This post was originally published as an op-ed in The Post on 11 September 2026, just before the City Rail Link opened. The header image shows Len Brown, first Mayor of the SuperCity and “godfather” of the CRL addressing a Greater Auckland gathering on opening day.
This is a great week to be an Aucklander. The City Rail Link is opening, and so is a vision of how good our city can be when we set our mind to it.
For the tens of thousands who walked through the new and refurbished stations over recent weekends, the feeling was jubilant.
A conversation I overheard at Te Waihorotiu, the new station by Aotea Square, captured the mood: not only have we entered the 21st Century, said someone admiringly, we’ve built something that rivals what you see overseas.
They sounded proud – and so we should be. This moment represents our Super City growing up. If through the 2010s Auckland was a bit of a gangly teenager just getting the hang of its newly long legs, then CRL Launch Day is our 21st birthday party. A civic coming of age.
The new stations, Te Waihorotiu and Karanga-a-Hape, are spectacular. Equally beautiful are the glow-ups for Maungawhau (Mt Eden) and Waitematā (Britomart). Ignore the miserly few grumbling about the relatively tiny sums that went towards artworks and sprucing up the surrounding precincts for pedestrians.
Every penny was worth it, paying off even before trains were even running. The ‘sneak peek’ open days brought throngs to the station precincts, with the Karangahape Business Association reporting foot traffic at 146% of a normal Saturday. Being there myself, the joy was off the charts.
The joy was also seriously off the charts on Sunday 13 September, when the first passenger services ran through the tunnels and new stations. (Image: The Post)
When people flock to the trains, let’s hope they also check out the buses – because the bigger picture of Auckland Rapid Transit, aka ART, embraces not just our lovely new trains but our increasingly electrified frequent bus routes. While there is always more to do, talented planners have worked hard to integrate and expand the network, and Auckland is now far and away the best bus city in Australasia.
Auckland Rapid Transit Map
While we celebrate this exciting CRL milestone, it’s important to recall how we got here: a journey over 100 years in the making. The 1920s saw the first conception of an underground rail tunnel, the Morningside Deviation, which didn’t progress. We got close in the 1970s, with Sir Dove-Myer Robinson’s ardent advocacy for ‘Robbie’s Rapid Rail’. But it was not until the formation of the Super City in the 2010s that things got under way, at long last.
Thanks are due to countless heroes behind the scenes, from those in the Auckland Regional Transport Authority who in the 2000s secured planning designations for a rail tunnel under Commercial Bay, to everyone who progressed the technical work, wrangled key people into the right rooms at the right moment, and those who did the hard mahi building the thing.
More publicly, there were many advocates and community members who campaigned for many years to help make this happen, Greater Auckland among them.
And political backers of all stripes. Councillors including Mike Lee, Chris Darby, Christine Fletcher, Cathy Casey, and more. Long-standing staunch advocates from central government, including many Ministers of Transport: National’s Simon Bridges, the Greens’ Julie Anne Genter, and Labour’s Phil Twyford and Michael Wood.
Plus a pragmatic Prime Minister, Sir John Key, who despite obstinate opposition from an enormous chunk of his party, and cabinet, made the call to support the project and set it rolling.
There is one political champion who stands head and shoulders above everyone else, without whom the CRL would not exist. This is of course the first Mayor of the Super City, Len Brown.
Len Brown campaigning to be the first mayor of the Super City in 2010. Photo: Neil Duddy/ Suburbans Auckland (as reprinted with this op-ed in The Post, 11 September 2026)
Key called Brown the ‘great father’ of the City Rail Link. And there is something very sweet about opening day coming a week after Father’s Day. Without Len Brown’s tenacity, stubbornness and boldness in constantly pushing for the project, it is highly likely it would never have gotten over the line.
Picture the sliding doors alternative world in which the Auckland of 2026 is still just debating the idea. We’d be a very different city indeed.
Luckily, Len Brown’s energy and commitment led us to the better place we now find ourselves in. His relentless roadshow of public events was essential in uniting Aucklanders behind the idea, eventually making the call for action unignorable.
Len Brown in conversation with Greater Auckland’s Patrick Reynolds this year. See full video here.
Convincing the government of the day to get on board, when for years it had been ridiculing him and the project, was Brown’s crowning achievement. Fittingly, the once-derided ‘Len’s Loop’ will be the centrepiece of his legacy, a glorious gift to the city and the country.
Now retired, the man himself is humble about his role, and quick to give credit to others. But Len Brown has achieved something many Mayors can only dream of: tangibly transforming a city for the better, in a way that will become even clearer over the decades to come.
And best of all, today’s children and future generations will grow up assuming Auckland was always this cool.
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Having visited most of the operational Sydney Metro Stations, I commented to people during the Opening Sunday that the new Auckland Stations were equal, if not better.
The lack of Safety Screens makes them feel bigger.
I am happy with what we have.
