Auckland rail disruption: 'Handful' of tracks under close safety watch

Monday, 21 September 2020

KiwiRail is keeping a close eye on several badly-worn sections of track in Auckland after the downtown Britomart terminus closed for a day for urgent track repairs.

The network operator said Britomart had not been a surprise and the worn and cracked rail was due to be replaced within months, but it acted at short notice last week after an inspection found it had worsened.

“There are other locations, a handful, in a similar state,” KiwiRail’s chief operating officer Todd Moyle said.

The closely-watched sections are at the sharp end of six months of urgent and disruptive work across Auckland to upgrade rails which high-tech testing found to be in a worse state than previously believed.

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**

Commuter trains are running less frequently and at half speed, just 40kmh, and four-week shutdowns on Monday moved to the Onehunga and Southern lines between Newmarket and Penrose.

This shutdown still allows trains to reach the CBD via the recently-repaired Eastern line, but the next two four-week closures might mean using buses for part of the trip.

The wear is so bad and so widespread that Moyle said KiwiRail will replace more track in Auckland in six months than it normally does nationwide in two years.

Auckland Transport does not expect to have the full commuter network back to normal until February 2021.

Moyle said a technical working group involving KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, Spanish train-builder CAF, and operator Transdev would look for the causes, but doubted it would be one single factor.

“It’ll be a systems-based issue, a number of things together.”

He discounted speculation there might have been a bad batch of lower-quality rail, but said it could be due to track formation and the profile on wheels and rails.

Parts of the 190km Auckland network have already been replaced after wear problems first surfaced 12-18 months ago, but the network has rails of varying age.

One example of past spending decisions was that when the Western line was double-tracked and electrified in the mid-2010s, the existing single track was not replaced.

A report by WSP/Opus commissioned by KiwiRail and Auckland Transport (AT) and obtained by Stuff put the condition of the network down to historic under-maintenance and inadequate systems.

Moyle said KiwiRail and AT had tried to get the funding for the upgrade work, but when it came through at the beginning of 2020, from a track wear perspective it was “a year or two too late”.

The biggest push will come during a four-week shutdown of the entire network over Christmas. Five hundred workers will be brought in from around the country to accelerate repairs and other upgrades.

Moyle said there is now a clear picture of the state of the network, although testing was continuing, and a rail-mounted grinding machine had arrived from Australia to accelerate repairs.

Auckland Transport pays KiwiRail about $20 million a year to use the state-owned metropolitan network, for which it has spent $443 million on new electric trains since 2013.

AT said it is in discussion with the state-owned company over some of the additional costs it will face due to the shutdowns, such as buses to replace some rail services.

Fifteen new Spanish-built commuter trains will have arrived by Christmas, with eight in the country already, though their introduction to service is being delayed until early 2021 when the network returns to normal.

The loss of fare revenue on a rail network due to have carried 22.3 million trips this year, is already underwritten by the Government as part of Covid-19 financial support for public transport nationwide.

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff said he was confident KiwiRail is progressing repairs as quickly as possible, and he isn’t involved in any moves to seek compensation.