When it comes to epic achievements, there’s one country which punches well above its weight.
It lays claim to one of the first people to climb Everest, probably the world’s best sports team,
and there was a big fuss about a ring.
You shall not pass!
Now this illustrious
nation has embarked on another huge adventure in its biggest city.
In case you’ve not guessed it by now, New Zealand is kicking off its
biggest ever transport infrastructure project and first underground railway.
The pioneering scheme is Auckland’s best bet
to prevent notorious traffic from grinding it to a halt.
But, surprise surprise, building a brand new rail line under a city
of 1.5 million people in a far flung corner of the globe is far from easy.
Throw in spiralling costs and a once in a century pandemic and you’ve got the sort
of adventure that would make the one that short chap did look like a walk in the park.
This is Auckland. Back in 2021 when the rest of the world was still grappling
with the pandemic it was voted the most liveable city in the world.
Sounds perfect, that’s all the excuse we need, pack your bags B1M team,
we’re relocating to Auckland! Let’s see what there is to do down here …
Well, we could take up surfing at Piha Beach, that looks pretty awesome. Or if
we didn’t want to get wet there are lots of dormant volcanoes that look good for hiking.
Oh, hang on, this is more like it: we could go to Waiheke “known locally as wine island” ...
We’ll keep remote working but also get an office in the Central Business District and then we can
all live in the suburbs that surround the city and it shouldn’t take too long to commute in.
As dawn breaks across the Waitemata Harbour,
Aucklanders settle into their morning routine. Bumper to bumper for the slow crawl into work.
ah…
Getting in and out of Auckland by car is a real challenge. Rush hour it's obviously really,
really bad. But even during the day and at weekends, it's very, very busy
This is where the dream of the pacific paradise comes into contact with reality.
The average Aucklander spends nearly 80 hours a year in traffic on motorways.
Auckland has suffered from chronic traffic congestion
for decades and it’s only getting worse.
In 2021, the very same year it was voted the best city in the world,
it recorded its worst ever congestion.
The place is grinding to a halt and it’s not just the impact on the economy that’s
a problem. A report published last year by the University of Auckland
showed a direct link between the city’s traffic and a decline in mental health.
It wasn’t always like this. In the 1950s the city had some of the highest usage of
public transport in the world, but after a strategic review in 1955,
the city’s infrastructure was decisively switched towards the car.
But now there is hope. After decades of neglect and underinvestment, Auckland’s
public transport network is undergoing a revival led by this: City Rail Link.
Snappily shortened to CRL.
The CRL is a USD $3.2BN twin tunnel rail line running 3.5 kilometres from the heart
of the central business district to the southern suburb of Mt Eden.
Two new stations are being constructed at Karanghape and Aotea, while the line
will plug into two newly refurbished stations at Britomart and Mount Eden.
These two stations are the secret sauce of the new line. The project will see
Britomart become a through station and the connection at Mount Eden
will create a link that unlocks Auckland’s entire rail network.
It links up the whole rail network. So from this one link, it's the catalyst for expanding rail
in northern New Zealand because it links up east and west and north and south. So you can actually
it'll bring in, you know, more than 50,000 extra people live within a commutable distance.
More frequent train services will double the network’s capacity, serving
54,000 passengers an hour at peak, that’s the same as 16 lanes of rush hour traffic.
More on that in a minute.
As New Zealand’s rail project continues, the government is sure to be watching closely.
The country’s economy, like many, is grappling with decades-high inflation,
And citizens and investors alike are gearing up for a deep recession.
But experts from Morgan Stanley to Bank of America are trying to combat those losses
by investing in real assets like real estate, commodities, and even fine art.
That’s because historically, art has served as a hedge against inflation.
And just last year–even amidst massive market crashes– leading
auction houses had record-breaking performance -
That’s where Masterworks comes in. It’s a fintech startup based in Manhattan’s Financial District…
They’re making it so that nearly any investor can diversify their
portfolio with high-end contemporary art…
For just thousands of dollars.
In their last three exits, just in the previous 60 days,
Masterworks investors realized returns of : +10%, 13%, and 35%
Over 617,000 people have signed up so far.
And demand is so high, they’re looking to acquire more art on a weekly basis…
But The B1M subscribers can claim a free,
no-obligation account at the link in the description.
Now let’s get back to the video.
Funding for the project was confirmed in 2016 and work began in 2018.
Building the country’s first underground railway has come with some challenges,
including the depth of the tunnel.
There are two common ways for constructing underground railways:
there’s the cut and cover method, or if you need to go deep you can
burrow through the earth using a tunnel boring machine or TBM.
City Rail Link used both.
At the lower end of the city in Britomart the tunnel is very, very shallow. And there's also
a very, very tight curve. So with the depth only being a few metres to the top of the
crown and the tightness of the curve... to get a machine to do that would be very, very difficult.
We can actually join on just outside Aotea because of the rest of it,
I had an up towards mandate. And you know, we're at depths of 25,
32 metre, 30 metres in one place. So that that was the main reason for the split in the two
To align with the shallow Britomart station a one kilometre cut and cover
tunnel was dug through the central business district between Britomart and Aotea and
from there a serious bit of kit was brought in for the rest of the line.
This is the Dame Whina Cooper, City Rail Link’s
USD $7.6M TBM. It’s 130 metres long with a cutter plate over seven metres wide.
Built by a German company in southern China, the 900-tonne giant was shipped over 10,000
kilometres from Guangzhou to Auckland, all for it to dig three and a half kilometres of kiwi soil.
An international team worked round the clock,
digging 32 metres of tunnel and excavating 1,500 tonnes of spoil every day.
Tunnelling was completed in September 2022 when Dame Whina Cooper broke through at Aotea station
and the team moved on to the next phase of the project, fitting out the tunnels.
Despite the disruption caused by covid the tunnelling phase of
the project was completed just 11 days later than scheduled.
We only actually locked down totally for just a few weeks.
But it’s not all been plain sailing. In August 2021 government ministers had to
intervene when the city was plunged into a strict
week-long lockdown following the first reported case of covid in six months.
An emergency exception was granted to allow the project to continue work as
turning off the TBM machine could have resulted in it getting stuck underground.
If the tunnelling machine stops quickly, where it's not a planned stop,
and then if it's going to remain stationary for an unforeseen period of time… you have a
risk of the ground squeezing onto the shield. And once the ground squeezes onto the shield,
gets a hold of it, the pressures go up when you try and move it because it's now got a grip
Cost rises and supply chain issues have also taken their toll. The original opening date
of late 2024 is unlikely to be met and there’s no clear completion date yet.
Despite this, support for the project remains high.
The city has got right behind it and they've showed great interest. It's real bonus is the
city being behind the project, which makes a huge difference when you go into work.
In 2022 Auckland was knocked off the top spot
of most liveable cities by the Austrian capital Vienna.
Luckily those breathtaking beaches and verdant volcanoes aren’t going anywhere – and if it
wants to regain the crown, perhaps City Rail Link could be its secret weapon.
This video was brought to you by Masterworks,
you can learn more on that at the link in the description.
There’s also the chance to dive deeper on New Zealand’s railway and the other topics on our
channel over on The World’s Best Construction Podcast – available now wherever you get your
podcasts. And as always , if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the
definitive video channel for construction, make sure you’re subscribed to The B1M.