Frustration is growing over an ever-elusive opening date for Auckland's City Rail Link as officials remain mum about even which month the new tunnel will open.
Councillors pressed project leaders at today's infrastructure committee meeting, where officials asked at the outset not to be questioned about the opening date.
Timetables utilising the new tunnel were released yesterday, but the announcement provided no clarity on when passenger services will actually begin using the City Rail Link (CRL).
Amid full-noise marketing for the project, North Shore councillor Richard Hills pushed back, telling the meeting that Aucklanders deserved greater direction.
"Obviously, it feels like my favourite day of August 30 is gone," Hills said of a previously speculated-about date for the opening.
"But is there any way in the next couple of days that it can be announced just what month? Because there are a lot of people getting upset and concerned."
1News understands the CRL was earlier internally expected to open between late August and early September. A series of station open days for the public are currently scheduled for early-to-mid-August.
Hills said businesses in particular were desperate for certainty.
"There's a lot of businesses who just kind of want hope. Is it August, September, or is it November, December?" Hills said.
"I know you're going to say no, but I think people deserve a little bit of direction."
Q+A goes underground to see the new stations and asks what it takes to get a return on the investment. (Source: Q and A)
Hills asked whether the roughly six-week window officials had signalled between confirming a date and opening could be shortened, and whether councillors could help.
Auckland Council infrastructure director Barry Potter responded: "It's the most common question I think everybody at that table and myself gets asked.
"Let's just keep on working through the process, and it is getting closer."
Manurewa-Papakura ward councillor Daniel Newman then took an oblique approach, asking project leaders when the new timetable would take effect.
"The new timetable – on what date does that apply?" Newman asked, only to be brushed aside once more.
Opening date coming 'in the coming weeks'
The reticence of officials to commit to a specific date comes despite the project reaching practical completion in late June, meaning it is substantially finished, insured, and handed over to KiwiRail and local authorities in Auckland to operate.
In a statement to 1News, an AT spokesperson said the opening date "has not yet been confirmed, but it will be in the coming weeks".
The first day of CRL services will fall on a Sunday, with special first trains on each new line and extra staff deployed across the network, according to the agency.
AT rail services group manager Mark Lambert told councillors there were two main hurdles still to overcome before the $5.5 billion project was ready to roll.
They included "closing out recommendations and outcomes from emergency services tests" and final safety certifications from the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA).
An NZTA spokesperson also refrained from putting a timeline on approving a safety case.
"For the CRL, three separate safety case variations have been submitted for approval – covering the new rail infrastructure as well as changes to freight operations and passenger services due to the CRL opening," a spokesperson said.
"As is to be expected with a project of this scale and complexity, a significant volume of documentation and evidence has been submitted to support these applications, and these are being assessed thoroughly by the regulator."
But for some retailers, the years of delays and disruptions has left them counting the cost. (Source: 1News)
Delays of this kind at the final regulatory stage are not unheard of overseas.
Melbourne public transport advocate Daniel Bowen, a spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association Victoria, told 1News in June that governments were often reluctant to set a firm date too far in advance, for fear of having to move it.
"People often look at the construction, and they see that the construction's finished, so therefore, shouldn't it open soon?" he said.
Bowen pointed to Sydney, where the opening of its city centre metro was delayed by two weeks in 2024 after authorities failed to get sign-off from all the relevant regulators in time, despite the project already being "99% ready" for passengers.
"They had announced an opening date, and then they didn't get sign-off from all the relevant regulators in time for that date, and so had to put it back," he said.
He said the delay "caused some embarrassment" at the time.
Auckland's overhauled rail network will open on a reduced "transitional" timetable, building to a full service within six months, after congestion problems forced officials to rework earlier "day one" schedules, 1News previously reported.
What comes next after CRL
Lambert told councillors a fresh round of buying trains was on the horizon once the CRL was open, naming additional fleet as one of three priorities for the city's rail network.
"We will, after CRL opens... start to look at what the next procurement round for fleet is, and that would be going to the market in the next couple of years," he said.
The other focus areas were removing level crossings to unclog the network, and resilience work by KiwiRail to enable single-line running "which allows us to stay open later in the evenings and things like that while the maintenance work happens".
A KiwiRail representative said running services later at night was "on the radar" but that there was no timeline on how and when the issue would be addressed.
They added the only partial sections of line closure before Christmas this year would fall on two weekends in November, with trains running until January 2, 2027 before a series of partial line closures on the Southern and Western lines to complete "vital" works.
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