Dumbing down the City Rail Link

The City Rail link is close to completion and is ready to properly open in early 2026.

The original vision needs to be restated. The CRL will allow the Britomart’s throughput to double. Instead of being a terminating station it would become a through station. And instead of its capacity being maximised in a few years time it will have room for expanded public transport numbers for some time in the future. The peak hour capacity of the train system after completion is the equivalent of 16 lanes of additional highway or two additional harbour bridges.

And the benefits for the West will be prodigious. Peak time trip frequency will decrease from 10 minutes to 6 minutes. The CRL will also take 15 minutes off a standard train trip. And the new Aotea and Karangahape stations will open up the centre of Auckland. Many more westies will prefer to catch a train to the city rather than driving. And for most of us it will be quicker and cheaper.

This is why recent announcements are so disappointing. Instead of there being ten trains heading both ways during peak times there will only be eight heading in one direction and four in the other.

A major reason for this is the number of level crossings out west. I have been saying ever since I saw the first electric train travel through the Glen Eden station ten years ago that the train crossing over Glenview Road was going to be problematic. I thought then that undergrounding of this section of rail would be vital.

I had previously had some involvement in the decision to underground the rail in New Lynn. Originally the proposal was that the rail would remain at grade. Modelling suggested that the surrounding roads would be gridlocked if this happened.

The problem was that Treasury’s discount rate applied to the expected return was set too high and the analysis then anticipated that the expected return would be too low. For something that will be around for a long time, such as rail infrastructure, a low rate is appropriate. Local MP David Cunliffe managed to get the Government to approve and part fund the project.

Looking back on the decision it was clearly the right one. The New Lynn station has been the driver of significant intensification and the area functions very well. And although road traffic is busy, it is not gridlocked.

Turning to Glen Eden the Glenview Road crossing is a bottleneck. With 6 minute frequencies the crossing arms will be down for a significant amount of time and congestion will be worse.

It has been predicted that if previous plans were implemented the barriers will be down 57% of the time. The current figure is 28%.

Investment out West on level crossings is clearly needed.

You would think that since most of the benefits of the CRL are out West this should be where efforts are concentrated. But for some reason the first two funded projects are on the Southern Line.

The first is in Takaanini. Auckland’s Regional Land Transport Plan said this about the project:

This project was not initially proposed to be funded for construction this decade due to its high total cost and funding limitations, however, it was fully funded after the Mayoral proposal for the LTP was adopted in June 2024.

It is expensive and is estimated to cost $550 million with $200 million being contributed by the Government although this estimate would appear to be conservative.

Instead in the ARLTP there was $63 million for dealing with level crossings including those at O’Neill’s Road and Corban Estate.

Council also announced that works in Glen Innes will also proceed early. The works involve the construction of a pedestrian overbridge. I understand that this was not programmed until 2037. I do not know why this should have been given priority over other competing claims such as the O’Neills Road crossing.

My initial response to the announcements is why aren’t efforts being concentrated out west. This is where most of the benefits will be felt.

The CRL is a transformative project that will do more for rail usage than possibly anything previously attempted. But I am afraid at a time where we need to maximise public transport usage as quickly as possible its implementation will mean that it is decades before it lives up to its potential.