I’m very worried we are going to lose the momentum on the amazing CRL because of AT’s inept tame timetabling. For years it was promised you would not need to worry about a timetable and just turn up and wait no more than 5 minutes like other modern PT systems. Not so. I went to get a train from Te Waihorotiu to Karanga-a-Hape last night and it was a 20 minute or so wait so I walked in 10 minutes. What troubles me is that already three friends who loved the CRL experience have told me in the last day they have gone back to driving because the wait times are too long. It’s time Mayor Brown took PT off AT as it fails time after time to be bold and make good decisions.
Sorry but lol @ the idea of Wayne Brown managing anything better.
Yes I do think this is a risk. With all the constraints on the network, one of which I think is over-stated – level-crossing limitations, there still is one operational thing AT should do, in my view to improve frequencies.
The strategy must be to focus on the two main lines, and getting them to maximum possible frequency all day as soon as possible. The one near term move to help that would be to return the Onehunga service to terminating at Waitematā, or just Maungawhau, to free train slots on the Green main line for all day higher and regular frequency.
If this is also constrained by port shunt slots on the eastern line, then bounce some services back from Quay Park. At least then the busy western line and the CRL would have better frequency.
O-W terminating at Waitemata would mean my wife would need *three* trains to get to work
Dropping the frequency to half hourly at 815pm is mad. We should be at 8 tph until 8pm and at least 4tph until at least 10 pm weekdays and probably until 2am Friday and Saturday nights.
I just don’t know how harder and more emphatically we can point out to AT that higher frequency is pretty much their entire product.
It is not everything, but it is pretty much everything. For as much of the day as is possible.
This how to create demand. They have a historic opportunity with the CRL and ol’ President Hormuz to gain new riders, they are getting more free marketing and a stronger ‘push’ environment than is likely to occur again…
But instead they fought to have pathetic official ridership targets, which they can sleepwalk to, so it seems they are.
Too true.
We were looking at catching the train for the NRL Final at Eden Park from Pukekohe. Makes plenty of sense on the way there but the idea of narrowly missing a South-City service home and having to wait another 30 mins on a Sunday night isn’t realistic.
Surely they need to/will put on extra trains?
Ceasing the rapid service at 8pm. Not a serious city.
The evening frequencies are terrible, not even an improvement on weekend nights by the look of it.
Really?
The trains have been quiet at rush hour, am and pm. Given that, can much higher frequency really be justified mid evening?
You know Wayne Brown went from 100% control but him being ineffective at using it as he couldn’t get his council onside, to giving half (including veto power) to central gov and he frames it as more control for Auckland rather than less.
That said, I agree with you about frequency, and I think KR has, like with their dwell times, taken away large amounts of the benefits from CRL.
The timetables aren’t great, they should be at a minimum equal time between trains (the crossing reqs are per hour, so if 3 trains go back to back there is no issue). If non existent freight services are holding up the timetable, they should be removed, a few containers from/to Northland doesn’t outweigh hundreds of people.
The issue is that KR is not a neutral party, AOR doesn’t strongly care, and AT isn’t fighting hard enough for Aucklanders.
This is AT’s and Council’s problem to own. Everyone is subsidiary.
Well the big step up has been achieved.
Thanks to Len Brown and eventually John Key stepping up and overcoming the very powerful motoring/roading interests and their captured politicians.
Also thanks to The Transport Blog and it’s successor, this organisation,
with all their writers/researchers who have, and are still, actively countering reckons, with well researched and referenced arguments.
Arguments that supportive politicians and media have picked up on.
Continuing this agitation here, and at the polls, will achieve ongoing continuing performance upgrades to this now very significant asset.
And can’t the over-long door dwell times be fixed? Thus wringing another complete return trip out of each train set and it’s staff each day? A significant efficiency gain.
Much as I appreciate the improvements, dwell times are a disaster: yesterday over 3 mins at Maungawhau and 2 mins 40 secs at Kingsland. Bizarre. New kit, refurbished rails, etc, and the system is still being run as if it was 12 diesel trains a day on a largely single-tracked network as it was in the 70s.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of this project. As a rural styled large town, occupied by car brain since the second world war, we have wasted generations of cerebral capacity with the numbing act of driving a private motor vehicle.
With the CRL, public transport becomes not only possible, but preferable. I can now walk to Te Waihorotiu, or through it, avoiding the still traffic dominated street above it. I can train to Karang a Hape (basically to enjoy the moving staircase). I even train / bussed to Stoddard Road yesterday, and not having to snake out of the city centre on the bus made the trip far less unenjoyable.
Although Roskill and Maangere (and the entire North Shore) still deserve far better public transport options, the CRL now allows for better transfers, which means for someone like me, who prefers trains, it is possible to minimise non train travel.
As a proud City Centre Resident, having a station near my apartment means I could be in New York, or Melbourne, or in some other city, which qualifies Tamaki Makaurau as an international city!
