Auckland Transport fessed up<\/a> to some of the teething troubles, with its public transport manager Stacey van der Putten calling the testing a \u201cvaluable learning curve\u201d. She promised to make changes to ensure the CRL would provide reliable services from opening day, whenever that is<\/a>.<\/p>\n At Te Waihorotiu station on Tuesday, it sure looked like the tweaks had paid off. I\u2019d been sent down into the still-unopened station by Aotea Square with a gaggle of reporters to see the CRL running through a simulation of its rush-hour peak. Trains turned up with almost alarming regularity. Each time they stopped, crew members would disembark onto the platform and set a stopwatch. They waited for 75 seconds to tick by, mimicking what the CRL\u2019s operators think will be the actual dwell time when dozens of passengers are entering and exiting the carriages. Then they\u2019d get back in and signal to the driver to leave. As their engine slid away, the white lights of the next train to arrive at the station were often already visible in the tunnel behind.<\/p>\n It seemed, at least to non-expert eyes, to be running like clockwork. If it wasn\u2019t, the CRL\u2019s operators were keeping a poker face. Auckland One Rail<\/a> will be charged with staffing and running the new network. Its chief executive Martin Kearney grinned and chirped cheerfully for the entire 40 minutes we spent at the platform. When a journalist later brought up Port of Auckland boss Roger Gray\u2019s assertion that far from being a game-changer, the CRL will be a \u201cdisaster\u201d<\/a> for the city, he seemed almost incredulous. \u201cDid you see the trains down there?\u201d he asked. \u201cIn my personal opinion, that\u2019s going to be a massive game-changer for Auckland.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The train tsunami did seem pretty game-changey. It was also, at least to my slow-moving and occasionally misfiring neurons, a bit overwhelming. The upside of Auckland having a stunted rail network that ends in a bottleneck is that it\u2019s easy to tell where you\u2019re heading. Trains shuttle from Waitemat\u0101 station (nee Britomart), along the western, southern and eastern lines and back again. The CRL will upend the network\u2019s timetable, rearranging it<\/a> so trains zip from Manukau, through the eastern suburbs, into the city centre and all the way out to Swanson on one East-West line and from Manukau, around the city centre stops and back out on the South-City route.<\/p>\n It should make for a much more fluid and free-flowing network, particularly on the western line, where trains will no longer have to stop at Waitemat\u0101 and reverse out via Newmarket. But the changes will make the in-station mental arithmetic more complex for passengers. Standing at Te Waihorotiu as trains hurtled past every few minutes, I received visions of a future me boarding on the wrong side of the platform and miserably traipsing my way to Meadowbank by mistake, instead of my intended destination of Spinoff HQ in Morningside.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing I dread more than accidentally ending up in east Auckland, and the spectre of a visit to Panmure is deeply troubling. But KiwiRail\u2019s CRL programme director Bevan Assink thought people, including senior writers from The Spinoff, would get used to the new system. \u201cWe do put where the trains are going on the sign on the front of them,\u201d he said, reassuringly.<\/p>\n OK, and the upsides of the CRL are pretty numerous. Te Waihorotiu will open up midtown Auckland to heavy rail for the first time, while the new Karanga-a-hape station will allow passengers to disembark on the doorstep of the Karangahape Road shopping strip. Journey times will halve for many people heading into the city from out west. According to Auckland Transport, the extra capacity will be equivalent to 16 extra traffic lanes heading into the city at peak times<\/a>.<\/p>\nTrains running in two directions. Through a tunnel. In Auckland. Unprecedented! (Photo: Hayden Donnell)<\/p>\n
Auckland\u2019s rapid transit network, starting some time in the second half of this year.<\/p>\n
Bevan Assink, City Rail Link programme director at KiwiRail, believes we will all figure out how to catch the right train. (Photo: Hayden Donnell)<\/p>\n
The view from the escalator as a train arrives at Te Waihorotiu station (Photo: Hayden Donnell)<\/p>\n