An earnest attempt to work out when the City Rail Link will open, with the help of maths, a calendar and the mayor.

As we get closer to launch day for that shimmering 3.5km-long stretch of railway track burrowed deep under the streets of Auckland we call the City Rail Link, my sense is people are shuffling towards one of two camps. 

On one side of the track, the Panacea-CRL crowd wait like stans for the rapture, convinced that the project will immediately unclog the roads, reanimate a sluggish city, and wash away all our sins and yellow-legged hornets. On the other, the CRL-Realists fold their arms, harrumphing that this will barely shift the needle, and was it really worth a decade of disruption and delay? 

What brings them – and the rest of us in between – together is just wanting to know when that launch day is going to be. 

While we wait for the people at KiwiRail and AT, who have just gained formal ownership of the thing, to let us know, may we lock arms and try to work it out. (There’s a poll at the end of their post, if that’s what you’re into.)

What we know about when the CRL will open

Hayden Donnell, senior anguish and CRL correspondent for the Spinoff, has stared this challenge squarely in the face more than once. In May, he settled on a two-month window: August and September. Any later than September, so the thinking goes, and it butts right up into election time, and nobody wants that. 

Since then, with Hayden waylaid by other passion projects, further information has seeped into the public domain. Most notably, an instructive slide prepared by Auckland Transport for a Waitematā Local Board workshop was spotted in the wild. That slide advised that the “public opening of network” would take place “on a Sunday, date to be confirmed”, with “trains above normal Sunday timetable to accommodate demand from people wanting to check out the new network”. 

There will also, in the weeks ahead, be a series of ticketed open days for the public at the new stations. 

As for the opening day, it would be “announced 6-8 weeks in advance”. 

Armed with that information, using a calendar and mathematics, we can create a list of seven Sundays.

• August 16
• August 23
• August 30
• September 6
• September 13
• September 20
• September 27

Whittling the options back 

Next Thursday is “dress rehearsal” day for the CRL. That will see the entire Auckland rail network closed to the public – yes, that’s the entire network, and that’s July 9, a weekday – for a full trial of the CRL with the confirmed Monday-Friday timetable. “This will give train drivers, managers and controllers the opportunity to practise and become familiar with the future network.”

The rest of the weekend, from Friday July 10 (Matariki public holiday) to July 12, the network will stay closed for maintenance and repairs. 

After those four days of train-deprivation, surely – surely – there will be an announcement of an opening date. It seems likely, even, that part of the function of the dress rehearsal is to run a line of ink over the pencilled date. 

Or, to put that another way, you wouldn’t announce a date before you’d run that dress rehearsal to check everything is present and accounted for, would you?

The very earliest date from that point of view is August 23, which is six weeks out from the Sunday of the long weekend. Auckland mayor Wayne Brown would love a bit of that, what with it being the day after his 80th birthday. Although he’ll probably still be knocking back the tequila and tearing it up on his banjo as the day dawns, and hardly in any fit state to cut a ribbon. 

More to the point, the announcement is unlikely to get made on a Sunday, so we’re pushed back to August 30 at the earliest. 

The Warriors play at home at Mt Smart on August 30, placing a bit of extra pressure on the network. So let’s lose that, too. 

Leaving:

• September 6
• September 13
• September 20
• September 27

The last of those September Sundays is out. Two reasons. First, it’s Daylight Saving, and while that hardly makes for Y2K, what kind of a monster would start a new timetable on a day with 23 hours? Second, parliament dissolves for the election just four days later; it’s getting right up into the grill of the campaign; better not. 

(It’s also the only of our dates that falls within the school holidays. If we were playing this guessing game for, say, the date of an election, then the holidays would be a cause to scrawl a line through it. But does that apply here? Unlikely. Commuter pressure falls back during school holidays – it could even be an advantage. But too late for that, we’ve ruled it out.) 

The final countdown

So that leaves three Sundays.

• September 6
• September 13
• September 20

And, look, any would probably do it. I attempted to swindle Wayne Brown by asking him what he thought of those dates, but his response was uncharacteristically gnomic. “Could be,” said the mayor. “I’m keeping fit so I live long enough.”

Assuming no gremlins lurch out of the dress rehearsal weekend, it just makes sense to do it as soon as safely practicable. People have waited a hell of a long time; if it’s ready, open it, and get any exuberance and/or teething issues out of the way before everything gets sucked into the election vortex. 

This date falls eight weeks after Matariki weekend, which leaves a good window for that six- to eight-week advance notice, and what better activity for a Father’s Day than pootling about on a brand new trainset?

Accordingly, may it please the court, my $20 is on the CRL opening on:

• September 6

What do you think?