RODNEY HIDE - City Rail Link: 19th-Century Trains Under a 21st-Century City

The City Rail Link is a $5.5 billion monument to backward thinking.

Auckland is digging a 3.5 km twin tunnel under its CBD to run 19th-century steel-on-steel trains. The project, originally budgeted far lower, has ballooned to $5.5 billion. Auckland ratepayers and taxpayers are on the hook for billions upfront with rate payers coughing up $220–$265 million every year in operating, interest and depreciation costs. That is real money sucked out of productive parts of the economy.

This is government at its most predictable: always looking backwards. When new technology screams opportunity, politicians and bureaucrats reach for Victorian-era solutions wrapped in 21st-century rhetoric.

Imagine instead a genuine 21st-century system. The Boring Company’s Vegas Loop is already operational. It uses electric Tesla vehicles in tunnels, driverless or minimally crewed, delivering passengers in safety, comfort and speed. Built in roughly a year for a fraction of CRL’s cost — the original LVCC section came in at around $47 million. It moves thousands per hour and tens of thousands per day at fares around US$12. No taxpayer mega-subsidy. No endless operating deficits. Just rapid, on-demand transport that scales.

Auckland could have offered The Boring Company a showcase project: dig the tunnels privately, run a fleet of electric Teslas, and charge users directly. Zero cost to ratepayers and taxpayers. Door-to-door convenience. No waiting on platforms. No fixed timetables. Real 21st-century mobility.

Instead we get CRL. Let’s do the maths that exposes the madness.

$5.5 billion capital cost. Even using optimistic projections of around 20,000–30,000 daily passengers in the early years (well below the long-term peak-hour claims), the capital cost alone works out at well over $150,000–$200,000 per daily passenger, i.e. the "Capital Cost per Daily Boarding" -- a useful metric in cost-effectiveness analysis.  Add the annual $220+ million running costs and the insanity deepens. This is not transport infrastructure. It is a slow-motion fiscal train wreck.

Governments love rail because it looks impressive, locks in jobs and lets them play central planner. They hate flexible, innovative, private solutions because those expose how outdated their thinking is. And they no longer control where and how we live.

The population is ageing and fertility is collapsing. We cannot afford white elephants that deliver yesterday’s technology at tomorrow’s prices. Auckland deserved forward-looking transport. Instead it got a very expensive hole in the ground for very old trains.

Scrap the nostalgia projects. Open the city to genuine innovation. The future does not run on 19th-century rails. It drives on electric autonomy — faster, cheaper and without the endless bill to ratepayers. CRL is not progress. It is expensive proof that government transport policy remains stuck in the past.

Indeed, with driverless cars we won’t need the tunnels, we won’t need public transport and unbelievable space in cities will be freed because we won’t need the car parks.

The world is digital and yet our government is subsidising the pony express.

Rodney Hide is a former minister and ACT party leader