City Rail Link’s $2.6B blowout leaves Auckland ratepayers with a $235m annual bill

Summarised by Centrist

Auckland’s City Rail Link will open next month as the country’s largest transport project. But after years of disruption and a cost rise from early estimates of roughly $2.9 billion to $5.5 billion, the immediate question is no longer whether Auckland needs better rail. It is who is paying for the way this project was built.

Auckland Council says its share of the project is $2.75 billion. Once the link opens, it expects the cost of owning and running it to reach about $235 million each year: $167 million in interest, $42 million in depreciation and $26 million for additional train services and stations.

The Council says those costs are “the main reason” for its proposed 7.9 per cent rates increase for the average-value home.

ACT MP Simon Court told Duncan Garner that the rail link itself was sound, but its execution was not.

“The City Rail Link as a concept … is a great concept,” Court said. “But it didn’t need to be gold-plated, platinum-encrusted and covered in public art.”

Court singled out the decision, made after work was underway, to extend platforms from six-car to nine-car trains. Supporters saw it as future-proofing. Court said the city had paid for capacity unlikely to be needed for decades, while parts of the wider network still require level-crossing separation and other upgrades before they can run substantially more trains.

“If it’s future-proofed far beyond the lifetimes of the people who are going to pay for it, that doesn’t seem like a sensible decision,” he said.

The Auditor-General previously found shortcomings in oversight and recommended that the Crown and Auckland Council strengthen the project’s governance arrangements.

Court said representatives of the two sponsors “weren’t even turning up to sponsors’ meetings” during an earlier review.

Hear more on YouTube,  Auckland Council’s annual-cost breakdown,  Auditor-General’s CRL governance review, and the  City Rail Link project overview

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