Auckland's City Rail Link: A Historic Milestone in Urban Transit Development

Kia ora koutou.

Thank you all for joining us here today.

Can I acknowledge the Prime Minister, the Minister for Rail, the Mayor of Auckland, my Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and Councillors – and those of you who have held those roles in the past.

I want to especially recognise today the thousands of tunnellers, engineers, electricians, specialists and planners, without who this project would not have been possible.

The apprentices who came onto this project as school leavers and will walk off it as qualified tradespeople – who will go out into the world, or stay here at home, and use those skills for decades to come.

Those who came from afar, and those who came from just down the road, to help our city take the next step in its story.

We should also acknowledge those businesses who have been impacted during construction. Your contribution has made this achievement possible, too.

None it has been easy. But I am certain that once people jump on the first train, it will be clear it has been worth it.

Success, they say, has many fathers – and today is certainly a very large family reunion.

More than one hundred years ago, on the 14th of June 1918, the Grey Lynn Town Board met.

On their agenda was a proposal for a railway deviation from the Town Hall to Morningside. What they wanted was a railway station in the centre of the city.

One attendee at this meeting dismissed the idea to the Auckland Star. Interesting as history, he said, but what Auckland needed was better transit, not history.

But if you want history, this project certainty has plenty.

In 1924, Gordon Coates announced the ‘Morningside Deviation’ – a tunnel under Morningside with an underground station near the town hall.

By 1930, the cost had tripled, and the Government cancelled it.

It came back in various ways in 1936, 1946, 1950, and 1955 – all in different forms, but none eventuating.

In 1972 Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, the great mayor of this city, took up this cause - only for it to be cancelled again by the government in 1976.

But I want to take you back to that first local board meeting in 1918. Buried at the bottom of that Auckland Star report is the real story.

By the time that meeting sat, a similar route had already been surveyed. For a tunnel. And a station in the centre of town - a few hundred metres from where we are standing right now.

That survey work was over 50 years old.

In 1918.

It would have been drawn up around the same time Auckland was laying its very first railways.

That’s right. We have been talking about building a railway through the centre of Auckland since the 1870s.

One hundred and fifty years.

But this idea has endured.

It has endured because generations of Kiwis knew, like we do now, that transport is what binds cities together.

This simple truth has always stood the test of time.

Cities take time to grow up – Auckland is no different.

Like us, they experience growing pains. They never mature nearly as fast as their parents would like.

But as we stand here today, like parents at a graduation ceremony, we should be proud that Auckland has, now, grown up.

Because this truly is a turning point for this city.

The world's greatest cities all share one thing.

Beneath their streets runs a railway that carries people to work, to study, to family, and to their homes.

From today, so does ours.

Generations have tried and failed.

We are the generation that finally did.

City Rail Link joins a long list of ambitious projects in our young country’s history.

The Auckland Harbour Bridge, Manapōuri, the Clyde Dam, the Waterview Tunnel.

Every time, our eyes widen, and our ambition grows.

But now, it’s time we look forward.

To the future, and what is possible.

The question is no longer if – it’s what.

For now, we have an Auckland rapid transit network to finish. But who knows what the next 150 years will bring.

The next generation will be as hungry for growth as we are.

They will go on to build the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing after that.

And so, our country grows.

A because of achievements like the one we are celebrating today, they will know they can achieve great things.

I am proud to be the Minister of Transport that gets to see this project completed but I am intensely aware that I am just the current guy holding the job.

There have been Ministers of Transport before me, governments and councils before me that started this project.

There will be Ministers of Transport and councils and governments to come and they will continue to build the future of this great city.

But today, we should be proud that as a country, we got this done.

Thank you.