Five years of chaos in Auckland

An artist's impression of the new convention centre.

Roadworks for $2,5b city rail link to disrupt City of Sails for half-decade.

Brace yourself, commuters. Five years of disruption in downtown Auckland has begun.

From today bus routes and stops are being moved out of one of the busiest bus thoroughfares in the city, Albert St, which is in the path of the biggest new rail transport project in central Auckland.

Early works for the landmark project - the planned $2.5billiob city rail link - begin either late next month or early December when work to install a new stormwater pipe begins in Albert St.

The full impact of today's changes will be felt tomorrow as thousands of commuters start the working week.

Auckland Transport and the AA are warning those affected - mainly those traveling to and frim West Auckland and the North Shore - to be prepared.

AT spokesman Mark Hannan said almost 3000 bus trips and 10,000 passengers would be affected by changes to bus stops and routes.

Weekday patronage is between 160,000 and 200,000.

Commuters should learn where their new stops will be, and arrive five minutes before the scheduled departure times, which remain the same but may be slightly affected by the new routes, Hannan said.

The InnerLink will no longer travel along Albert St, using Queen St instead. AT staff will be affected bus stops to help commuters.

Posters at bus stops also detail the route changes and where the new stops are, and 23,000 maps had been handed out at bus stops explaining changes.

Another 35,000 brochures explaining the changes were being distributed by bus operators, businesses, libraries and customer service centres.

Despite the aawareness campaign, AA spokesman Barney Irvine feared people would still be caught out.

But the disruption was nothing compared to what was coming when cut-and-cover work on the rail link began in seven months, Irvine said.

Those using city roads could expect to encounter roadworks, truck movements and lane closures.

"from May next year it starts getting serious," he said.

"There will be tunneling work through the downtown shopping centre and through the bottom of Albert St to Wyndham St. Albert St will go down to one lane in each direction and the speed limit will be 30km/h."

Major building projects in Albert St, including the 30-level office block and hotel on the NZME site and the 52-level apartment/hotel NDG Tower at the corner of Albert and Victoria Sts, meant city-goers would be making their way around construction works for a long time, he said.

"It's going to be disruption on a scale we haven't seen before."

SkyCity spokesman Colin Espiner said work on the $450m-$470m New Zealand International Convention Centre, occupying a city block bordered by Nelson, Wellesley and Hobson Sts, was expected to take three years from Christmas. No long-term road closures were planned.

Work on the $350m NDG Tower - set to be Auckland's second-tallest skyscraper after the Sky Tower - is due to begin late next year.

Marcus Beveridge, a lawyer for the site's developer, multimillionaire Shanghai NDG chief Furu Ding, said the first year would be "just digging".

But although no roads or lanes needed to be closed, double length trucks would be removing earth from the site.

The development should be completed in 2020, he said.