Auckland rail shutdown begins: What you need to know
Starting today, Auckland’s railway lines will be empty with no trains operating for the next 32 days.
It is the first extended period of rail closures in the city – in total, 96 days of empty tracks are planned, through to the end of January 2026.
That means no passenger trains, freight trains, Northern Explorer or Te Huia train.
The shutdown is to allow for KiwiRail to complete rail rebuild works that are crucial to the successful opening of City Rail Link in 2026.
Auckland is so fucked.
Our public transport system is a joke with a punchline that says, no trains for 96 days.
We have a fanatical Christian Transport Minister boy king who is privatising the roads in front of our eyes and weaponising our impatience alongside a Grumpy Rich Privileged Boomer King Mayor who is punting Auckland Transport for decades of underfunding and pretending that’s a solution.
Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown have announced a major shake-up to the transport policy decision-making powers for the region.
The Council-Controlled Organisation (CCO) of Auckland Transport (AT) will be turned into a service delivery agency by transferring strategy, policy and planning functions to the control of Auckland Council, under new Government reforms.
Simeon Brown, who is also the Minister for Auckland, announced the changes at a joint media conference in the central city at 3.30pm today.
Brown said the Government was “restoring democratic accountability” to transport decision-making in Auckland, ensuring voters could hold their elected representatives responsible for the city’s transport policies.
“Aucklanders have become increasingly frustrated with how transport decisions are made and how little their views are taken into account,” the minister said.
NO! NO! NO!
As a long suffering Auckland public Transport User, what we fucking want is a functioning public transport system so that Auckland can be an actual proper grown up City!
None of what Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb have suggested here will do a fucking thing towards a functioning public transport system!
It will just allow Shop Owners to complain about fucking cycle ways and stop the little progress that is being done.
It is a recipe for gridlock.
Look, Idiot 1 thinks lifting speed limits around schools will lead to efficiencies while Idiot 2 thinks selling off our Airport is prudent.
They are entrenching car privilege, they are abandoning everything else.
I pray a new Auckland Volcano will erupt under Mayor Brown’s house while Simeon is over having dinner.
A curse on them both.
Don’t get me wrong, I love that Auckland Transport is being ripped to pieces!
Like a chump I did what I was supposed to do.
I rented near transport routes and didn’t buy a car.
Like a chump.
Dear Auckland Transport – Auckland hates you.
Like a chump, I moved near a train station so my Daughter could catch the train to school.
Then you shut down the Station for 4 years – hilariously my Daughter will graduate before the fucking Train Station opens!
Like a chump.
Then you cut services…
City Rail Link: Aucklanders warned of disruption as near 100-day rail network closure revealed
…raised fares…
Auckland public transport fares to increase by 5.2% on average from February
…all while casually fucking over the entire public transport users of Auckland.
But while I cheer their hanging in the public square, I know it won’t make anything better.
The disgusting under funding of public transport in this city is a hate crime wrapped in a question shat out by a paradox.
I don’t believe I will live to see a functioning public transport network in this city ever.
Bring on the Volcano!
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well move out of Auckland and come to christchurch where we do have a functioning public transport system.
And if too many of them move to Christchurch there won’t be a functioning public transport system. Stay in Auckland Ye Aucklanders.
the Brown bros are both idiots .
Looking at pre election costings by national and post election costings by NZTA and already Browns dreams have blown out by 2x to 20 billion and none are shovel ready for at least 3 years so will be close to 30 billion by then .
Exactly right. These economic geniuses haven’t a fucking clue.
Labour’s so called mismanagement will be seen for what it really was in the next couple of years.
It was designed to keep the country moving whereas this lot want to take us back to the dark ages. Stupidity.
I can just hope that the public servants getting the chop are those that were part of Peters handbrake crew and after the next election we will make some progress with the ones that are left realizing their jobs are to get the country moving not to get it back on the Key, English, Joyce track that revolved around roads and immigration. However I fear with the appointments made by Willis and Co the senior civil servants are servants to the rich and privileged so the obstruction will continue.
We have lived in what I now call The Shitty of Fails for well over 61 years. Auckland has become a Shit-Hole.
In much of that time the public transport service has been pretty well abysmal or a more better use of wording “A Shit of a Service”. It is not reliable or dependable. In fact there now exists what I call “Virtual Buses’. They are buses that appear on the signage at a bus station to arrive at such ‘n such a time but never do. They disappear into some non-existent time-frame that means they will not turn up. They don’t even appear with a C word meaning Cancelled.
We have used public transport for much of the past 61 years and have been through all the too numerous names of even the bus services i.e Auckland Bus Company, The Yellow Bus Company, Stage Coach. etc.etc.etc Most of those bus services and others seem to have been an Exist for Profit for the Stake-holders/Share-Holders ‘investment(s)”.
They have never existed for Public Convenience.
Neither the Minister of Pot-Holes and the Mayor of Playing Tennis during a Storm seem to have a clue as to what is in the best interest of the biggest city in NZ. It’s all a matter of Blame-Games by two Right-Wing idiots who Live in the World of being the Great Pretenders and of course Blaming Everyone Else but the Faces Staring Back at them in the Mirror.
As a regular commuter using public transport I very much doubt we would see either of the Use-less Brown’s on public transport because both are completely Out of Touch with Reality.
They are both much like Luxon who claims credit for Something He Has Never Done whilst putting very LIttle or No Effort on Their Part Towards Anything.
Meanwhile the Rich and the Share-holders in public transport will get richer and the poor will be on the receiving end of irregular public transport services but required to be ACQUIESCENT, Obedient, Compliant because that is the NZ Way of Life.
This from Sept 2024 on Auckland and the brown Browns’ from the Spinoff. Seems good backgrounding. Apparently they are not related and it is just a case of Browns being too prolific!
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/04-09-2024/hate-off-simeon-brown-vs-wayne-brown
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