Kia ora

We hope you and your whānau have been keeping safe and well. This month despite COVID-19 Level 3 restrictions we’ve made huge strides in our work progress including the breakthrough of the Tunnel Boring Machine at Karangahape Station! 

Coming up next month we’ll be inviting you to participate in our quarterly feedback survey to better understand how satisfied you are with communications and engagement in relation to the City Rail Link project, and how we may be able to improve. Keep an eye out for the invitation to participate in the coming week! 

As always, feedback and questions about the City Rail Link project can be sent to mteden@linkalliance.co.nz or 0800 CRL TALK (press 5 for Mt Eden Station). 

Ngā Mihi, 

Mt Eden Station team 

Karangahape Station welcomes Dame Whina Cooper, our TBM

This month we celebrated a mighty milestone with the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM), Dame Whina Cooper, breaking through into the Karangahape Station construction site at the end of its 860-metre-long journey from Mt Eden. 

Our workers 32 metres below ground at Karangahape welcomed Dame Whina Cooper as the TBM breached a 100-millimetre-thick protective wall of concrete into the station cavern. 

New Zealand’s recent five-week-long covid lockdown delayed the TBM’s planned September breakthrough. The Link Alliance, continued to operate the TBM during the lockdown, well below full capacity, to stop earth settling around it. Tunnelling accelerated when lockdown restrictions eased. 

Covid-related health and safety protocols curtailed larger breakthrough celebrations. The TBM operators did mark their arrival with a symbolic gift for Karangahape Station workers - a hard hat representing the Link Alliance’s commitment to achieve industry-leading standards in health, safety, and wellbeing. The hard hat bears Dame Whina Cooper’s portrait. 

The TBM’s name acknowledges Dame Whina Cooper’s mana and reputation as a woman of influence and significance for Māori and for wider New Zealand. 

The TBM began mining from the Mt Eden Station construction site five months ago, in May. The TBM multi-tasked – cutting into the earth, removing spoil to the surface, and installing the concrete panels that line the tunnels. 

At Karangahape the 130-metre-long TBM will now be pushed 223-metres to the northern end of the station cavern and readied for the next stage of its journey, to Aotea Station in Auckland’s midtown. Its planned arrival is early in the new year where it will connect with the tunnels already built from Britomart and under the lower end of Albert Street. 

The second CRL tunnel from Mt Eden to Aotea will be bored in 2022. 

Aucklanders can follow Dame Whina Cooper’s progress online at https://www.digcrl.co.nz/ a website dedicated to the TBM, its progress and the people behind its journey. The website is updated weekly. 

Link Alliance celebrating Artweek Auckland 

The annual Artweek Auckland festival is set to begin next week from the 5th - 14th of November. City Rail Link Ltd and Link Alliance are excited to join with Artweek in celebrating Auckland’s diverse and vibrant visual arts community. This year we will celebrate in a new and still fun, digital format. 

City Rail Link is New Zealand’s largest infrastructure project supporting local artists to paint, draw, sculpt and light our communities with colour, vibrancy and character. 

Come celebrate Artweek with us by visiting the Artweek website, joining our Art Walk, taking advantage of the creative resources in this newsletter, or participating in our activities. Ignite your creativity and extend your knowledge of our community’s local art.  

Coming up at Basque Park 

This month site set up began at Basque Park, the location of our upcoming waste water pipe diversion works. The pipe diversion works is a small but essential part of the Mt Eden Station upgrade. Bringing the new rail tracks into the station will displace some pipework and this needs to be redirected and joined at a nearby interconnection at the park. 

Ahead of site set up taking place, the Link Alliance and Mana Whenua representatives from Ngāti Whatua o Õrakei and Ngāti Te Ata Waiohua held a dawn karakia to prepare the work site.  

Getting creative in your bubble

To help you get creative, we have pulled together some fun resources for the whole family that you and your bubble can enjoy together from the comfort of your home.  

Dame Whina devoted her life to fighting discrimination and improving the living conditions for her community. Our Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) named after this great lady is a true feat of engineering, a work of art you might say.  

This colouring image shows the intricate detail and complexity of the TBM cutterhead. The cutterhead is the face plate on the TBM that powers through the earth to create our future City Rail Link tunnels. Release your creativity and relieve some stress with an afternoon of colouring and do be sure to send us your masterpieces. Warning! You will relax while colouring – this is for the big kids. 

In addition to colouring, we also encourage you to... 

• Download the new ‘Artweek Every Week’ app on your mobile device, making it easy to navigate your way around Auckland’s galleries and creative spaces (Yes, virtually!). 

• Explore more than 17,500 works on the Auckland Art Gallery website, including blogs, publications, videos and much more. 

• Download the Mt Eden Art Walk brochure (to be added) to check out your local creative groups in the area.  

• Grab your paintbrushes and pencils and join our Thursday Meditative Art classes at 4pm, download zoom and click here.  

