시티 레일 링크 개통 임박에 따라 오클랜드 시간표 시험 운행

Staff are now putting the near-completed City Rail Link to the test as they try to make the schedule work.

It's the morning peak at one of Auckland's newest train stations.

The rumble of the tracks, the hiss of the brakes, and the doors slide open ... but instead of suits and briefcases, it's clipboards and high-vis.

This week, staff are putting the near-completed City Rail Link to the test, running dozens of mostly-empty trains to simulate the daily timetable.

Martin Kearney, the chief executive of Auckland One Rail, said the tests were improving day by day.

"Yesterday, I think the start-up was slower than it has been today. So today the start-up has performed really well. We've made sure that our train managers have got better timings with the dwell times, and we're just doing tweaking," he said.

But with so many eyes on the $5.5 billion project, he admitted he was nervous.

Photo: RNZ / Yiting Lin

"Lots of anxiety. Look, this is New Zealand's largest infrastructure project, of course I've got anxiety about it," he said.

"I'm happy how the testing's going so far today, and you're only as good as you last day, so I'm happy with today."

Te Waihorotiu is one of four stations on the City Rail Link, alongside the brand new Karanga-a-Hape station and the significantly redeveloped Mount Eden and Britomart stations, now named Maungawhau and Waitematā respectively.

All except Mount Eden were underground, and Auckland Transport's rail services manager, Mark Lambert, said that had been a unique challenge.

"It's a whole different ballgame for Auckland. We don't have underground stations at the moment, so how do you make people feel safe, secure? How do you operate things like tunnel ventilation systems? You've got whole different mechanisms, different equipment to manage, to operate, to maintain," he said.

Martin Kearney, CEO of Auckland One Rail, Mark Lambert, general manager of rail services for AT, and Bevan Assink, City Rail Link programme director at KiwiRail.
Photo: RNZ / Yiting Lin

Though the project had been built in Auckland's central suburbs, KiwiRail's Bevan Assink said those living out west would see the biggest benefits.

"West Auckland, currently, when you ride the train, has to go all the way into Newmarket, through Parnell to get into Britomart. So it's got a really long journey," he said.

"Whereas now, you'll be able to come directly from the west and everything, and come straight into Maungawhau station, then into Karanga-a-Hape, down through to Te Waihorotiu and Britomart."

He hoped the new stations would be as transformative to Auckland as the Britomart station had been when it opened in 2003.

"If you go back in the history of the metro, back to 2003, the metro was nearly dead. But there was a good vision to build Britomart, and so you started seeing the growth in the metro," he recalled.

Photo: RNZ / Yiting Lin

"And now when you look at what we're going to do with the CRL, if history is anything to go by, it's really pointing where we're going to get to."

Amongst all that excitement, some uncertainty remained.

Lambert said the CRL was on track to open by the end of this year, but couldn't confirm a date.

"It will open sometime in the second half of this year. We're currently going through a lot of testing at the moment. Right now we're just about to start trial operations across the three CRL stations, and we need to do emergency services testing as well over the next few months," he said.

Photo: RNZ / Yiting Lin

"When we see how those go, we'll be able to narrow it down further."

Lambert hoped a clearer picture would emerge as testing continued over the next few months.