Trains return to Drury and Paerata after 54 years at a cost of $300 million

Scheduled passenger trains stopped at Drury and Paerata on Sunday for the first time since 1972, and the bill for putting them back on the map has now been made public at about $300 million for the two stations.

KiwiRail told 1News that the combined cost of the Drury and Paerata stations came to roughly $300 million. The wider three station programme, which includes a station at Ngakoroa in Drury West that is still being built, is now forecast to land just under $450 million. A pre construction estimate four years ago put the figure at $495 million.

The two stations are among the last pieces of the government’s $2.4 billion programme of work on Auckland’s rail network. Rail Minister Winston Peters and Transport Minister Chris Bishop opened them on Sunday 2 August.

Peters said the money had been set aside in 2020 and the work was coming in “on time and under budget”. He also used the occasion to argue that Auckland still does not have enough track. “Other countries would have us with an up main, a down main, a spare main, and a freight main. That’s four, and that is what Auckland needs,” he told 1News.

Each station has two platforms, up to 350 park and ride spaces, bike and motorbike parking, and a pick up and drop off area. Auckland Transport also started two connecting bus services on opening day, running through Paerata Rise, Ramarama, Waiuku, Glenbrook and Drury, with no extra fare for anyone who changes between a bus and a train within 30 minutes.

Trains run from early morning to late evening seven days a week, with late night services added on Friday and Saturday nights. Once the City Rail Link opens, the two stations become part of the South City Line, with services every 10 minutes at peak times, every 15 minutes through the middle of the day and every half hour at night.

Both stations sit on the Southern Line, which connects them to the city centre, Middlemore Hospital and Puhinui, where passengers can change for the AirportLink bus to Auckland Airport. For people living at the southern edge of the city, that is the difference between a motorway commute that gets slower every year and a fixed timetable.

The reason for building them is the block of greenfield housing going up between Papakura and Pukekohe. Roughly 130,000 more people are expected to settle in southern Auckland over the next three decades, most of them in subdivisions that did not exist a decade ago. The stations have been dropped into paddocks and half built streets in the expectation that the suburbs will grow around them.

Auckland Transport chief executive Stacey van der Putten said the investment was about choice as much as travel time. “With the opening of these two new stations we are giving people real transport choices at a time when we know Aucklanders are looking further out of the city for more affordable housing and a lifestyle that suits them,” she said.

KiwiRail chief metro officer Bevan Assink said the company was “proud to be delivering the necessary infrastructure required to support train travel today and to future proof for population growth”. Auckland Council’s transport and infrastructure delivery committee chair, Councillor Andy Baker, said the stations were “going to make such a big difference for people living in South Auckland and Franklin”.

Tim Welch, a senior lecturer in urban planning at the University of Auckland, told 1News that building the rail line before the houses is the right way round. He said the alternative was “plunking down a bunch of lifestyle blocks around these communities and then hoping people can drive into the city”, and argued for higher density housing near the stations where people would not necessarily have to own a car.

He also warned that a train station on its own does not make a suburb work. “We need good water infrastructure. We need schools. We need healthcare. We need groceries,” he said. That is the harder half of the job in Drury, where water, roading and school capacity have all been flashpoints as the subdivisions have gone in.

The third station, Ngakoroa, is still under construction. Early works started late in 2025 and KiwiRail expects it to be operational in 2027, with up to 200 car parks rather than the 350 at the other two. 1News reported that it is due to open in the first half of next year.

Auckland Minister Simon Watts said much of the recent spending had been about getting the network ready for what comes next. “Much of the recent investment has been about preparing the network for more frequent trains that will come when the CRL opens this year,” he said.

Drury last had a scheduled passenger service in May 1972, when the old station closed as part of the long retreat of local rail stops in the face of the car. The line itself never went quiet, carrying freight and long distance trains through the township for the next half century while the passenger platforms sat unused. The return of services after 54 years closes a gap that opened when the area was still farmland.

Whether the stations are worth $300 million will not be settled by the opening day photographs. It will be settled by how many people use them, and that depends on things outside KiwiRail’s control, including how quickly the houses go up around Drury and Paerata Rise, how good the bus connections turn out to be in practice, and whether the promised 10 minute peak frequency arrives with the City Rail Link.

What is not in doubt is that the trains are running. For a part of Auckland that has spent five decades watching them go past, that is the change.

Have you used the new Drury or Paerata stations, or are you waiting on Ngakoroa? Tell us what the trip is like in the comments below.

This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