Emergency crews spent this week working through a simulated fire on a train near Te Waihorotiu Station, the last live exercise in the City Rail Link tunnels before Auckland’s underground railway starts carrying passengers on Sunday 13 September.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand, New Zealand Police and Hato Hone St John worked alongside train and station staff for the drill, which Auckland Transport described in a statement issued on 24 August. Auckland Transport said the exercise was not a formal requirement. It was run because it gave responders one more chance to practise together in an environment that does not exist anywhere else in the country.
It closes out a testing programme that has been quietly running under central Auckland for months. Fifteen live exercises were carried out in total, from small drills through to scenarios involving more than 300 participants at a time. Around 200 emergency service personnel and more than 50 emergency vehicles took part across the programme. The main block of testing finished last month and used more than 1,400 volunteer passengers.
The scenarios covered station fires, train failures in tunnels, derailments, medical incidents on board and complex evacuations spread across more than one station at once. What was being watched was not only how quickly crews arrived. Auckland Transport said the tests also looked at the systems sitting behind the response, including ventilation and smoke extraction, alarms, communications, CCTV, lighting and control room operations.
Participants were often given little or no advance detail about what they were walking into. That let organisers watch real reactions to smoke filled carriages, simulated injuries, low lighting and crowds moving in the wrong direction, rather than a rehearsed performance.
The volunteer passengers were not all fit young staff members either. Auckland Transport said they reflected the mix of people who use Auckland trains every day, including older people, people with health conditions, people with limited English and people with hearing, visual or mobility needs. More than 75 actors were used on top of that to create situations the volunteers could not safely reproduce.
Auckland Transport general manager rail services Mark Lambert said the programme has given the operators confidence the railway is ready.
“The City Rail Link is unlike anything else in New Zealand’s rail network, so it has been vital for everyone involved to practise how we would respond in a range of different situations. The strong collaboration between emergency services and our rail partners has helped build confidence that Aucklanders will be well supported should an incident ever occur,” Lambert said.
The reason for all the rehearsal is depth. Parts of the twin tunnels sit more than 40 metres below the surface, which changes almost everything about how a fire or a medical emergency is handled.
“The City Rail Link’s underground environment, with tunnels more than 40 metres below ground in some parts, presents unique challenges around access, evacuation and communication, requiring specialist planning and coordination,” City Rail Link Ltd chief executive Patrick Brockie said. “I want to thank every single person who’s played a part in this mammoth effort to ensure Aucklanders can travel with confidence, knowing they’ll be well taken care of should the unexpected ever happen in our new stations and tunnels.”
Hato Hone St John area operations manager Kim Moser said the drills mattered most for familiarity. “For Hato Hone St John, this testing has been an important opportunity for our ambulance personnel to build familiarity with the CRL’s new underground environment and practise coordinated responses alongside our emergency service and transport partners,” Moser said.
Fire crews have also been turning up outside the new stations at odd hours, which Fire and Emergency New Zealand region manager Ron Devlin was keen to explain before anyone drew the wrong conclusion. “People may have seen our fire trucks parked outside the stations at all hours of the day,” Devlin said. “There’s no need for concern, we’re simply giving as many crews as possible the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the new environment.”
Once the railway opens, responsibility is split. KiwiRail leads and coordinates the response to incidents in the tunnels through its Auckland Rail Operations Centre. Auckland One Rail handles unplanned events on trains and inside the stations, with emergency services called in as needed.
The City Rail Link is 3.45km of twin tunnel under the city centre, with two new underground stations at Te Waihorotiu in midtown and Karanga-a-Hape near Karangahape Road, plus a rebuilt Maungawhau Station at the western end. For the first time, trains will run through the city centre rather than reversing out of WaitematΔ Station at the bottom of Queen Street. The project has cost around $5.5 billion, a figure we looked at in detail in this piece on how the bill got so large.
Auckland Transport chief executive Stacey van der Putten said when the opening date was confirmed on 6 August that the remaining weeks were about readiness. “The next few weeks are about making sure Auckland is ready. We’re introducing a completely new rail network, new bus connections, updating thousands of customer touchpoints and helping people understand the new travel opportunities available to them from day one,” van der Putten said. Public open days were held at all three new stations through August, and bus timetables around the network were adjusted from 13 August to line up with the new train services.
One change Aucklanders may notice more than the tunnels themselves is the end of the long shutdowns. KiwiRail chief metro officer Bevan Assink said the upgrades done to get ready for the City Rail Link mean no full network closures are needed, and trains will run on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Last summer the whole network was closed for 33 days. Extra staff will be on hand for the first weeks of operation.
“We’ll have extra maintenance crews and more people working round the clock at our rail operations centre, all ready to go in case there are any issues during the launch period, while everything beds in,” Assink said.
Passenger services start on Sunday 13 September, with the first full weekday timetable running from Monday 14 September. Details of the opening day celebrations are still to be announced. RNZ reported the final exercise was under way this week.
Will you be on one of the first trains through the tunnels, or are you waiting for the queues to die down? Tell us 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 π
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