Tag: City Rail Link

Yesterday Phil Twyford was confirmed as the new Transport Minister with Julie Anne Genter as an Associate – a powerful team to change transport in NZ. Twyford also picked up the role of Housing and Urban Development. Given housing and transport are two sides of the same coin, it’s great that we might finally be able to see some co-ordination and integration between these two critical portfolios.…

There have been a number of updates recently from City Rail Link Limited (CRLL) showing some of great progress of the city’s highest priority transport project. Outside Britomart, the path of the tunnels through the Commercial Bay development has become increasingly visible with walls starting to be formed.…

Following on from my post the other day about The Spinoff’s interview with the City Rail Link team and some of their concerning comments, I thought I’d take a look at a few issues from a slightly different angle. In particular I thought I’d look at the issue of the Mercury Lane entrance and the access from there to Karangahape Rd, where most people will be going.…

On Saturday, The Spinoff published a fantastic and concerning piece by Simon Wilson on the City Rail Link. It comes following an interview with the CRL project director Chris Meale, whose answers to a few questions ought to have the new board of City Rail Link Limited, along with their stakeholders in Council and the Government asking some serious questions.…

On Friday, the City Rail Link (CRL) took another important step forward with the government and council officially signing agreements to create a jointly owned company to deliver the project – City Rail Link Ltd (CRLL). The new company will take over delivery of the project from Auckland Transport.…

This post originally appeared in June 2012. Looking back now, it’s a huge relief that Auckland Transport did end up including the Eastern Link in the CRL project, as excluding it would have undermined the functionality of the CRL enormously. The other day I covered part of the case against having an Eastern link, with this post I thought I would look at the case for building it and also whether we could live with things if it was not possible to grade separate the junction with the western link.…

In September last year it was revealed the City Rail Link’s cost may have increased from $2.5 billion to $3.4 billion. As much as we have strongly supported CRL over the years, and continue to do so, a $900 million cost increase is massive.…

The City Rail Link really seems to be moving forward at the moment. Physical construction on the first sections are no wel underway and progress on the main works from Wyndham to Mt Eden are at various stages of the tender process.…

The City Rail Link is a crucial piece of infrastructure for Auckland but it’s not a magic bullet and doesn’t have unlimited capacity. We’ve been seeing a lot of comments recently, both on the blog and elsewhere, questioning why the City Rail Link (CRL) isn’t being used more, why we’ve suggested a second, complementary network of light rail for some routes. …