{"id":192061,"date":"2025-12-19T17:10:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/192061\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T17:10:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:10:12","slug":"john-campbell-rides-the-new-city-rail-link","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/192061\/","title":{"rendered":"John Campbell rides the new City Rail Link"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the end, and we\u2019re not quite there yet, the tunnel boring machine that drilled the 3.4km subway making up Auckland\u2019s City Rail Link (CRL) not only moved roughly 1 million cubic metres of soil, and smoked through somewhere in the region of $5 billion and the best part of a decade\u2019s work, it also chewed through governments, ministers, councils and mayors. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s figurative, of course. <\/p>\n

Watch John Campbell ride the CRL on TVNZ+<\/a><\/p>\n

But the CRL has taken so long and has had so many parents that hardly anyone really remembers its conception. Mayor Len Brown was amongst its most fervent supporters. And I remember interviewing Simon Bridges about it when he was Transport Minister. But the dream pre-dates both of them. Indeed, as Len Brown himself repeatedly pointed out, “Railways Minister Gordon Coates gave his support for a city-to-Morningside underground rail line” as early as 1923. 102 years ago. Yes, this has been a project that\u2019s stumbled slowly forward with the ridiculous will of a drunk trying to walk in a straight line. <\/p>\n

And now (well, at some stage in 2026), Aucklanders will be able to catch a train that actually stops in the central city, doesn\u2019t have to go via Newmarket to do so, and will get there roughly twenty minutes faster than the current service. In a city in which traffic can sometimes move at the same speed as the Southern Alps, that\u2019s a pretty revolutionary public transport development. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve canvassed the budget over-runs and the ever expanding time-frame<\/a> at length, elsewhere. But now that it\u2019s almost, almost, a train people will be able to catch, what\u2019s it like? <\/p>\n

I can answer that, dear reader, because, along with TVNZ camera people Rewi Heke and Zoe Madden-Smith, I\u2019ve travelled it. <\/p>\n

I should declare that I love trains. Not as much as some people think. I mean, really, approaching me on the street to discuss steam locomotives is endearing but a little bit wasted on me. <\/p>\n

But when my children were little we\u2019d go to what was then the Britomart (now Waitemat\u0101) Station and get on the first train leaving, to anywhere. After a while, these adventures had less appeal for my extraordinary daughter, but my son regarded them with the same joy a child might treat a trip to Disneyland. And his joy was my joy. He\u2019s 22 now, but every time I see a commuter train in Auckland I grab my phone to photograph it and send to him. <\/p>\n

And when I went to Japan in 2019, cameraman Andy Dalton and I were standing on the platform in Yokohama, and on the spur of the moment we made a story about trains that Breakfast loved so much they played twice in the same morning<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Word gets out. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The City Rail Link has three brand new stations. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

So here we are, the first TV crew to do the full trip, on the platform of the Maungawhau Railway Station, where the CRL goes underground and heads down to the big Waitemat\u0101 station, at the bottom of Queen Street. <\/p>\n

We are in so much PPE gear that we look like a cheap, seventies toothpaste. But this is still a work site \u2013 with the formal process of safety tests and emergency evacuation tests, etc, yet to be fully completed. <\/p>\n

New route<\/p>\n

Previously, trains from the west of Auckland shuffled along this line, passing above the city, and then, bizarrely, away from it, heading to Newmarket, before dropping through Parnell and (finally, finally) into the CBD. That\u2019s like Wellingtonians going from Lower Hutt to Courtney Place via Karori. In other words, it\u2019s stupid. <\/p>\n

And that, for decades, was Auckland\u2019s train service. At least from the west. And no matter where you came from, there was one city stop at the Pacific Ocean end of Queen Street and no, and I\u2019m going to repeat that word, no stops at all further into the CBD. Honestly, it wasn\u2019t so much a train service as an IOU on a train service. People used it, which tells you how bad Auckland\u2019s traffic is, but it wasn\u2019t ideal. Or even close to ideal. Or even a train ride away. <\/p>\n

Now, at Mt Eden, not far from Eden Park, the train turns north, as it always should have, and descends into the earth for the 3.4km ride, underground the whole way, to Waitemat\u0101. <\/p>\n

That saves 20 minutes, each way, for people coming from the west. And 40 minutes a day is worth saving. <\/p>\n

But there\u2019s something else welcome about it. On its way to Waitemat\u0101, the train passes through two, new, central city stations – Karanga-a-Hape Station (33 metres beneath the city\u2019s beloved K Road area), and Te Waihorotiu Station, directly adjacent to Queen Street, and in the shadow of the Sky Tower. <\/p>\n

Previously, you had to get off at Waitemat\u0101 (formerly Britomart) and walk or catch a bus to get to these parts of the city. The walk to K Road would be roughly 25 minutes, up hill, in a city in which it rains in winter and is humid in summer. You’d arrive wet, or smelling like a salmon quiche, or both.<\/p>\n

\"Joel<\/p>\n

Joel O’Dea, train driver trainer. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

And now, now, you\u2019ll get off at one of the two new central city stations and catch an escalator from the dark into the light. Yes, you\u2019re right if you think that\u2019s a leaden metaphor as well as a statement of fact. But it feels like Auckland is catching up with where it should always have been. Better late than never, of course. But wow, this is late. <\/p>\n

The ride itself is quick. Eight minutes. But it\u2019s been so long in the making that it contains a larger quality of wonder. <\/p>\n

Doubling the trains<\/p>\n

Joel O\u2019Dea is our tour guide. His role is Train Driver Trainer \u2013 and he\u2019s trained 280 drivers, so far. Why? Well, at peak time, a train will rumble through this subway slightly more often than every four minutes. <\/p>\n

Joel points out that previously you could only enter Waitemat\u0101 from one direction, the east, but the CRL comes in from the west, effectively doubling (or thereabouts) the number of trains that can run in and out of the city. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s just a train, of course. They look no different, and are no different, from the trains already running on Auckland\u2019s tracks. But a large city without a decent public transport system is a city selling its inhabitants short. There are still no trains under (or over) the harbour to the North Shore, and that\u2019s absurd. But one victory at a time, right? And a victory this is. <\/p>\n

We pull into Waitemat\u0101 Station, once a dead-end, now open from two directions, and it feels like we\u2019re arriving somewhere new. Everyone involved is looking proud and chuffed. <\/p>\n

It’s an ordinary arrival, really. Almost anti-climatic, in some respects. But it will change this city – in ways that make it better to live in. <\/p>\n

We get off, briefly, looking nuttily out of place in our PPE amongst the ordinarily clothed commuters waiting for other trains. <\/p>\n

At some stage in 2026, they too will be able to jump on this train. <\/p>\n

Maybe they\u2019ll go to K Road for a drink or a meal. Maybe they\u2019ll save twenty minutes on their trip home. But whatever their purpose, they\u2019ll be catching a train that takes the idea of getting people in Auckland to where they want to be more seriously than even before. <\/p>\n

Watch John Campbell ride the CRL on TVNZ+<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the end, and we\u2019re not quite there yet, the tunnel boring machine that drilled the 3.4km subway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5901,51,111,43,139,69,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-192061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-1news-recommends","9":"tag-auckland","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-transport"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}