The retaining walls supporting our future train lines 

Redeveloping Mt Eden Station to connect the new CRL lines and integrate them with the North Auckland (Western Line) means a whole lot of dirt to be relocated or retained. 

Mt Eden will see the addition of two trenches which provide for the lowered North Auckland Line (NAL). On the east side of the station the trench starts lowering adjacent to the Mt Eden Correction Facility and heads west under Mt Eden Road to link with the tunnel leading to Karangahape Station. On the west the trench will run parallel to Haultain Street and Fenton Street, and connect to the CRL track which passes beneath new footbridges at Porters Avenue and Fenton Street. 

To avoid ground subsidence, retaining walls are required for the construction of these new rail trenches. 

The type of wall constructed is dependent on a variety of factors such as groundwater assessments, surface elevations, ground condition and load, constructability, sequencing, and consideration for future developments. As Mt Eden is a known overland water flow path, a 2500 year flood event has also been incorporated into the wall design to provide additional protection and strength. 

The design of these will be cantilevered (walls without supports to enable open unobstructed excavation), contiguous bored piles (piles arranged in a line typically with a 150mm gap between them) or overlapping / secant piles (reinforced concrete piles that interlock).  

In other words, there is more than one (retaining wall) that meets the eye. 

"Water" Milestone! Celebrating the Huia 2 cut over

Our team recently celebrated a significant milestone on the Mt Eden Station site, with the relocation and cutover of the Huia 2 watermain on Nikau and Fenton Streets.   

The Huia 2 is considered a critical piece of infrastructure and runs approximately 15 kilometers from the initiation point at the Huia Treatment Plant in Titirangi, to the Khyber Pass reservoirs. At 1.3metres diameter, the watermain is on the larger size of the treated water pipes in Auckland. 

The pipe was required to be relocated in these two areas to allow for other critical construction activity to commence on site.  

After months of ongoing work, the final cut over between the old and new pipe is now complete and our teams are working hard to reinstate these areas. We thank our site neighbours for their patience and support while this work has been taking place.  

Local Businesses, Art Tours, and Picnics! 

Earlier this month, Aucklander’s were given the freedom to venture outdoors and explore Tāmaki Makaurau’s best picnic spots, with one of them being our very own Basque Park.  

In celebration of Art Week, we have planned the best picnic for you and your whānau to enjoy!  

On the way to Basque Park, we invite you to take part in our self-guided art walk. Simply follow the art trail map above to see the latest art installations. With all kinds of interesting art around the Mt Eden site, we encourage you to make a day of it.  

We also have a few local businesses that can help fill your picnic baskets with Mt Eden’s must haves: 

• House of Knives are the go-to for all picnic thermos, chopping boards, plastic cups and cutlery.  

• Pack your picnic basket full of pizza, pasta and desserts from the award-winning Al Volo pizzeria.  

• Pick up a book or two from Hard to Find, a secondhand bookshop full of 146,000 online treasures. 

• Sabato have a variety of beverages, cheeses and confectionary that will suit the tastebuds of any picnic-goer. 

Important work in the rail corridor over the Christmas period

Between now and January 2022 there will be a number of 'Blocks of Line' taking place at the City Rail Link Mt Eden sites, meaning increased weekend and public holiday construction activity in order to maintain the momentum of the City Rail Link project.    

Link Alliance takes the opportunity to work during Blocks of Line (BOL), which are periods throughout the year when trains are not running on the rail network. Construction work is undertaken during this time as some of the activities take place immediately adjacent to the track, and it is safest for our teams to do this while trains are not running.  

During these BOL, Link Alliance will undertake construction activity along the rail corridor between Khyber Pass and the Dominion Road overpass and in adjacent areas within the three areas of our Mt Eden construction site (main station site, eastern site and western site). 

To keep up to date on when these BOL are taking place and what construction activity will be happening, get in touch to sign up for our works notifications or view our construction calendar HERE. 

Jargon Buster 

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 will look at the term ‘scrim’.  

Scrim is a strong and coarse fabric that provides protection and security throughout the stages of construction. Scrim can often be used to add vibrancy, attractiveness and storytelling in the area. Across site, we’ve asked NZ artists to create colourful designs to add to our scrim. Pictured above is our scrim artwork designed by Wolfe Girardin Jodoin. 

Wolfe describes his mural as a colourful, playful and reminiscent of comic book styles of story-telling. He hopes that this imagery is easily recognisable to the viewer and they can spot some of the deeper narrative hidden in the artwork. 

Update on our information sessions & tours

Under the government’s guidance, we have paused our information sessions and perimeter site tours until the traffic light system allows. Usually they are held on the first Tuesday of every month at our visitor centre at 1 New North Road – Te Manawa.  

We look forward to resuming our information sessions and tours once it is safe to do so, keep an eye out for our communications and as always, if you have any questions about the project, you can contact us on 0800 CRL TALK (press 5 for Mt Eden Station) or mteden@linkalliance.co.nz. 

You can also follow Link Alliance's progress by clicking the social media buttons below: