Auckland’s City Rail Link finally opened to passengers yesterday, after a decade of construction and more than a century of talk, writes Henry Oliver in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.
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Yes! The CRL is finally open! And more than 400 Aucklanders turned out before dawn on Sunday to catch the first CRL train into the city, RNZ reported yesterday. The first passenger service departed Ōtāhuhu at 4.57am, with about 14,300 people travelling across the rail network on the first day.
The Spinoff’s Joel MacManus was among those queuing in the dark. Several enthusiasts arrived as early as 3am, he wrote, though no one seemed to mind waiting. “They’d been waiting for this moment for 10 years. Or, depending how you count it, for more than a century.”
As the train approached the first underground section, a chant of “tunnel, tunnel, tunnel” rang out. MacManus described the scene: “The tunnelled section was the best-lit part of the entire pre-dawn journey… People stared out the windows, audibly gasping at the idea of a train running below the surface of the earth.”
At Karanga-a-Hape station, passengers burst into applause. On the platform, many waited with phones out to document the arrival.
Fire disrupts first day
But the launch was not without drama. A small fire started by an electrical cable forced the evacuation of Waitematā Station around 5.50am, RNZ reported. The fire was quickly extinguished, but there were delays and cancellations on all lines, with service mostly recovered by noon.
Auckland Transport chief executive Stacey van der Putten told the media: “These things happen. It’s an active railway. You can’t predict these things. What we were really impressed with was how the system responded.”
What the CRL means for Auckland
Transport Minister Chris Bishop, who was on board the first train, said the CRL’s launch was not just about new stations but “what it unlocks for the rest of the network” — including significantly shorter journey times and a more connected network across the city.
Auckland councillor Richard Hills said: “It’s huge for our city, people don’t realise what’s coming and they’re going to be demanding more after this.”
Patrick Reynolds, director of urban transport lobby Greater Auckland, told RNZ that despite the blown budget and complaints from politicians along the way, the CRL was actually good value for money – and cheaper than motorways.
OK, what’s next?
The CRL may be the biggest piece of Auckland’s transport to-do list, but it is far from the only one, 1News’s James Ball wrote this morning. The next projects on the list include:
- Ngākōroa Station in south Auckland, planned to open in 2027
- Eastern Busway – the final section through Pakūranga to Botany is due for completion in late 2027
- Northwest Busway (Te Ara Hauāuru) – an 18km busway with seven stations, priced at least $4.4bn
- Airport to Botany – an 18km bus rapid transit route, with route protection confirmed in April 2026
- Avondale to Southdown – a proposed 13km rail line, the biggest addition to Auckland’s rail network since Britomart opened in 2003
- Second Harbour Crossing – NZTA counts at least 10 major studies in 30 years, and a decision on a bridge or tunnel is not expected until 2027 at the earliest, so construction would go well into the 2030s
But for now, we celebrate (and commute)
It’s taken so long – a hundred years or over a decade – it’s actually hard to fathom that it’s open. As MacManus wrote, the true sign of success for the CRL will be when it is “just another train boringly following its schedule, a part of Aucklanders’ lives so widely accepted that no one thinks about it at all.”
If you want more CRL news, both Stuff and the Herald have liveblogs up reporting on the first Monday morning commute. Let’s hope everyone gets to work on time.
