Boring tunnels for City Rail Link

← Contents: Discover more

Politicians talked about building an underground rail in Auckland for almost 100 years before it actually started! Now it is happening again, with the City Rail Link (CRL) being built. Due to finish in 2024, the CRL is going to change the way people travel around Auckland.

Check out this video which gives an overview of the CRL project and its benefits:

At the moment, if people use trains, the last stop into downtown Auckland is at Britomart Transport Centre. Trains stop there and can go no further. If passengers want to travel on a different line, they must get off and wait for a train at another platform.

Thanks to the CRL, Britomart will no longer be the only stop in the central city

With City Rail Link, there will be two new tunnels at Britomart going all the way up to the Mt Eden train station. That means passengers can stay on the train at Britomart and keep going. There will be two new stations that will be handy to other parts of the inner city.

One station will be at Wellesley and Victoria Streets - at the moment, this station is called Aotea.

Another station will be near Karangahape Road with two entrances - one in a side street called Mercury Lane and another at Beresford Square on the other side of Karangahape Road.

The tunnels

The tunnels will be 3.45kilomtres long and up to 42 metres deep.

The trains will also be up to nine carriages long which means more people can get a seat. Travel times will improve.

The route for the tunnels will be: From Britomart, to Albert, Vincent and Pitt Streets, and then cross beneath Karangahape Road and the Central Motorway Junction to Symonds Street before rising to join the western line at Eden Terrace where the Mount Eden Station is located.

The TBM

Big machines are needed to do this work. This is New Zealand’s biggest transport infrastructure project. One machine being used is a tunnel boring machine (TBM).

The TBM has three main jobs:

1. excavating the tunnels
2. transporting tonnes of excavated spoil to the surface
3. installing the thousands of concrete panels that will line the tunnels.

It’s a tradition that a TBM can’t start work until it has a woman’s name to honour St Barbara, the patron saint of underground workers. This as a sign of good luck for the project ahead. The machine for this project has been named after an inspiring New Zealander, the late Dame Whina Cooper. Dame Whina Cooper fought for Māori rights and was the inspirational leader of the Māori land march on Parliament in 1975.

Link Alliance

The Link Alliance is a group of six New Zealand and international companies that are building the CRL stations and tunnels. Combined, they bring a lot of experience having worked on large-scale projects like the City Rail Link both in New Zealand and overseas.

Three of the companies in the Link Alliance focus on the design side of CRL and the other three focus on its construction.

Try the Boring tunnels for City Rail Link quiz

More +

Audio Māori keywords: