffed at.
Most impressive thing for me wasn’t the station entrance in K Road that I had a quick walk around, it was that the area all around the station was activated, lots of people dining, which was great to see. I can see a lot of potential for a part of the city I would have generally avoided like the plague after dark.
It wasn’t like that this morning! The only CRL station that had coffee outside and handy was Maungawhau. Felt quite strange, but I daresay it will change soon enough as summer comes.
We were also disappointed at the lack of visibility in the stations of a story about the artworks – say a big video screen with the building of the,work,etc.
The trains themselves were fabulous though! It will be wonderful for those whose trips are hugely reduced, like the AGGS students.
> At this stage the changes are largely about filling in the gaps in the timetable, so they won’t change travel times.
They absolutely do reduce the time I spend on the platform waiting for the next train, which is a win!
Amazing first week!
I was not a regular train user before, but have since used it everyday since flying back into Auckland on Monday, including an Airport-Puhinui-EW to get home.
Also, the bike + train combo is elite!!
The OW line has made the bike + train combo from Mt Albert to Remuera the quickest way to get to work. 2 mins ride, 1 min wait, 18 minute train, and 2 mins ride to work. What would have previously a 35-40 min trip with a transfer (and having to lug a bike around to change platforms, and then a potential wait at Newmarket) is now <25 min with no transfer.
The biggest problem is no OW at peak times, the earliest OW at Mt Albert is 9:29am. Hopefully this changes soon.
Same combo for uni, ride bike to Mt Albert and get off at K Rd, and then bomb it downhill on Symonds St. I then go down to TWH to get back home.
Also did a CRL Pub crawl on sat, holy hecker trying to run down the Beresford escalator for an arriving train was hilarious and it felt like it took forever.
4:30pm train to Eden Park on Sunday was mostly full, an hour and a half before kick off. The trains were chocka headed back. Worked probably as well as it could have.
Thanks to GA for your tireless advocacy for this amazing project!
Sadly there’s very little hope for O-W line running during peak – there’s no enough slots through the network past Maungawhau towards West (and back). With all the level crossings the booms would have to be down most of the time. And according to articles it’s going to take 30y to grade-separate.
if that’s the case then maybe running extra trains as a shuttle service just between Maungawhau and Newmarket is doable? having a 15 minute frequency on that section would certainly make peak time transfers easier.
Why is Metcalfe Rd busier than other crossings on the western line? Is this just because of the timings of the trains meaning there are fewer occasions when two trains go through at a time?
I assume it means busiest in terms of cars/pedestrians using the crossing.
If I remember correctly, Metcalfe, Glenview (Glen Eden), Woodward (Mt Albert), and Morningside were the 4 busiest (or 4 with most near misses/incidents) on the western line
I believe it’s due to the road traffic going through the crossing, not the number of trains.
It is busier with trains than most crossings as it also has trains exiting the depot in Henderson heading out Swanson to start their service but the busier comment relates to road traffic. From what I can tell, there are more cars crossing the tracks here than any other crossing. At last count (earlier this year), nearly 18,000 vehicles crossed the tracks each weekday. The next nearest on the Western line is St Jude St ar around 13k.
Walters Rd is busiest on the southern with about 14k per day.
18K vehicles/day? Well going on warkworth to tehana precedent, that level crossing needs replacing with an expressway, 3 lanes each direction.
“Auckland Transport says the thing preventing this improvement from being extended to Swanson is concerns around the Metcalfe Rd level crossing, which from what I can tell is the busiest road level crossing in the country.”
Is there any discussion about bringing forward the Metcalfe Road and Rānui Station rail level crossing removal? Given it is in the “Outer West” set I assume by default that would put any solution along way into the future.
Yes it is under consideration.
Does anyone know why some of the S-C trains terminate at Waitemataa instead of continuing through Parnell to Newmarket?
Freighters on the eastern line.
Can you clarify this please Patrick? SC trains from Waitematā to Nmkt don’t cross any freight tracks.
Do you happen to know if that will be improving?
Now I’m taking the train every office day and noticed an immediate improvement AT could have done. Why not just MARK all the door location on platform like most of the Asian train stations, ppl would know exactly where to wait for the onboarding, this probably makes the dwell time shorter
I ran for the train as it was pulling as i came down the escalator. Silly me it sat with it’s doors open for at least another minute after i had got my seat.
So i don’t think getting people lined up by the doors to get in faster is going to reduce dwell times. They first need to reduce dwell times to the point that people gettting on and off is actually the thing that holds up the train
Yeah I get the impression that there’s quite a lot of fat in the timetable at the moment.
Big fan of the blog, but I don’t think you should be taking pictures of other people’s kids and posting them online, despite what privacy law allows. The news usually hides faces for privacy in those sort of images.
Fair point, well phrased, thank you – have swapped out the photos in question.
Got the train from the airport straight to my front door on Karangahape. Previously would have to wait (usually late at night) for that (damn confusing) green inner loop bus.
Do we know if the usual Christmas to early new year shut down will still be a thing? I hope not. It always gets in the way of my annual visit to the old homeland. Really looking forward to exploring the new system and the central city without using a car. Park in Pukekohe and train the rest of the way. Cruised Youtube for vids of opening day and beyond and happened upon washed up journo/dinosaur, Duncan Garner doing a right-wing snivel about the CRL. Contrast that to the positivity of the head girl of A. G. Grammer on opening day with her modern world view. The difference couldn’t be more stark.
Now if only we had a train all the way to the airport and if the last departures in the city were around 1am. I work in hospo just across from Waitematā and I can guarantee that you’ll get so many more riders each day if the stations had trains running just a couple hours later. Most restaurant staff are getting off 11pm-1am and have no way to get home other than infrequent, annoying busses or driving ourselves into the city.