In the end, and we’re not quite there yet, the tunnel boring machine that drilled the 3.4km subway making up Auckland’s City Rail Link (CRL) not only moved roughly 1 million cubic metres of soil, and smoked through somewhere in the region of $5 billion and the best part of a decade’s work, it also chewed through governments, ministers, councils and mayors.
That’s figurative, of course.
Watch John Campbell ride the CRL on TVNZ+
But the CRL has taken so long and has had so many parents that hardly anyone really remembers its conception. Mayor Len Brown was amongst its most fervent supporters. And I remember interviewing Simon Bridges about it when he was Transport Minister. But the dream pre-dates both of them. Indeed, as Len Brown himself repeatedly pointed out, "Railways Minister Gordon Coates gave his support for a city-to-Morningside underground rail line" as early as 1923. 102 years ago. Yes, this has been a project that’s stumbled slowly forward with the ridiculous will of a drunk trying to walk in a straight line.
And now (well, at some stage in 2026), Aucklanders will be able to catch a train that actually stops in the central city, doesn’t have to go via Newmarket to do so, and will get there roughly twenty minutes faster than the current service. In a city in which traffic can sometimes move at the same speed as the Southern Alps, that’s a pretty revolutionary public transport development.
We’ve canvassed the budget over-runs and the ever expanding time-frame at length, elsewhere. But now that it’s almost, almost, a train people will be able to catch, what’s it like?
I can answer that, dear reader, because, along with TVNZ camera people Rewi Heke and Zoe Madden-Smith, I’ve travelled it.
I should declare that I love trains. Not as much as some people think. I mean, really, approaching me on the street to discuss steam locomotives is endearing but a little bit wasted on me.
But when my children were little we’d go to what was then the Britomart (now Waitematā) Station and get on the first train leaving, to anywhere. After a while, these adventures had less appeal for my extraordinary daughter, but my son regarded them with the same joy a child might treat a trip to Disneyland. And his joy was my joy. He’s 22 now, but every time I see a commuter train in Auckland I grab my phone to photograph it and send to him.
And when I went to Japan in 2019, cameraman Andy Dalton and I were standing on the platform in Yokohama, and on the spur of the moment we made a story about trains that Breakfast loved so much they played twice in the same morning.
Word gets out.
So here we are, the first TV crew to do the full trip, on the platform of the Maungawhau Railway Station, where the CRL goes underground and heads down to the big Waitematā station, at the bottom of Queen Street.
We are in so much PPE gear that we look like a cheap, seventies toothpaste. But this is still a work site – with the formal process of safety tests and emergency evacuation tests, etc, yet to be fully completed.
New route
Previously, trains from the west of Auckland shuffled along this line, passing above the city, and then, bizarrely, away from it, heading to Newmarket, before dropping through Parnell and (finally, finally) into the CBD. That’s like Wellingtonians going from Lower Hutt to Courtney Place via Karori. In other words, it’s stupid.
And that, for decades, was Auckland’s train service. At least from the west. And no matter where you came from, there was one city stop at the Pacific Ocean end of Queen Street and no, and I’m going to repeat that word, no stops at all further into the CBD. Honestly, it wasn’t so much a train service as an IOU on a train service. People used it, which tells you how bad Auckland’s traffic is, but it wasn’t ideal. Or even close to ideal. Or even a train ride away.
Now, at Mt Eden, not far from Eden Park, the train turns north, as it always should have, and descends into the earth for the 3.4km ride, underground the whole way, to Waitematā.
That saves 20 minutes, each way, for people coming from the west. And 40 minutes a day is worth saving.
But there’s something else welcome about it. On its way to Waitematā, the train passes through two, new, central city stations - Karanga-a-Hape Station (33 metres beneath the city’s beloved K Road area), and Te Waihorotiu Station, directly adjacent to Queen Street, and in the shadow of the Sky Tower.
Previously, you had to get off at Waitematā (formerly Britomart) and walk or catch a bus to get to these parts of the city. The walk to K Road would be roughly 25 minutes, up hill, in a city in which it rains in winter and is humid in summer. You'd arrive wet, or smelling like a salmon quiche, or both.
And now, now, you’ll get off at one of the two new central city stations and catch an escalator from the dark into the light. Yes, you’re right if you think that’s a leaden metaphor as well as a statement of fact. But it feels like Auckland is catching up with where it should always have been. Better late than never, of course. But wow, this is late.
The ride itself is quick. Eight minutes. But it’s been so long in the making that it contains a larger quality of wonder.
Doubling the trains
Joel O’Dea is our tour guide. His role is Train Driver Trainer – and he’s trained 280 drivers, so far. Why? Well, at peak time, a train will rumble through this subway slightly more often than every four minutes.
Joel points out that previously you could only enter Waitematā from one direction, the east, but the CRL comes in from the west, effectively doubling (or thereabouts) the number of trains that can run in and out of the city.
It’s just a train, of course. They look no different, and are no different, from the trains already running on Auckland’s tracks. But a large city without a decent public transport system is a city selling its inhabitants short. There are still no trains under (or over) the harbour to the North Shore, and that’s absurd. But one victory at a time, right? And a victory this is.
We pull into Waitematā Station, once a dead-end, now open from two directions, and it feels like we’re arriving somewhere new. Everyone involved is looking proud and chuffed.
It's an ordinary arrival, really. Almost anti-climatic, in some respects. But it will change this city - in ways that make it better to live in.
We get off, briefly, looking nuttily out of place in our PPE amongst the ordinarily clothed commuters waiting for other trains.
At some stage in 2026, they too will be able to jump on this train.
Maybe they’ll go to K Road for a drink or a meal. Maybe they’ll save twenty minutes on their trip home. But whatever their purpose, they’ll be catching a train that takes the idea of getting people in Auckland to where they want to be more seriously than even before.
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