The City Rail Link (CRL) in Auckland officially opened on Friday, the 11th of September.
As a public transport enthusiast, I am absolutely fuming that this occurred when I could not justify going up to Auckland to take a train. The CRL is the biggest makeover to New Zealand’s transport infrastructure in history. It introduces two twin tunnels that connect the downtown Waitematā station to the new Te Waihorotiu and Karanga-a-Hape stations, respectively located midtown and uptown. The entire rail network is 3.45km, and the upgrades extend beyond the central city to Ōtāhuhu.
So when is Hamilton going to catch up?
Public transport here is at best, underwhelming, and at worst, leagues behind where a growing city should be. We have some great services that other cities don’t have, like the Flex bus on Fridays and Saturdays, but the general consensus seems to be that weekday Hamilton buses don’t work well enough for people to want to ditch the car.
Because most of our ratepayers are motorists, developing public transport infrastructure is often opposed, which means the public transport we do have doesn’t get used, which means the council doesn’t invest in our infrastructure, which means most of our ratepayers continue to be motorists. But as the price of fuel rises alongside the population of our city, there’s only so much improvement that we can afford to put off.
