Between Tuesday 13th and Wednesday 14th of February, multiple cancellations of train services occurred throughout Auckland’s rail network. Since the beginning of 2023, it appears that roughly 15% of Auckland’s 500 train services are regularly cancelled. Radio New Zealand reported that nineteen trains had been cancelled on the morning of 14 February, the last day of summer school exams, due to “overheating tracks.” The weather temperature on the day had been 25℃, although Auckland Transport had reported temperatures of 48℃ in “certain parts of the track.”
Even before the recent disruptions in February, train services being flat-out shut down and unavailable throughout early January negatively affected students attending summer school. With classes starting on January 8th (some as early as January 4th), the Eastern Line’s closure and subsequent reopening on January 15th have left some students within that 1–2-week period reasonably frustrated at the loss of a vital transport option. For students like Samuel, a second-year Civil Engineering student who took Korean courses during summer school, taking the train over any other available public transport is preferable and much more comfortable. “Going (from Panmure) through Ellerslie (by bus) is AIDS, and trains just happen to be faster for me, so it’s a no-brainer,” he says.
Since the conclusion of summer school, a plethora of new causes for disruptions and delays have sprung up over the past two weeks. On February 22nd, an “infrastructure issue” delaying morning commuters was later revealed to be caused by an IT staff member at KiwiRail working on diagnostics for the train network’s firewall. Last week’s disruption in the morning (again) of February 26th also brought trains on the Eastern Line to a grinding halt as a freight train in Ōrākei broke down.
Outside of the myriad railroad-related disruptions, some of the stations’ interior infrastructure on the Eastern Line also does not appear to function correctly. In Panmure station specifically, a quick perusal inside (by yours truly) reveals that the electronic gate barriers are wide open, leaving passengers to believe that the card readers are faulty and thus unsure whether they should tag on/tag off at all. That last sentence cost me about $5 extra than the typical 16 – 24-year-old fare concession rate gives you on a 2-zone journey. Getting charged a default rate for missing tag-offs is a pain, especially for us uni-brokies who need to take our budgeting seriously and frugally; But now imagine being broke and not being able to get to university reliably due to the cancellations.
As the first week of a brand-new, student-filled semester has passed, there is significant doubt that City Rail Link and its related train services can adequately handle their full return. Whatever nine-point plan Wayne Brown has and all the “bloody good bollocking” he serves to the Unholy Trinity of trains (Auckland Transport, KiwiRail, Auckland One Rail) should have been implemented decades ago.
In our current state of public transportation, whose capillary networks are struggling to accommodate the hustle and bustle of a growing Auckland population, the only one ‘hustling’ to keep trains afloat is Auckland Transport, while the general public and financially fragile university students are getting ‘hustled’.
