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Auckland’s Deputy Mayor has blasted KiwiRail this morning after tens of thousands of rush-hour commuters were left without a train to catch when a power fault hit the network.
More than seven hours after the fault was first detected causing the network to grind to a halt, trains are nowrunning to normal schedules.
Earlier, inconvenienced rail commuters were warned to expect ongoing disruptions this morning right across the network. All trains on the Onehunga Line remained cancelled until further notice.
Auckland Transport said with the fault repaired commuters should expect minor delays and minimal cancellations.
It comes as city leaders take KiwiRail to task over the widescale disruption.
“This is no different from a sort of emergency weather event, we have to plan for disruption and immediately be able to have a flow-on effect, so commuters are not inconvenienced.
“I’m not sure they have that plan and I want to see from KiwiRail that they absolutely have a plan so this will not happen again.”
She is concerned that Aucklanders have another reason to doubt that public transport will work.
“We have to have a reliable public transport network that works across multiple modes and when KiwiRail have a failure like this and don’t have an immediate plan of action which they can put together and get working straight away ... I mean, this is so frustrating for Auckland.”
Mayor Wayne Brown said he was “disappointed” with the incident this morning that caused disruption to tens of thousands of Aucklanders.
“The reported line fault at Grafton is the result of many years of under-investment that we are finally addressing.”
Brown was not available for an interview.
There were no trains in or out of Britomart station on Friday morning. Photo / Michael Craig
Auckland councillor Mike Lee, who has been instrumental in the revival of rail in Auckland, said he was not sure what sort of apology long-suffering Auckland public transport users can expect.
”When trains in Wellington this week were slowed to 70km/h and KiwiRail senior executives had to make humiliating apologies to Parliament, here in Auckland train speeds are reduced to zero.
“While equipment failures are as usual blamed, clearly there is something deeply dysfunctional in present-day corporate management systems - especially so in public transport,” said Lee.
As chair of the former Auckland Regional Council, Lee successfully pushed for electrification of the city’s rail network and the reopening of the Onehunga branch line - and remains a strong advocate for further improvements to rail.
Power was restored around 9am, after KiwiRail chief operations officer Siva Sivapakkiam said a fault was discovered at 4am.
For safety reasons, power had to be switched off between Penrose, Swanson and Britomart, and electric trains could not operate.
UPDATE 9:15AM
Eastern Line services will only operate between Otahuhu and Manukau. Onehunga Line remains cancelled until further notice. Expect further delays and cancellations to all services across the network while some return to schedule. Updates to follow. https://t.co/nFpaOUx5G9
— Auckland Transport Travel Alerts (@AT_TravelAlerts) May 4, 2023
KiwiRail’s website states that the national rail system has experienced “decades of under-investment”, until the recent unprecedented investment in rail by the Government.
“Our technicians have been on site this morning and have assessed and repaired a fault. We are aiming for the power to be switched back on shortly, so that train services can resume.
Auckland Transport group manager metro services Darek Koper said tens of thousands of Aucklanders relied on the rail network every day to get to school, work and access essential services.
“It is hugely disappointing and frustrating that we are not able to operate our services, as usual, this morning.
“Because of the short notice of this outage, our teams have only been able to arrange for a small number of rail replacement buses, so we’re encouraging our train customers to consider using one of our scheduled bus services instead this morning.”
The city is already facing shortages of buses and bus drivers and Uber fares have been hiked this morning for those wanting to catch a ride from the western suburbs to central Auckland.
On some routes, fares were almost three times higher than a usual trip.
An Uber X from Mt Albert to Britomart Train Station would cost $60 and one from New Lynn to Britomart Station $75.
