Auckland City Rail Link set for capacity boost

Tuesday, 24 July 2018

The proposed Aotea underground station would have longer platforms for 9 carriage trains in plans being considered.

Longer platforms and an additional station entrance are planned for Auckland's yet-to-be-built City Rail Link project, to boost capacity.

Auckland councillors will consider the plans behind closed doors, following a review of the $3.4 billion underground rail tunnel through the CBD.

The main changes would extend platforms at the new Aotea and Karangahape Road stations, to handle nine carriage trains rather than six as presently planned.

The plan also includes re-instating a second entrance to the Karangahape Road station, which was in the original plan but dropped on cost grounds.

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The changes would boost the passenger capacity of the underground link from 36,000 an hour to 54,000.

Design elements of the project have been under review since it passed a year ago from the council agency Auckland Transport, into a stand-alone company jointly-owned by the council and government, called City Rail Link Limited.

The 3.4 km tunnel is due to open in 2024-25, creating a rail loop around the CBD instead of the existing dead-end at the Britomart Terminus, and nearly doubling the capacity of the rail network.

The mayor Phil Goff said the changes being considered are needed to accommodate future passenger growth.

'The time to make the decision on expanding station size is now, not trying to retrofit stations in a decade which will be disruptive and much more costly,' Goff said.

'Widening the tunnel to cater for larger stations at the time of construction is common sense. Otherwise the CRL would have to be closed for a prolonged period of time potentially as early as 10 years after original construction for the station tunnels to be widened.'

The upgrades would be the second time that earlier cost-cutting decisions on the project have been reversed.

In 2014, Auckland Council approved deferring beyond 2025 the purchase of 24 additional electric trains which had been priced into the project at $336 million.

Late last year it accepted that faster than expected passenger growth meant more trains were needed, and ordered 17, due to enter service next year.

The deep second entrance from Beresford Square into Karangahape Station was also removed from the initial construction plans, leaving just a single entrance from Mercury Lane.

Transport advocates had yesterday argued for capacity improvements to the project, pointing to historic mistakes such as building Auckland's Harbour Bridge with just four lanes, prompting a doubling of it's size within a decade of opening.

'Getting the CRL right is much more of a one-shot deal as the cost to go back underground to fix, both financially and on the impact to services, would be too prohibitive,' wrote Matt Lowrie a director of the Greater Auckland website.

Auckland councillors are expected to sign-off the changes on Thursday, with the Government also required to back them.

No cost estimates are attached to the changes, but Goff has been reported as saying it could be at the lower end of several hundred million dollars.

Tender documents are soon to be released, with two tenderers in the running, following a delay of several months when the previously preferred tenderer-thought to be Fletcher Construction - pulled out.