In 1976, the newly elected National government scrapped the previous government’s ambitious underground metro plan, citing its unacceptable cost. In 2024, the newly elected National-led government scrapped its predecessor’s ambitious underground metro plan, citing its unacceptable cost.
There are some key differences between Sir Dove-Myer Robinson’s oft-lamented Auckland Rapid Transit (ART) and the freshly killed Auckland Light Rail. The former was much larger and more shovel-ready – the ART directorate report that went to the government in 1974 even contained draft train timetables. By contrast, Auckland Light Rail had spent $228 million without even having a publicly finalised route between the central city and the airport.
The rail company kept spending money and acquiring land right up to an election it must have known would result in its abolition, including a $33 million purchase in September. The money was not wasted as such, but it was an investment that would be realised only when the project was actually built. Most of it went on engineering. So much engineering.
When then-opposition leader Jacinda Ardern announced Labour’s light rail plan before the 2017 general election, it came in two parts. The first was an affirmation of her party’s existing commitment to a light rail service that would run from the central city along Dominion Rd to Mt Roskill. There would follow, within a decade, an extension to the airport in Māngere, then to the northwest and eventually the North Shore. The first part, she promised, would be running in four years and cost about $1.5 billion. It was a realistic and relatively simple plan, based on work already done by Auckland Transport.
In 2018, the government announced it would be building the airport line and the northwest line at a cost of $6 billion, with construction due to begin in 2020. Then things got weird. Competing proposals, neither of which was the original plan, were vetoed in Cabinet by New Zealand First, formerly a light rail cheerleader. By 2022, the original trams up Dominion Rd had become “Tunnelled Light Rail” to the airport, which would be underground all the way to Mt Roskill – and cost $14-30 billion.
There are a number of good arguments for tunnelling – faster journeys, higher capacity – and it could certainly be seen as a conscious break from the unfortunate New Zealand tradition of half-arsing major transport infrastructure. But it dumped the core virtues of the original proposal: that it would start fast and be operating quickly, and that it could comfortably be funded.
Aucklanders will have been watching the City Rail Link (which essentially replicates part of the old ART) for a decade when it opens in 2026. We didn’t need another 10-year tunnelling project, not when getting tracks down on Dominion Rd would have proved the light rail concept in a city that is running out of room on its roads. The failure to do part one was the failure of all the parts.
Yet, 15,000 people go to work every day in the airport precinct, the huge Kāinga Ora redevelopment in Mt Roskill is well on the way to 10,000 new homes and the building boom in West Auckland has created a desperate transport squeeze there. When they finish crowing about the cancellation, NZ First and Transport Minister Simeon Brown will still face these realities. The answers will not lie in more cars – or buses – on the roads. The minister’s pre-Christmas order to cancel all work on national initiatives to reduce reliance on private cars does not inspire confidence.
For any future government or council looking to finally address Auckland’s transport needs, there’s a lesson in this whole sorry business: if you’re going for gold, it helps to get at least one win on the board first.
