Chris Bishop: Infrastructure Minister on the planned review into the City Rail Link Build

The Infrastructure Minister suspects the grandeur of Auckland's City Rail Link stations will surprise users.

Chris Bishop's announced the build will be reviewed - after the project's former boss claimed it could have been completed for half the $5.5 billion spent. 

Bishop says the architecture is amazing, and some might describe the stations as palaces. 

"They're going to be incredible, but they come at a price. And you've just got to weigh up whether or not it's worth the price, and like every other project, we should do a review once it's open." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
City Rail Lincoln White's cost so much. The former CYERL
boss Sean Sweeney has told The Herald it could probably
have been done for about the half the cost that
it was done I think was over five billion dollars
was super expensive. As a result, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop
has announced a review into the costs and he's with
us high bish good afternoon. How could it have been
built for half the cost?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well as Dr Sweedey says, who I've got a lot
of time for Remember he ran the project, but he
ran it to what the government and the Council agreed
on would be the design scope at the time. People
will see when CRL opens in the second half of
the year. It's an amazing piece of infrastructure. But I
think people will also be somewhat surprised by, how shall

(00:41):
we say, the grandeur of the stations they are. Some
would say that they are like palaces. They're amazing, they're
going to be they're going to be incredible. But they
come at a price, right, they come at a cost,
and you just got to weigh up whether or not
it's worth the price. And you know, five and a
half billion bucks is a lot of money, so I

(01:03):
think that, like every other project, we should do a
review once it's open.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Fair point. But we are building for the future. So
in a hundred years will our descendants be standing in
those stations and going, jees they overspect this, or will
they be saying, look at how well they built something
that we now actually can still use.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, and that's a reasonable point too, And that's precisely
why we're going to do a review. And I'm also
really interested in having a look at how we got
some of the scope wrong from the start when it
comes to urban development, because CRL is not just a
transport project, right, it's actually an enabler of growth around
the city, for housing, for commercial development, and except we

(01:41):
didn't really think about all of those things right at
the start of the project. Okay, we just thought about
it as a transport project and said, okay, let's go
on and build an underground railroape three and a half
kilometers underground. Now, that's fine, that's important, But we missed
some opportunities along the way to really take advantage of CRL.
I mean, if you think about it, only now are
we doing the level crossings along the rest of the

(02:02):
rail network in Auckland, and all of the evidence is
that to really take advantage of city rail Links increased
passenger service trains, you need to do the level crossings.
But we're only getting on with them now ten years
after we started building CRL, So we've you know, frankly,
the country's made some mistakes along the way, and I
want to make sure we don't repeat those mistakes in
the future.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Do you think that when this review is completed, we
will find that we have built things here that we
really honestly don't need, that we will never need, never,
never in the country's future. Do you think so?

Speaker 2 (02:32):
No? I think City Rail Links is a good project.
The question is whether or not it could have been
delivered for a more cost effective solution. And by by
you know, some of the stuff I've seen is by kilometer.
City rail Link is the most expensive underground rail link
in the world, in the world. Now, you know, New
Zealand is an expensive place to do construction. There's other

(02:55):
things going on. But you know, honestly, why are we
delivering the most expensive underground rail.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
But when is there? So when is the most the
other most recent one that we're comparing it to. You know,
when was the because this is brand new, so it's
going to be more expensive, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah, But we've been building it for twelve years and
in the meantime, you know, cities around the world have
delivered underground rail linkages that actually, actually, to be honest,
some of them started after City rail Link started and
they finished before City Railink finished. It's taken quite a
long time to do, right, So these are all the
things we need to look at. Look. But I don't
want people to get the wrong impression. It's going to

(03:31):
be an amazing project. People should use it. I'm really
proud of it. I'm really delighted it's coming to the end.
But like, and this is what we do really badly
in New Zealand. We open something and we go great,
you know, and we walk away. We don't look back
and go, Okay, how do we learn from what's happened
and do better in the future. So what I want
to do?

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Why are we opening it now? Is it not good
to go?

Speaker 2 (03:53):
It's coming to it's coming to the end of its
time for testing, and there's a lot of testing to
be done, and there's a lot of worrying what we'll
testing because you've got passenger rail running at the same
time as freight. You don't want trains to collide and
they've got well.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
How long does it take to test? How long is
it taking months to test something like that? You can't
teest it in a week?

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Well you would, You should be in the meetings. I'men
you sound like me. Yeah, I mean I'm I'm as
frustrated as you. I want to get it done, but
I also want to open a safe and reliable train system.
You're dealing with underground trains, You're dealing with thousands of people.
You've got freight and passenger running on the same network.
You've got to get the timetabling right. The last thing
I want to have happen hither is open it and

(04:36):
it to be a disaster, and everyone say, why didn't
you just take another couple of weeks and get it right?
You're true, and so I'm trying to avoid that.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Fair enough, Haybush, thank you as always. Good luck with
that review. Chris Buship, Minister for Infrastructure. For more from
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