Aucklanders and politicians alike need to realise that trying to guarantee the opening date of the City Rail Link is like trying to guarantee it’s going to rain on Christmas Day, says Dr Sean Sweeney.
It’s an unusual comparison of the anticipated completion of the country’s biggest infrastructure project with a soggy public holiday but the message is clear.
Such assurances are not going to happen.
At least not from the CRL chief executive Sweeney who, hailing from Porirua, has spent 40 years working across the globe overseeing such massive construction projects as the Melbourne Museum, AAMI Stadium and the Victorian Cancer Centre.
“I had a minister once in Australia say to me ‘I need you to guarantee me that we can open on a certain date’,” Sweeney says.
“What you’re actually talking about is a p95 date - the probability of 95 per cent that we’ll hit that date. I said if you want p95 it’s a year later. We can guarantee that date - but it’s a pretty dumb date for you because you’re now working to a date that’s a year later than what we think it’s going to be and the public amenity is going to be lost for a year because you want a guarantee.
“Once you start explaining it like that to people they get it. I mean who’s going to guarantee the cost of their house extension. Really? Watch Grand Designs.”
The most recent delayed completion date for the now $5.5 billion project is November 2025. The City Rail Link will be a 3.4km track spanning four underground stations from downtown’s Britomart to Mt Eden.
But as yet, all Aucklanders know the project for is the construction disruption that has dominated the city centre since 2016.
November 2025 is just the “practical completion date” at which point City Rail Link Ltd consortium responsible for actually digging the tunnels, laying the tracks and fitting out the stations will hand over the keys to the big shiny underground tube to Auckland Transport (AT).
AT will then undertake at least six months of training of drivers and staff and systems checks on the new rail line, before any passengers will swipe their HOP cards at the turnstiles.
Talking to both CRL chief executive Sweeney and AT executive Mark Lambert - who will oversee all the tests and training of CRL staff - these dates are themselves incredibly fluid.
The November 2025 date - which had been pushed out from late 2024 earlier this year - is still only the p50 date. There is a 50 per cent chance that City Rail Link Ltd will be finished with all the construction by that month.
“That’s the date we’re still reporting on and we still think we’ve got a good chance of p50 of hitting that date. But there’s some big things to be got through,” Sweeney says of the still provisional November 2025 practical completion date.
Lambert is also vaguely optimistic, but imprecise, about the final operational testing phase of the CRL.
“Six months-plus is probably the best we can put on that right now,” he says.
“[That] will be a good target. As we get nearer to November 25, we’ll have a far better understanding of what it will entail and what it will look like. That’s a while off. So we’re not going to be giving a date any time in the near future.”
The Herald’s November 21 tour of the underground works of the 300m-long Te Waihorotiu Station spans a midtown block directly beneath Albert Street between Victoria Street and Wellesley Street.
Throughout it, both Sweeney and Lambert cite the London Crossrail underground project as a gauge by which the CRL’s progress might be more favourably judged.
“Crossrail in the UK and London was broadly a third, a third, a third between actual civil and construction, and then testing, commissioning and then actual operational readiness,” Lambert says.
“We’re not going to take that long, but that sort of puts [it] into a little bit of perspective. That’s how long they took and we’re trying to learn from them to make sure we don’t fall into any potential issues they did.”
An alarming prospect would be if the testing for the operational readiness of the CRL did take that long - this would lead to a grand CRL opening date for passengers of approximately 2029.
But instead of another five years for all this operational readiness testing, AT is projecting that it is “six months-plus”. In Lambert’s favour, the London Crossrail is 42km in length compared to CRL’s 3.4km.
What “six months-plus” exactly means is also unclear. Given the scale of the operational readiness stage needed to be undertaken by AT - including testing all emergency contingencies and the training of all CRL staff - such a timeline does seem optimistic.
In May, Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Simon Bridges, who was Minister of Transport when work started on the CRL in 2016, said a 2026 opening date is far too late for the city.
“While most big infrastructure projects do take longer than is said when they start, a critical mistake here was not continuing during Covid lockdowns, when in hindsight we could have, if anything, picked up the pace in a safe and appropriate way.”
But Bridges conceded that once the CRL does eventually open in 2026, or even dare it be said 2027, “the vast majority of people will forget all the criticism, and Auckland will be in for a pretty golden period”.
Sweeney says the CRL project has completed all heavy construction work and is now into the second stage of testing and commissioning of the internal workings of the line and stations.
The final operational readiness stage which will theoretically begin after November 2025 is, with full disclosure from Sweeney and Lambert, no small task.
“There are 44 different operational scenarios we have to go through. The biggest one is a fire on a train,” Sweeney says.
“There could be a major health event, someone has to be evacuated, they all have to be gone through and you can’t have members of the public there while you’re practicing for a major security event. Some of them will have to be done more than once because something will transpire that doesn’t work.
“It’s not far off from licensing an airline, it’s the closest thing I can imagine. Because we have 1000 people on these trains.”
Another major step will be the training of the new drivers.
“We’ve got 300 train drivers, 220 train managers who obviously have to be completely au fait with the new network. That’s the train operation side of things and our operators need to get regulatory approval from Waka Kotahi to operate those trains. For the stations themselves we obviously have to have all the staff trained in front of office, maintenance, operations,” Lambert says.
The 300 trainee drivers will take 1200 trips to get them up to speed.
“And if we’re going to keep the rest of the network operating, I’m sure Aucklanders won’t appreciate it if we close the network for six months to train all the drivers, you can only train them in the off-peak, midday, evening,” Lambert says.
Of the ever-expanding $5.5b bill, Sweeney said: “at the moment, we’re still okay and feeling we’ve got enough money but there’s no way I would guarantee”. It should be noted that this cost does not include additional operational expenses like 23 trains being built in Mexico.
“I’ve been in this game a long time and I’ve stopped guaranteeing numbers and dates because you’re actually making up you have more knowledge and control than you do,” he said. “I’ve stopped in my career some time ago promising ministers and mayors certainty.”
Tom Dillane is an Auckland-based journalist covering local government and crime as well as sports investigations. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is deputy head of news.
Test your brains with the Herald's afternoon quiz.