The three agencies that run Auckland’s rail system will soon be under one roof together, after the ribbon-cutting of a new rail operations centre in Ellerslie.
From the end of next week, teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail will all be punching in at the same location, with the hope that closer relationships and collaboration will help them solve future rail issues at speed.
It’s a sign of a rail network that’s about to turn a corner. KiwiRail chief executive Peter Reidy said the new site is needed to manage greater operational complexity.
On a similar timeframe is a raft of changes and upgrades to the current network, mostly designed to allow the region to make the most of the City Rail Link once it’s opened.
KiwiRail is two thirds of the way through an Auckland upgrade that has seen recently completed renovations of the eastern and southern lines.
The to-do list is significant, however, with projects like three new train stations between Papakura and Pukekohe along a newly electrified line, and station upgrades at Middlemore and Henderson. Reidy said the current work programme represents a “game-changer” to Auckland’s transport infrastructure.
“It’s happening today, it’s not ‘might be’,” he said
While the significant works have caused disruptions for Aucklanders trying to get around the city in recent years, Reidy said there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
“It’s hard when you see the disruption, it’s hard when you hear about heat, it’s hard when you hear about speed restrictions, it’s hard when commuters send you a text saying their train has been delayed,” he said. “Every world-class city goes through this. You cannot have the infrastructure unless you have the disruption.”
He pointed to the Puhoi to Warkworth motorway as an example of a period of pain netting dividends down the line:
“Look at that motorway, look at the disruption that was causing, look at the issues, and look at what it’s doing now for property values around that area and connection times.”
The men in charge of Auckland’s rail appear very aware of some of the common complaints of a city left waiting at the platform one too many times.
Heat-related speed reductions earlier in the year saw a number of services suspended, right as the Eastern Line came back online after almost a year of scheduled maintenance.
It was a situation that saw Mayor Wayne Brown collect the agency heads in his office for some answers. Speaking at the site opening, Brown said he was pleased to see this renewed approach to collaboration after the “barking” he’d given them.
The rail operations centre, however, was in business case form back in 2020 and turned around in the past 18 months, according to project lead Carl Mills.
Nevertheless, the timing is good for the agencies that can back up their promise of a quicker reaction to issues with a bustling floor of staff, complete with a forest of screens displaying up-to-date data and an ominously named ‘incident room’.
The rail heads said the hope behind the current suite of work was that by the time the City Rail Link opened, line closures for maintenance would be much less frequent.
KiwiRail asset management and investment manager Dave Gordon pointed out how upgrades to the Eastern Line would mean work on one section would not close the entire line down.
That’s because of switches allowing trains to change between northbound and southbound lines, steering around specific areas of work to reduce delays and cancellations.
Gordon said a system with less disruption would be a necessity once the City Rail Link was open.
“There’s just a lot happening on 150km,” he said. “This time in a year, that lot will be considerably less. And it has to be, because we’re going to start to bring [the City Rail Link] into operation, and you can’t look at it as just a self-contained tunnel.”
The City Rail Link is expected to be a shot in the arm for Auckland’s rail network with a target of 29 million annual rail passenger trips by 2030.
That’s more than double the current 12.5 million trips in the past year.
So trains going through the tunnel between Mt Eden and Britomart will also allow for more trains throughout the entire network, potentially with services travelling all the way from the far west to the far south via the centre city.
Gordon said that meant in the future, a problem in Sunnyvale could mean a delay in Papakura.
“In a year’s time, a huge chunk of the noise that everyone’s experiencing at the moment will be gone,” he said. “Once City Rail Link gets going, we can’t rock up in a year’s time and say ‘Oh, wouldn’t mind closing this line for a while for work.’”
KiwiRail says once the City Rail Link is up and running it will shift from a reactive maintenance state to a preventive long-term forecasted approach.
The key to that is getting a sustainable maintainable network up right now.
But even with all of this underway and the City Rail Link inching towards the present, this could be seen as a difficult moment for transport infrastructure.
The recently released transport policy statement from the Government indicated that freight rail would no longer be funded from the National Land Transport Fund, with Transport Minister Simeon Brown saying road users shouldn’t have to subsidise rail.
With passenger rail handled by a variety of stakeholders across the country, it’s unclear if it will be hit by an equal slash to funding.
Speaking at the opening, Brown said later this year the Government would take another look at the metropolitan rail operating model, which hasn’t been updated since 2009.
“The Government will also be reviewing the metropolitan rail operating model of rail to ensure the system of which governs, runs and funds metropolitan rail in Auckland and Wellington is able to keep pace with the change and complexity and the increased patronage which we are hoping for on our network,” he said.
He said the review would likely institute a user-pays approach “which ensures commuters ultimately get the service they deserve”.
Unfortunately Transport Minister Brown is one of the key drivers of the neoliberal approach to transport issues, like not having car drivers contributing to what is a crucial public necessity which benefits the whole community, even those who never ride on it. He uses insulting language such as commuters getting the service ‘they’ deserve. Not ‘we’ deserve. It’s not a service for ‘us’, it’s a service for ‘them’ and ‘they’ can also pay for it. Never mind it frees up the roads so that ‘we’ can get across town. Global crises issues aren’t even on his radar. I’m wondering what public role would be a suitable one for Transport Minister Brown but can’t think of anything.