Auckland train chaos: 5000 commuters delayed after signal fault halts trains

Wednesday, 19 June 2019

All Auckland train services were down for 30 minutes on Wednesday.

About 5000 people were affected when a signalling fault halted all trains across the region for 30 minutes.

Auckland Transport said the services went down about 8am on Wednesday morning but were back up and running at 8.30am after a system reboot.

The Onehunga line remained suspended at 9.10am, but started to resume normal service at about 10.10am. Scheduled buses were temporarily accepting train tickets.

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff hit out at KiwiRail over the outage, saying it needed to do better.

* Auckland Mayor Phil Goff slams KiwiRail's city train blackout 'unacceptable'**

'A second KiwiRail signal failure on Auckland's network is not good enough,' Phil Goff tweeted.

'I have asked KiwiRail for more information and sought assurance from its chair Greg Miller that infrastructure is fit for purpose.'

KiwiRail Boss Todd Moyle said the fault lasted 28 minutes.

Commuters said they were fed up with the train disruptions, which had been occurring for about the past week.

One commuter called it 'ridiculous'.

'People are late to work, kids are late to school,' she said.

'There are costs incurred everywhere for people who rely on these services and employers are far less sympathetic these days.'

An Auckland Transport spokesman said about 4000-5000 people were affected during their morning commute.

Ride sharing app Uber was experiencing a large surge in demand due to the number of people not able to get trains, which saw it increase its rates.

One regular user said it was going to cost $30 for a normally $6 trip, and she had to wait about 10 minutes longer than normal to hail an Uber.

Auckland University of Technology business student Matthew Dennis paid $50 for an Uber after his train from Takanini to Manurewa was cancelled mid-journey.

He believed the disruption would make him late to his exam, which was worth 50 per cent of his overall grade for the semester.

'I may be half an hour late to my exam if I'm lucky,' he said.

AUT is yet to clarify whether the train disruptions affected its exam timetable, but University of Auckland spokeswoman Lisa Finucane said morning exams had been delayed by 15 minutes, which was communicated to students via text and email.