May Newsletter

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27 May 2021

Kia ora,

We hope you have all been keeping safe and well this month. Here at the Mt Eden station construction site there has been an exciting buzz of activity as the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) starts to move forward to Karangahape station.

You can read more about our action packed May below and our journey to delivering the re-developed Mt Eden station in 2024.

Ngā Mihi

Mt Eden Station Team

Dame Whina Cooper ready to bore

Earlier this month on a beautiful sunny morning, the Mt Eden Station team held a special ceremony to mark the start of Dame Whina Cooper our Tunnel Boring Machine’s drive.

Transport Minister Michael Wood described the launch as an “exciting milestone” for New Zealand’s largest ever transport infrastructure project – “one,” he says, “that is helping our economic recovery and supporting jobs”.

The Transport Minister was joined by Dame Whina Cooper’s whanau, Auckland Iwi, the city’s Mayor Phil Goff and City Rail Link workers at the launch celebration.

At exactly 8am the Minister and the Mayor entered the TBM’s control room and pressed the button to start the machine to allow its cutter head to make a couple of ceremonial revolutions.

Alongside CRL’s contribution to Auckland’s future, mining tradition also had a significant role at the event.

One tradition involved breaking a bottle of champagne on the TBM to mark its official launch. Father Christopher Denham, the Dean of Auckland’s Cathedral of St Patrick and St Joseph, also blessed the TBM and the teams who will operate it – an acknowledgement to St Barbara, the patron saint of miners and others who work underground.

The first 50 metres of tunnel at Mt Eden have already been mined to provide room for the front sections of the 130 metre-long TBM.

Dame Whina Cooper will excavate 1.6 kilometres under the Central Motorway Junction and Karangahape Road into central Auckland to connect with the CRL tunnels already built from the Britomart Station.

The TBM has three busy jobs as its crawls below Auckland, excavating spoil, removing spoil by conveyor belt from the tunnel, and lining the tunnel walls with concrete segments.

The TBM will complete the first tunnel towards the end of the year. It will then be returned to Mt Eden in sections and prepared for its second tunnel drive next year.

You can watch the video of the ceremony here.

Basque Park Pipe Diversion - proposed works

We would like to share with you our plans to carry out temporary works in a section of Basque Park.

The Basque Park pipe diversion is a small but essential part of the Mt Eden Station upgrade for the City Rail Link. Bringing the new railway tracks into the station will displace some pipework and this needs to be redirected and joined at a nearby interconnection within the park.

The site will be located in the 'amphitheatre' area of the park, by the Couldry Street and Rendall Place entrances, as shown in this map below:

Key facts:

The site will occupy approximately one quarter of the park's total footprint
The works will take a maximum of 12 months, starting in October 2021 at the earliest
The park will be returned to its original state when the work is over
During these temporary works Basque Park will still be available to all users
The site will be safely secured inside construction hoardings
Standard working hours will be 7am to 7pm, Monday to Saturday.

We will be sharing more information at a drop-in session at our visitor centre: ‘Te Manawa’ at 1 New North Road, Eden Terrace on Thursday 27th May from 5pm to 7pm and Saturday 29th May from 10am to 12 noon.

You can also find more information about this work on the CRL website at www.cityraillink.co.nz/basquepark.

Normanby Road level crossing upgrade

To improve safety and allow for additional rail tracks, Normanby Road level crossing will temporarily close to start the construction of a new over-rail bridge to replace it.

The level crossing is currently rated the second most dangerous in Auckland and, once the City Rail Link is complete, more trains will pass Normanby Road more often. This means it’s important that we make this change now.

From overnight on Tuesday, 1 June, the Normanby Road level crossing will close to traffic and we will start constructing the new bridge. Combined with a new rail trench, the bridge will permanently separate cars, people, and trains on Normanby Road. You won’t have to stop to wait for a train to pass anymore.

People on foot will be able to use the level crossing until mid-July, when we will open the temporary services bridge (TSB) to people. It will have stairs added so that people can access both sides of Normanby Road, however it will not be suitable for people with a walking aid, pram, bike or scooter as elevators cannot be installed. We will clearly signpost an alternative route for people who cannot use the TSB and are working closely with accessibility groups to ensure it’s suitable.

The TSB currently being built will allow people on foot to safely cross the rail tracks while the new road-over-rail bridge is under construction.

If you drive across the level crossing, you will need to use a different route from Wednesday, 2 June. We’re making changes in the area to help maintain traffic flow but delays are expected. Please consider using public transport, walking or cycling instead, or allow extra time for your journey by car.

The new Normanby Road-over-rail bridge is expected to open in early-2022.

Online CRL ‘field trip’ now available

Some of our amazing team are featured in an online City Rail Link field trip designed for children.

Students nationwide are getting the chance to “visit” the project without leaving their classrooms.

Video technology is turning the project into a virtual classroom for students from all over New Zealand, allowing them to see how the project is being built while highlighting careers available in the infrastructure industry.

Students also get the opportunity to connect with one or more of the experts in a live web conference on the 9th and 10th June as part of the school programme. Link Alliance Project Director Francois Dudouit will be involved in these online class sessions too.

Angel, Antoinette, Don, Wilson and Isaac are some of the awesome Mt Eden Station team members being featured.

At the same time, the imagination of primary, intermediate and secondary Year 7 to 10 students will be tested with a competition for them to design their own public transport station. There are three prizes of $200 up for grabs for schools.

