Two key City Rail Link commitments confirmed ahead of opening

Transport officials say they have no plans to close Auckland's new $5.5 billion City Rail Link for full-day maintenance after it opens, with the tunnel expected to run without major works for years at the very least.

Officials have also confirmed the link and an accompanying revamp of Auckland's train network will open on a reduced timetable, building to a full service "within six months".

The commitments came as the CRL faces its final major test – a full-scale dress rehearsal this morning that closed the entire Auckland rail network to the public while the new timetable, stations and systems were put through their paces.

1News understands officials expected the system's opening date to be between late August and early September.

Auckland Transport chief executive Stacey van der Putten said an opening date would soon be announced, speaking to media from the new Karanga-a-Hape station.

"We have to do those final tests ... there's a timeline for us to follow, one of the integral pieces of that is making sure Auckland One Rail and KiwiRail have their safety cases approved," she said, of certifications involving NZTA.

"We'll then provide a recommendation, there'll be an announcement on opening, and that'll give a six-week timeline for the doors to open to the general public."

Van der Putten added, when pressed on a specific day, "we all have a date in mind, but it would be presumptuous at this point.

"Next week we'll be better informed to understand what that may look like."

The link is expected to open in the second half of the year, on a Sunday, with the earliest feasible dates understood to be from mid-August onwards.

Thursday's rehearsal flows straight into the four-day Matariki weekend closure – which agencies have promised will be the last full network shutdown before the link opens.

No major CRL works foreseen for at least three years

Bus replacements, along with day-long and weekend-long track shutdowns in Auckland, have become routine for train commuters over the past several years.

KiwiRail chief metros officer Bevan Assink told 1News the newly built track in the CRL was in strong enough shape that no major works were foreseen for at least three years.

"We'll do our normal maintenance and inspections, and we'll do some rail grinding and everything like that. I don't see that it's going to need a major intervention for something in the order of sort of three years."

He acknowledged the repeated disruptions to train services over the past six years had been frustrating for an increasingly impatient Auckland public.

Asked whether Aucklanders could expect the link to remain open for the rest of 2026, Assink said there was "no reason that I can perceive for us to close it for maintenance".

The same applied to 2027, he said. "Next year, we don't have anything in the plan to close it, so as long as nothing interesting happens, I don't see the reason."

Assink said routine engineering windows would continue – nightly closures on weekdays with a larger window on Sundays - to keep the network maintained.

AT: Reduced timetable to run for only six months

The second of the official commitments concerns how often trains will run.

The CRL-overhauled rail network will open on a reduced "transitional" timetable before building to a full service within six months, with uneven frequencies on lines.

That temporary timetable was publicised after significant congestion problems were identified during CRL testing in January, with line routings and maps modified.

Van der Putten confirmed earlier today that Auckland Transport remained committed to ramping up to a full timetable within six months of opening.

The CRL operations director for operator Auckland One Rail, Louise Pengelly, said the phased approach was designed to build confidence among staff as well as passengers.

"We'll see how it goes. If we see that things are running safely and reliably, then we'll look to increase frequency sooner than that," Pengelly said.

Ride CRL to your heart's content after it's open – KiwiRail

KiwiRail's commitment to keep the City Rail Link open, as per timetables, for the rest of the year builds on an earlier promise in February that full network shutdowns were "dead and gone" following the completion of a five-year rail rebuild programme.

Successive governments have invested more than half a billion into "rebuilding" Auckland's rail network over the past four years.

Assink confirmed the wider network had shifted to targeted maintenance, with the last full network closure taking place over the Matariki weekend right now.

"From a network closure point of view, it'll never be a full network anymore — it'll be just the partials where we need to, so it's more targeted interventions, so we'll always be moving trains, always giving the public the ability to use them."

While the link itself was new, Assink said parts of the wider rail network in the region remained "a little bit fragile", with the signalling system approaching "about half life".

The tight curves inside the new tunnel would also need close monitoring.

"Those are going to be the areas where we need to keep a really close eye, just because those are under pressure more often," he said.

"You've got the high-friction contact with the trains themselves, but the CRL is brand new, so from that point of view it should be in good shape for a long time."

Meanwhile, when asked, Auckland One Rail's Louise Pengelly said there were no plans to change train dwell times - how long services sit motionless at stations.

"No dwell times will be pretty much as they are today," Pengelly said.

But passengers would need to board faster than they do now.

She said the new timetable had to be adhered to far more closely.

"We won't have time to wait like we currently do now. At stations, the timetable is a lot more, needs to be adhered to a lot more closely than we have now, where we have a little bit of flex in the timetable today to wait for people."