{"id":575213,"date":"2026-08-20T21:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T21:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/575213\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T21:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T21:14:09","slug":"city-rail-link-neighbours-lose-sleep-over-karanga-a-hape-station-vent-noise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/575213\/","title":{"rendered":"City Rail Link neighbours lose sleep over Karanga-a-Hape Station vent noise"},"content":{"rendered":"

When night falls, the sound hums outside her bedroom, which she said she can no longer sleep in.<\/p>\n

\"Judith,Judith, a resident in an apartment overlooking Beresford Square, is frustrated about the noise generated by the CRL Karanga-a-Hape Station. Photo \/ Emma Tavai<\/p>\n

She said the relentless noise has made parts of her home virtually unusable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt runs 24 hours a day, all day, all night. Very rarely does it get turned off,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you think it\u2019s not going to turn on, then it turns on at midnight. But lately it\u2019s been going 24 hours a day \u2026 for days and nights on end.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the worst part was knowing there was nowhere in her own home she could go to escape it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t live here. We just can\u2019t escape the noise. At night it\u2019s absolutely awful. It\u2019s affecting our sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judith said she could no longer use her master bedroom or balconies and kept her doors and windows shut in an attempt to block out the sound.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have everything closed, we have the TV on, we can still hear it. There\u2019s just no escaping it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AucklandAuckland Transport says the Karanga-a-Hape Station fans are within permitted noise levels, but their settings will be changed to reduce the sound. Photo \/ Emma Tavai<\/p>\n

Judith said residents were never warned they would be living alongside a fan producing this level of noise.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were never told that there was going to be this noisy vent, this noisy fan going all day and all night. Never.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judith first raised concerns about the noise last year. <\/p>\n

She claimed AT told her noise measurements had only been taken at ground level rather than from apartments above the vent.<\/p>\n

Further testing was then carried out from higher up, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey thanked me for raising it because they didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ResidentsResidents living above ventilation fans at the new Karanga-a-Hape Station, in apartments like this one, say the noise can continue through the night. Photo \/ Emma Tavai<\/p>\n

She questioned the positioning of such a powerful ventilation system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would you put a big noisy fan outside all these bedroom windows, outside all these homes?\u201d<\/p>\n

Judith wanted the noise significantly reduced or at least redirected from residents\u2019 apartments.<\/p>\n

An AT spokesperson said the fans were operating within permitted noise levels, but changes would be made in the coming weeks to make them quieter.<\/p>\n

AT took responsibility for the City Rail Link infrastructure on June 30 and had since received complaints from five people, mainly about noise at night. <\/p>\n

\"FiveFive people have complained to Auckland Transport about fan noise around Karanga-a-Hape Station since the agency took control of CRL assets on June 30. Photo \/ Emma Tavai<\/p>\n

The spokesperson said noise testing had since been carried out inside affected homes and around Beresford Square, including in apartments and on balconies above street level.<\/p>\n

The testing found the noise was below the permitted night-time limit of 60 decibels, they said.<\/p>\n

The fans were needed to circulate air through the tunnels when trains were not running, particularly while KiwiRail workers carried out maintenance at night.<\/p>\n

After residents\u2019 complaints, AT reviewed how the fans were running and had decided to change their settings, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The new settings were expected to \u201csignificantly reduce\u201d the noise and residents were told about the planned changes last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have undertaken these additional measures in good faith to help improve the experience of residents living near the station and to respond to concerns that were raised with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The changes were expected to be made within the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

After hearing AT\u2019s response, Judith said residents had little choice but to wait for the fan settings to be changed and see whether it made a difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has to be at a level that is reasonable [so] we can sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

The long-awaited $5.4 billion City Rail Link project will open next month<\/a> on September 13. <\/p>\n

Rachel Maher is the education correspondent for the New Zealand Herald. She also covers other topics such as Auckland issues, crime and local government. She started at the Herald as a breaking news journalist in 2022, before joining the Auckland team this year. <\/p>\n

Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When night falls, the sound hums outside her bedroom, which she said she can no longer sleep in.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[21045,2199,22857,9517,71,13313,6800,283368,48623,101,58,4188,5268,3244,111,139,2551,35921,69,1523,207,138250,530,50557,8808,84758,2863,213,13655,165,2846,271288,245435,102],"class_list":["post-575213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-above","tag-city","tag-escape","tag-fans","tag-from","tag-giant","tag-homes","tag-invaded","tag-karangaahape","tag-left","tag-link","tag-living","tag-lose","tag-neighbours","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-night","tag-noise","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-rail","tag-relentless","tag-residents","tag-robbed","tag-running","tag-shaft","tag-sleep","tag-sports","tag-station","tag-their","tag-them","tag-vent","tag-ventilation","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575213","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=575213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}