City Rail Link construction start goes off with bang

Today’s ceremony to mark the start of construction of Auckland’s City Rail Link (CRL) was outgoing mayor Len Brown’s moment in the sun – both literally and figuratively.

The clouds over central Auckland dispersed as Prime Minster John Key, transport minister Simon Bridges and Auckland Transport chairman Dr Lester Levy all acknowledged Mr Brown’s role as chief cheerleader in getting the long-stymied project to this point.

Mr Key described the official start of one of the biggest infrastructure undertaking in New Zealand history – “a very futuristic project” costing an estimated $2.5 billion and involving a 3.4km tunnel from Britomart station through the CBD to connect with the existing western line at Mt Eden station – as the mayor’s legacy.

It will meet the needs of the increasing population of Auckland’s CBD population as well as wider Auckland residents, he said.

Noting “politics is a tough business,” the prime minister said Mr Brown would be able to “look back and take a lot of pride” in getting the CRL across the line.

Kicking off with a joke about how he “wouldn’t have missed Len’s speech for the world, because I know he’s been working on it for a very long time,” Mr Bridges said the CRL will play an important role in moving people around a city whose population is projected to grow by more than 700,000 people – or 60% of New Zealand’s total population growth – over the next 30 years.

“It will double the capacity of Auckland’s rail network, provide two new stations in the central city and see travel times for commuters reduce significantly,” he said.

Mr Bridges also took the opportunity to talk up the government’s “strong focus on meeting Auckland’s transport needs,” investing $1 billion a year as well as completing a $1.7 billion upgrade of the Auckland metro rail network and trains.

Mr Brown was, not surprisingly, in an ebullient mood, declaring, “Today is a historic day – today changes Auckland forever!”

Referencing a Mainland cheese commercial, the mayor noted “good things take time” – in this case, 90 years since the idea of a CRL was first floated by then railways minister Gordon Coates in 1923.

Trio explodes glitter bomb
Mr Brown said Auckland Transport forecasts that in the first year of the CRL’s operation in 2022 there will be an 88% increase in rail passengers travelling to the city centre and a 40% increase in rail patronage across the network in the morning peak.

While the present “dead end at the Britomart train station limits the rail network to 15,000 trips an hour,” the link will enable the movement of 30,000 people an hour in peak – “the equivalent of 12 motorway lanes.”

The mayor also noted the CRL will also aid economic development, with the private sector planning and delivering $7 billion worth of new private investment around the CRL area by the time the link opens.

This includes more than 70 projects within a short distance of the route, including the New Zealand International Convention Centre, all of which are estimated to create over 13,000 new office jobs and 7000 new retail and construction jobs.

The ceremony – which began with a traditional Maori welcome – culminated in several dance groups performing to “We Built This City” and “Moving on Up” in reflective vests and hard hats (but, oddly, no “The Loco-motion”).

It finally came to an end with Messrs Brown, Bridges and Key together pushed down a plunger that let off a small glitter-loaded firework and served as a signal to release a large number of blue balloons, which floated off into the temporarily cloudless Auckland sky.

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