To learn more about the school challenge click here.

To get your school to enrol in the programme visit: https://www.learnz.org.nz/futurejourneys212.

Sharing our stories with the future workforce

This month the Link Alliance hosted an awesome bunch of Year 13 students from Auckland Boys Grammar. The students were keen to learn more about ground-breaking design and product design on the CRL project.

They got just that! Hearing from our architect, Building Information Modelling (BIM) team, and Deputy Construction Manager Nick Adams.

There were a few firsts for the boys, such as learning about BIM and its importance in the design and construction process on the CRL project.

As a bonus, the students got to hear from an old Grammar boy - Nick Adams, (Deputy Construction Manager) who shared stories about his career pathway, highlights and work on the CRL. He also took them on full PPE site tours of the Mt Eden station construction site!

Deputy Construction Manager Nick Adams sharing his experience on the CRL project.

Lighting the way to be Auckland’s largest outdoor art gallery

Although our usual colour palette is concrete and steel, the team are working hard behind the scenes to add some vibrant colour into the mix by turning the hoardings and fence lines around our construction sites into open-air galleries to show off the work of highly talented creatives.

This month the lights were turned on for the first time on our new hoarding artwork on Flower Street. The mural done by NZ artist Eliav Meltzer, utilises reclaimed materials and elements to create transparent panels of PVC intertwined with LED lights to colour the contours throughout.

In daylight, these films case their hues across the surface delicately. At night, filtered light pierces them by projecting seas of colour.

Across the road, colourful scrim (woven cloth to cover temporary fencing) has been erected around our construction site.

The scrim artworks, titled “Here we Flow” by artist Wolfe Girardin Jodoin is colourful, playful and reminiscent of comic book styles of story-telling.

Composed like a patchwork, the mural expresses non-linear stories of the area’s past, present and future.

Additional route to the future re-developed station in progress

Next year we’ll begin the construction of a modern pedestrian bridge that will connect Fenton Street to Ngahura Street.

This bridge will replace the previous at-grade pedestrian level crossing that connected pedestrians to the former Mt Eden station platform.

Following public feedback, Auckland Transport (AT) have now committed to creating a second station access which will connect the bridge to the new Western line platform.

Recently AT confirmed that the proposed plan is to convert the emergency exit stairway from the Mt Eden station to the Fenton / Ngahura Street bridge, to a second entrance. Due to the restricted space, this second entrance provide access to the Western Line platform only.

The connection of the Fenton – Ngahura Street bridge to the platform will be a separate project from the CRLL station redevelopment and will open after the completion of the re-developed Mt Eden station.

The bridge itself will be open and ready for pedestrians at the end of 2023.

Important works on the train tracks over Queen’s birthday weekend

To work on the existing rail tracks, Link Alliance utilises KiwiRail’s Block of Lines (BOL) which are short periods throughout the year when trains are not running on the rail network. The next BOL is Queen’s birthday weekend, 5th June – 7th June 2021.

Construction work is undertaken during this time as some of the activities take place immediately adjacent to the rail track, and it is safest for our teams to do this while trains are not running.

During this BOL we’ll be undertaking the following works between Normanby Road to Dominion Road overpass:

Laying utilities for track drainage
Temporarily removing existing tracks to work under them
Excavation works including breaking through basalt rock
Piling work to form foundations for overhead line equipment

Outside of our construction site the team will also be installing wastewater services on Boston Road by the Normanby Road roundabout. This will require a temporary road closure while these works take place, highlighted below:

BOL activity along the rail corridor will take place between 8am to 6pm, and BOL works include Sundays and Public Holidays.

To read the full scope of work activities happening during Queen’s birthday weekend, click here.

Introducing: Dress for Success

Dress for Success is a charitable organisation that empowers woman from all walks of life to achieve economic independence. Dress for Success has seven affiliate stores in New Zealand, with one of these stores being in our very own backyard: Boston Road.

The Dress for Success team on the corner of Boston Road and Mt Eden Road provide women with a network of support, professional attire, and career development tools to help them gain confidence personally and professionally.

At the Link Alliance we’re encouraging our staff and the Mt Eden Community to support our neighbour by donating clothing, volunteering, or contributing financially, as these small acts of kindness have a huge impact on a woman’s future.

Upcoming information session

Next Tuesday – 1 June, the Mt Eden Station team will be hosting an information session from 4.30pm – 5.30pm to answer any burning questions you may have.

We will also be kicking off a site perimeter tour led by our Development Response Manager – Piet Ubels. Our regular readers might recognise Piet’s name as he is also the artist who created the incredible hoarding art on Shaddock Street! The tour kicks off at 3.30pm meeting outside Te Manawa and touring down Shaddock, Flower and Nikau Streets.

Each month Link Alliance is going to look at some of the more technical terms from the construction and ‘translate’ them into more easy to understand terms. This month we look at the term ‘multi-service vehicle’ or MSV.

Multi-service vehicle (MSV)

A multi-service vehicle (MSV) is a special vehicle that safely drives equipment, material and people in and out of the tunnels. The MSV has special wheels that can drive on tunnel segments and hard ground and navigate curves within the tunnel.

Now that the TBM is on it’s way, we’ll be using MSV to deliver the concrete segments that will line the tunnel and to drive shift workers in and out.