Jack Tame: Love a bit of subterranean mass-transit - Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

When I first moved to New York, I spent my first year living in a railroad apartment above an Ecuadorian fruit shop on Second Avenue.  

It was a character-building experience. I went weeks without heating or hot water in winter, and my windows had almost no effect whatsoever in keeping out the ceaseless sound of trucks thundering past my bedroom enroute to restock the city.   

When I arrived they’d just start construction on the Second Ave subway, a few blocks from my home. The project was hitting a few speedbumps. Bedrock turned out to be deeper than anticipated, a worker nearly died after being stuck in waste-deep slop on site, and what was supposed to be a controlled explosion sent rocks flying all over a busy Manhattan intersection. 

Curiously, the Second Ave subway route was first proposed in the 1920s, which Wikipedia tells was about the same time that planners first mused over the possibility of the Morningside Deviation, a train tunnel in central Auckland.   

Stage One of the Second Avenue subway was a 3.2km tunnel. The Central Rail Link is 3.5km.  

Second Ave ended up costing more than $7 Billion. The Central Rail Link blew out however many times but at last check was $5.5 Billion.   

The weird thing about a big underground tunnel development is that most of us never fully appreciate the scale of the work. It’s obvious I suppose, but even if you live and work in the city, while you get used to a few cones and traffic delays up above the ground, you have no real perspective about the extraordinary activities happening somewhere beneath your feet. 

Auckland Transport has this week released its updated transit map with the CRL stations. Apparently they’ve done 1600 test runs so far. They’ve run trains more than 5000km – Kaitaia to Bluff two-and-a-half times. They’ve been driving trains at 70kmph directly underneath Auckland’s CBD and at no point have I felt so much of a rumble or a shudder. I reckon the vast majority of us up top have been absolutely none-the-wiser. The kid in me who briefly considered becoming an engineer (and even volunteered to spend a school holiday touring the Lyttelton Tunnel) can’t help but think that’s pretty cool.  

After riding along on a VIP tour yesterday with all the politicians and movers-and-shakers, Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown was in vintage form.   

How was it? He was asked.  

“It was a ride in a train.” He said.   

“We don’t want excitement.”  

Well, maybe not. But guilty as charged.   

Maybe it’s the engineering. Maybe it’s the people-watching. Maybe it’s the broader sense of momentum and life, but whether it’s a tube, an underground, or a subway, I love a bit of subterranean mass-transit.    

You know you’re a nerd when you’re less excited about the opening of New Zealand’s first IKEA than the transport connection you’ll take to get there.  

After years of construction, the Second Ave subway opened two weeks before I moved back home. One of the last things I did on my last few days in New York was ride a loop. Not because I had somewhere to be but because I wanted to see what all that fuss and money and effort had created, out of sight, underneath my feet.   

I can’t wait to do the same thing here. 

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