CRL delayed till second half of 2026
While Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel officially opened yesterday, our own rail tunnel just got a little further away.
For some time now, it has been said that the City Rail Link (CRL) will open sometime in 2026, and there was a lot of hope that it could be early in 2026 given we’re already seeing Auckland Transport running timetable testing and that the construction part of the project was due for completion now.…
46 Comments 2025 Public Transport Ridership Update
We’re rapidly approaching the end of the year and it’s been a while since we last looked at what was happened with public transport ridership, so it’s time to take a look again.
First up, data for October suggests that at a monthly level, we can see we’re tracking almost identically to last year.…
The frequentisation of Tāmaki Makaurau
This is a guest post by Darren Davis. It originally appeared on his excellent blog, Adventures in Transitland, which we encourage you to check out. It is shared by kind permission. The bad old days To get a full appreciation of just how big a transformation Auckland’s bus network has undergone, you have to look back to the bad old days.…
More progress on the Northwest Busway
One of the few major transport projects that we agree with the government on is the Northwest busway and it’s about to take another step closer to reality.
Earlier this year it was announced that the NZTA board had approved an investment case for the project and that more work would happen
“Funding of around $116 million has also already been approved by the NZTA Board in late 2024 for early consenting work and strategic property acquisitions for Brigham Creek and Lincoln Road stations.…
Manchester: an urban renewal case study
I lived in the UK in the 1980s, so whenever anyone describes the Auckland city centre as “dilapidated” (as the Herald did in an recent editorial), I can’t help chuckling. While we do have very real problems, we have nothing like the complete physical ruin of whole areas and communities on the scale that was so widespread in post-industrial Thatcher’s Britain, especially in the north where the Industrial revolution began, like Manchester below.…
Pre-Rapid Transit
A clear game-changer for Auckland would be the earliest possible completion of the long-planned Rapid Transit Network. We have a growing and improving bunch of lines, on a long held and evolving plan, but as yet not enough of the whole to gain the great multiplying benefit of the network effect.…
Electrifying the Golden Triangle
This is a guest post by Darren Davis. It originally appeared on his excellent blog, Adventures in Transitland, which we encourage you to check out. It is shared by kind permission. A Detailed Business Case for the electrification of the Golden Triangle’s rail network has been underway for a while but information recently shared by KiwiRail with Waikato’s Regional Land Transport Committee sheds some light on their emerging thinking on what this might look like.…
The secrecy of mega-projects
How is it that mega-projects costing billions get such little public involvement and scrutiny? That’s a question that Mayor Wayne Brown effectively hits on in an interview a few days ago with the Herald where he spoke on plans for an additional harbour crossing.…
Electrifying the North Island Rail Network
At about the same time as Wellington were announcing their new battery electric regional trains, KiwiRail was talking to the Waikato Regional Transport Committee (WRTC) about a plan to effectively electrify the entire North Island rail network.
You can also watch the presentation here, from about 44 minutes on.…
Wellington’s new regional trains revealed
Much like Auckland, Wellington rail users have had a hard time of it recently with significant works being undertaken to upgrade the network. They had some great news yesterday with the announcement Alstom will be building 18 five-car battery electric multiple unit (BEMU) trains to for their regional services.…
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