Finally we can declare independence from the rest of the motu and stop waiting for Poneke to allow us to do stuff.
Who will be the first President of Tamaki Makaurau; an independent, Maori led sovereign state within Aotearoa?
bah humbug
>”When people flock to the trains, let’s hope they also check out the buses – because the bigger picture of Auckland Rapid Transit, aka ART, embraces not just our lovely new trains but our increasingly electrified frequent bus routes.”
Related to this, is there a map (official or otherwise) that shows this ART + most frequent bus routes? The routes that come to my mind are going to be biased to the ones I frequent but hopefully you get what I mean. I’m thinking things like the Outer/Inner/City Links + >>70s, >>27s, >>30, >>65 etc.
I think it’d be pretty useful to show how things like Pt Chev > Mt Eden > Glenn Innes are all connected by a single bus route for example.
https://at.govt.nz/media/l5vpxayy/auckland-transport-map-of-all-bus-train-and-ferry-routes.pdf although they haven’t updated it for CRL yet – from https://at.govt.nz/bus-train-ferry/network-maps-guides-and-timetables
We’ve got something like 40 frequent routes, our bus network is pretty decent. That said, it lacks priority especially crosstown so often it’s easier to drive.
I agree that using the term “metro” has raised expections of a rather more frequent service than has eventuated, which is unfortunate. Also unfortunate is that, as an integral and essential part of the national railway network Auckland has three significant impediments that are designed out of moderm metros:
– level crossings (and lots of them);
– flat junctions (five of them);
– sharing with non-metro trains (especially freight).
There’s some progress on the first; nothing that I’m aware of re the second (though, at the cost of passenger inconvenience, Newmarket and Penrose junctions could be removed from passenger service); and the third (and possible fourth) mains will help with, but not eliminate, the third.
Until these are addressed, running at “normal” metro freqencies will be problematic (though none of them stop current frequencies extending into the evening, obviously desirable if not essential).
As for credit where credit being due, from my recollection if Christine Fletcher hadn’t taken Les Mills’ grandiose underground car park with trains attached and turned it a proper affordable station, there wouldn’t have been the signicant seed from which the CRL has grown.
Wholeheartedly agree on the last point. The redevelopment of Britomart and bringing trains back to the CBD kicked everything else off.
1. Level crossings they’re working on. They’ve left the highest passenger count line until last as it doesn’t have freight, and KR isn’t as concerned about metro services, but it’s at the point now where there is not much left on other lines (Onehunga technically is last but it’s very possible they close that line entirely).
I don’t know if there are plans for the Wiri junction, but Westfield is planned to be seperated by the 4th main. They’re up to planning 6 tracks between Wiri/Westfield but my view is still that they’ll need 8+ along that section in time.
Agreed on Penrose/Newmarket could cease to be an issue by better timetabling/routing (and in Newmarket’s case a 100m or so of extra track south of the station on P1 so it joins after P2/P3 crosses to join the southbound track).
Re Westfield, the fourth main on its own won’t resolve the problem of Green and Red routes and port shuttles weaving past and through each other, but four passenger mains so that the two routes could continue parallel southwards to Wiri junction would help (and with that junction, too).
As for the western line, it does have freight (though not a lot, but this may change with developments at Marsden Point). KR is concerned about metro services (they’re a major customer): it may not be concerned enough from some perspectives, but it also has its other customers (and its owner) to take into account.
And re Newmarket and Penrose, it seems to me that AT has prioritised (respectively) cross-platform/through-service passenger convenience over operational simplicity (having Onehunga’s single-track branch as part of the core network doesn’t help the latter). I’m sure that that’s the right thing to do at the former and probably the latter, but who knows what the future holds?
There’s something clearly wrong where it’s now 5-10 minutes faster for me to get to work – a 4 minute walk from Parnell train station – by getting off my Green Line train and walking from Waitemata than it would be to wait for the next train stopping at Parnell.
And that’s just so I can get to work only 5-10 minutes later than I was getting to work last week.
I think I’m even more pissed than most people because I was so excited for how great the CRL would be.
I was talking to my relative in Takanini the other evening.
She has grandchildren in Pukekohe, so I suggested they could visit her by train, she indicated it was not safe, is that true?
Untrue.
Way safer than being on the roads.
We now have amazing public transport to and around the city centre now, I think it’s only fair to congestion charge the isthmus at peak times.
Cross town a lot of work is to be done, our trains are (still) too slow, especially at off peak times. Travel times are really the main barrier I hear people using to justify driving over public transport, usually because it would take twice or thrice (for off peak large crosstown trips) the amount of time. Last mile will always be the slow part so I think the reasonable goal for the network is comparable travel times from one station to another to another compared to off peak driving.
Raising frequency, lowering dwell times, getting some more tracks and then running all day expresses on the SC should be the main thing we chase up for the next few years.