Commuters between West Auckland and Newmarket will from today enjoy a quicker journey thanks to the return of dual tracks on the Western Line.

The Western Line has been running on a single track through the Maungawhau Station worksite since mid-2020, to allow the City Rail Link’s delivery partner, Link Alliance, to rebuild a section of the Western Line while maintaining commuter services. Having a single line running while crews worked on the other line, has meant that the project could proceed at pace while keeping around 400 workers safe from the risks of a live rail line.

To thank commuters for their patience, City Rail Link, Link Alliance, Auckland Transport and KiwiRail representatives this morning boarded Western Line trains and handed out coffee vouchers and biscuits to commuters.

City Rail Link chief executive Dr Sean Sweeney says the work on the Western Line between Grafton and Kingsland stations is an important component of the overall build, with the rebuilt lines making room for the new City Rail Link lines that will in time take passengers down into the tunnels towards Waitematā Station (Britomart).

Link Alliance project director Francois Dudouit says “this morning’s giveaways were a small gesture to thank the public for their patience and support which enabled safe construction during single line running”.

KiwiRail’s CEO Peter Reidy says “the dual tracks will benefit commuters by helping improve travel times and service reliability on the Western Line. It is another incremental step towards a world-class rail network for Auckland.

“Our teams are working hard across the city on a range of other complementary improvement projects – from our Rail Network Rebuild, which is raising the standards of the tracks across the whole network; building a Third Main Line in South Auckland to better separate commuter and freight trains; extending the electrified network to Papakura; and building new stations to support housing growth around Drury.”

Auckland Transport’s Executive General Manager Public Transport Services Stacey van der Putten says Western Line passengers will benefit from meaningful time savings now that trains can use both tracks through Maungawhau Station in Mt Eden.

“Customers on the Western Line will spend less time travelling as a result of this change, with even more significant time savings in store when the City Rail Link opens,” Ms van der Putten says.

“We’re really grateful to our customers on the Western Line for their patience over the past three years and we’re glad to be able to improve the speed and reliability of their journeys from today.

“I’d also like to thank our AT operational teams and Auckland One Rail train crews for their hard work over the past few years to make sure that our Western Line services could run safely and with the least possible disruption while we were down to one line through Maungawhau.”

The works involved the replacement of 1.3km of dual track, with the total length of the ballasted track built totalling 2,860m, including connections to the City Rail Link lines.

The rebuilt section of line involved approximately 4,375 sleepers, 10,751 tonnes of ballast, 71 sections of 70m-long rail, 50 masts, more than 3.7km of overhead line contact wire and 1.6km of feeder wire. More than 150,000m3 of spoil was removed for Western Line tracks and the location of new City Rail Link tracks at western and eastern links. Sustainability efforts saw 81,720kgs of temporary prop steel beams on the eastern grade separation sold to a company that will store and resell to another project for reuse.

When complete and operational, the City Rail Link project will deliver significantly improved travel times for commuters. From Maungawhau Station, it will take only three minutes to get to Karanga-a-Hape Station, six minutes to Te Waihorotiu Station and nine minutes to Waitematā Station (Britomart).

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