The CRL a great start but more needed

09 Sep, 2026

Professor of Macromarketing Ben Wooliscroft says the CRL is a great start, as the central hub for a comprehensive over and underground network of public transport. Just back from a visit to Vienna, the capital of Austria, Professor Wooliscroft adds:

• Vienna, Austria, a city with a similar population (2 million) to Auckland (1.8 million) has:
  • 5 underground lines, with the sixth being built as we speak. Many of the lines are being extended as well. Riding the underground doesn't require a timetable, most lines are sub five minute intervals.
  • 29 tram lines
  • 134 bus lines
  • a network of night and on call public transport through the night.
  • There's also extensive rail that runs through the city and out to the regions, and around Vienna
  • They've reduced their car mode share from 40% (1993) to 24.9% (2025).
• We're 70 years behind. Dove-Myer Robinson was right, the time to build public transport is always now. It will always be more (and too) expensive in the future.
• Sustainable transport requires us to get people out of single occupant 1.5 ton automobiles (petrol, diesel or e-, they all have major environmental impact) and the CRL is a small part of that.
• Public transport creates active transport. There is clear evidence that people who use public transport walk more than non-users (this might be impacted by the rise of e-scooters, with their host of externalities. They are banned, or heavily regulated, in many European cities).
• We're just back from heat waves in Europe and Japan. The time to act is yesterday, but today will have to do.

John Tookey, AUT Professor of Construction Manager, School of Future Environments, says theCRL will rapidly fade into the background.  Like all pieces of transformational architecture and engineering, its daily utility will rapidly be taken for granted.  The average working, taxpaying, Aucklander will rapidly forget the problems that it was designed to address.  Wasn’t it always there?  For anyone alive prior to the completion of the harbour bridge, the hassle of getting a ferry from the city to the ‘countryside’ of North Shore was rapidly forgotten.  As too was the need to travel huge distances to the West to bypass the Upper Harbour. Soon the complaint was having to wait to deal with queues on the bridge.  Why wasn’t it wider?  Let’s make it wider.  Thus, the clip-ons were conceived.

Similarly, the Waterview tunnel was underplayed. Various articles were written earnestly proclaiming the vast waste of money that was the new road to the airport.  Transport chaos was predicted.  No-one would use the route.  What was the point of moving all those people and shifting all those properties? Wasteful government was lambasted. Then the tunnel opened.  A miracle occurred.  All of a sudden transit times were improved and the ‘long route’ via the Western motorway became the norm.  Wasn’t it always here?  How did I get to the airport?  I forget.

In reality the delays and cost overruns of the project will fade from the public consciousness.  No-one will care.  Property prices will rise around stations that permit its use as a transit point into the city.  The CRL will become an integral element of a day in the life of the big city.  The proponents of the infrastructure will be quickly overlooked as we see the next stages of the growth of Auckland.  What about replacing the harbour bridge?  What about improving links to the outer suburbs? How about urban densification?  In the end the visionaries who created CRL will receive few plaudits.  Maybe a birthday honour in a few years when the dust settles.  But I will say this – we do actually owe them a lot as far as this project is concerned.  Sometimes as a population we find it hard to see the benefits and always willing to tear down the individuals rocking the boat.  Visionaries have always been so condemned.

Mani Poshdar, AUT Associate Professor in Built Environment Engineering says the benefits of the CRL should not eclipse the lessons learnt from delivering a complex underground urban rail project.

The CRL has given New Zealand first-hand experience of delivering a complex underground rail project in a live city, including building tunnels in tight urban conditions, connecting into the existing rail network, and coordinating large teams of contractors and specialist disciplines.

That experience should not be romanticised. While CRL has delivered major technical and delivery achievements, it has also come with real pressures on people and places, from cost escalation and long construction timeframes to disruption for businesses, residents and commuters. The $12 million hardship fund established for affected small businesses is a tangible reminder that those impacts were significant. Those difficult parts of the project are just as important to learn from as the engineering success, particularly if that experience is to inform how future projects are planned and delivered. They are an essential part of the project’s legacy, not something secondary to it.

What CRL now leaves New Zealand with is experience that is difficult to gain without actually undertaking a project of this scale. That experience includes not only technical knowledge, but first-hand lessons about managing the cost, complexity and disruption that come with delivering major infrastructure in a live city. Some of those lessons are already being formally documented through Te Waihanga’s review of the project. The more important test, however, is what happens next: whether future projects begin with that experience rather than having to discover the same problems again. If they do, CRL’s legacy will extend well beyond the railway itself.