The $5.5b question with only one acceptable answer: Can trains bring a city back to life?
When the City Rail Link finally opens next year, it will arrive in a city that’s been through a long grind of cones, scaffolding and economic strain.
The 3.45km of train track, two new stations and one substantially upgraded one, have been held up as transformative, bringing life back to struggling areas of Auckland and connecting the suburbs to the city centre.
But will it really make that much of a difference? For those on the North Shore, the answer’s probably no, but for others, there is hope that it will mean good times are around the corner.
The vacant optimism around CityRail opening seems very desperate
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, 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 AT 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, so words that this bloody great big hole in the ground that is now 4 years overdue won’t be ready by 2026 doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
For me the City Rail Link is a bit like the second Harbour Bridge crossing, in that I will be dead before it ever gets built.
I don’t know who to blame anymore, The French, Auckland Council, Wayne Brown, Auckland Transport or Simeon Brown.
No one seems to actually be in charge and no one seems to be accountable.
Auckland Central has been killed by the City Rail Loop and after all this time I’m not even sure there will be a City to come back to.
The idea that once it is open there will be change seems very optimistic because the issues of poverty that are now entrenched in the CBD will take more than new train.
When you underfund the outreach and safety nets, people fall over and we see that social failure all within the CBD.
The juxtaposition between the homeless and Luxury brands is so jarring it sickens in a country that once prided itself on egalitarianism.
Our broken mental health system.
Our broken welfare system.
Our cost of living crisis.
Our housing crisis.
All vomit up onto the streets of the CBD.
The opening of the City Rail Loop won’t change that equation.
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